August 28, 2024

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Developments

Scattered signs point to growing migration out of Venezuela, amid turmoil and repression following the Nicolás Maduro government’s illegitimate claim to have won July 28 presidential elections. Yesterday the line to enter Cúcuta, Colombia from San Antonio del Táchira, Venezuela stretched for a kilometer, local media reported.

WOLA has seen a non-governmental update from this week (no link available) finding only a small post-election increase in migration along the Colombia-Venezuela border so far, with just over half of migrants surveyed planning to stay in Colombia to earn enough money to migrate somewhere else, and about one in twenty planning to migrate to the United States immediately.

• Jonathan Maldonado, “Reportan Aumento de Movimientos Migratorios en Frontera del Tachira Con Colombia” (La Nacion, Tal Cual (Venezuela), August 27, 2024).

At The Hill, Manuela Nivia of Albright Stonebridge Group lamented that the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) has put on hold the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela—pending adjustments to reduce potential fraud—at a time when Venezuelans may need to flee the country more urgently.

• Manuela Nivia, “Biden Is Closing the Door on Venezuelans and Putting the Border at Risk” (The Hill, August 27, 2024).

In the more than three years since Texas’s state government began implementing its border security crackdown, at least 17 Texas National Guard members participating in “Operation Lone Star” have died, Stars and Stripes revealed. While the Texas state Military Department has not shared this data, the number of deceased troops “came out during a hearing last week of the Texas House Committee on Defense and Veterans’ Affairs,” reporter Rose Thayer found.

Causes of death vary. They include at least four deaths by suicide, traffic accidents, an accidental shooting, and medical emergencies.

At its peak in 2021, about 10,000 Texas National Guard members were assigned to the border mission. The state refuses to share the deployment’s current size.

• Rose L. Thayer, “At Least 17 Guard Members Have Died While Deployed to Texas Border to Help Deter Crime” (Stars and Stripes, August 27, 2024).

In remarks to NewsNation, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) called for building barriers along Texas’s border with New Mexico because “There are people who cross from Mexico into New Mexico and then right over into El Paso.”

• Ali Bradley, “Abbott: Border Barriers Needed Between New Mexico, Texas” (NewsNation, August 27, 2024).
• Connell Mcshane, “Border Issue ‘More Complicated’ Than Abbott Claims: Ex-Ice Official” (NewsNation, August 27, 2024).

Near a border wall gap in a remote area of Arizona, men from south Asian countries hoping to turn themselves in to Border Patrol told the conservative Daily Mail about the beatings and theft they suffered at the hands of Mexican criminal organizations.

• Jon Michael Raasch, “Migrants Reveal Dream U.S. Cities to Settle in as They Cross Border” (The Daily Mail (UK), August 27, 2024).

Guatemalan authorities arrested four police officers who had been demanding bribes from Cuban and Venezuelan migrants near the terminal in the country’s capital from where buses depart for the Mexico border.

• “Detienen a Policias de Guatemala por Exigir Dinero a Migrantes” (Agence France Presse, Milenio (Mexico), August 27, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s full-throated support of a bipartisan “border deal” bill, which failed in the Senate in February and May, drew a bit of media attention. The bill, the result of a political compromise, includes some measures that the Democratic Party would have opposed during the Trump era, like limits on asylum when the border gets busy and a commitment to spend about $650 million in remaining border wall construction money that had been appropriated during the Trump administration. Some media outlets portrayed Harris’s support for the bill as a “flip-flop” of previous opposition to building new border wall segments.

• Alex Thompson, Hans Nichols, “Harris Flip-Flops on Building the Border Wall” (Axios, August 27, 2024).
• Adam Shaw, Paul Steinhauser, “‘Total Bulls—’: Trump Campaign Rips ‘Preposterous’ Harris Pro-Border Wall Narrative After Media Report” (Fox News, August 27, 2024).
• Ryan King, “Harris Imitates Trump With Border Wall Ad, but Backs Softer Bipartisan Immigration Bill: ‘Preposterous and False Claim’” (The New York Post, August 27, 2024).

Senate Republicans’ lead negotiator on the border deal, Sen. James Lankford (R-Oklahoma), told the Washington Examiner that the $650 million in unspent border wall money might no longer be available, and that the “border deal” bill is probably dead, unlikely to gain necessary Republican votes if it were ever to come up again in the Senate.

• Anna Giaritelli, Christian Datoc, “Senate Border Deal Likely Dead Despite Harris’s Apparent Wall Flip: Lankford” (The Washington Examiner, August 27, 2024).

The “border deal” bill’s provision to shut down asylum access between ports of entry when Border Patrol apprehensions exceed a threshold is effectively in place right now, anyway (pending legal challenges): the Biden administration implemented a rule to do that on June 5. At the New York Times, Hamed Aleaziz noted that the restriction on asylum access has caused a sharp drop in Border Patrol apprehensions, but the Harris campaign is not drawing attention to it.

The reluctance owes to the reduction’s likely short-term nature; a desire not to raise the profile of the border and migration issue, which draws Republican attacks; and divisions within the Democratic Party about the wisdom of rolling back the legal right to seek asylum.

• Hamed Aleaziz, “The Big Border Change Harris Isn’t Talking About” (The New York Times, August 27, 2024).

At Vox Christian Paz discussed progressive Democrats’ silence so far about Harris’s adoption of harder-line stances on the border and migration.

• Christian Paz, “How Long Can Democrats’ Truce on Immigration Last?” (Vox, August 28, 2024).

At his newsletter, Arizona-based journalist John Washington dug into Harris’s record on the border and immigration, going back to her time as San Francisco’s district attorney. He concluded that Harris “emphatically championed the politically palatable. Her commitment to the issues has never gone against the grain of partisan public sentiment or the overall inertia of the U.S. immigration system.”

• John Washington, “Kamala Harris’s Electric Border” (Lit and Border News, August 27, 2024).

At Los Angeles public radio, Gustavo Solis marshaled statistics and quotes from experts to recall that migrants commit crimes less frequently in the United States than do U.S.-born citizens.

• Gustavo Solis, “‘No Migrant Crime Wave.’ Experts Fact Check Election Rhetoric” (KPBS (Los Angeles), August 27, 2024).

At the Intercept, Sam Biddle reported on DHS’s intention, through its Science and Technology Directorate, to find ways to implement facial recognition scanning of all drivers and passengers approaching the Mexico border, even when their vehicles are in motion.

• Sam Biddle, “Homeland Security Still Dreams of Face Recognition at the Border” (The Intercept, August 27, 2024).

On the Right

• Mike Pompeo, “How Trump Must Use the Military to Smash the Cartels and Build the Border Wall” (The New York Post, August 27, 2024).