August 29, 2024

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Developments

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) rejected a Fox News Freedom of Information Act request to identify the nationalities of migrants encountered at the border who come up on the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Dataset. CBP has reported 139 such encounters during the first 10 months of fiscal 2024 (43 at ports of entry, and 96 Border Patrol apprehensions), but does not reveal where the people with suspected terrorism affiliations are coming from.

Republican critics of the Biden administration—including the authors of an August 5 Judiciary Committee report—have made much of data, omitting nationalities, that has been showing an increase in such encounters.

The official explanation for turning down the request for nationalities cites privacy concerns and the possibility of revealing investigative techniques, “allowing the terrorists to take countermeasures against the investigators and their investigations.”

(WOLA suspects, but is unable to prove, that many—perhaps most—individuals matching the dataset come from Colombia, a country that has seen a sharp recent increase in border encounters and has had five different groups this century on the State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations, two of which have long since demobilized. While WOLA staff have not filed Freedom of Information Act requests—usually a very slow process without litigation—DHS officials and legislative staff have immediately refused past verbal suggestions to release even just the top nationalities.)

• Adam Shaw, Bill Melugin, Biden-Harris Admin Refuses to Reveal Nationalities of Terror Watchlist Migrants Nabbed at Border (Fox News, Tuesday, August 27, 2024).

A hearing is scheduled today in U.S. District Court for a lawsuit brought by 16 Haitian citizens who allege abuse at the hands of mounted Border Patrol agents, who were caught on video charging at them on the banks of the Rio Grande in Del Rio, Texas in September 2021. The hearing is to consider the Justice Department’s motion to dismiss the case.

• Sandra Sanchez, “Us Seeks to Have Lawsuit Over Agents Accused of ‘Whipping’ Haitian Migrants Dismissed” (Border Report, August 28, 2024).

Cronkite News covered CBP’s August 16 issuance of a new directive governing the agency’s handling of migrants’ personal belongings, which frequently get discarded or confiscated even when they are valuable or necessary for medical or legal purposes. Noah Schramm, who has worked on the belongings issue at ACLU of Arizona, characterized the policy change as an advance, but “remains concerned because the rules don’t explicitly ensure that migrants get their belongings back when they’re moved to another facility or released.”

• Mia Osmonbekov, “After Scathing Gao Report, Border Patrol Agents Ordered to Stop Tossing Out Migrants’ Belongings” (Cronkite News, The Tucson Sentinel (Tucson Arizona), August 28, 2024).

A 60-year-old man from Mexico fell from the 30-foot border wall, on the Mexico side, near Sasabe, Arizona after midnight on Wednesday, the Tucson Sentinel reported. He lay on the ground with a compound fracture in his leg, aided through the wall by humanitarian volunteers on the U.S. side; medical workers treated his leg through the wall at 5:30PM, but the man remained in the desert awaiting rescue through Wednesday night.

• Paul Ingram, “60-Year-Old Had Not Been Taken to Hospital Hours After Being Found Near Base of Border Barrier in Remote Az Desert” (The Tucson Sentinel (Tucson Arizona), August 29, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Some election campaign analysis continues to discuss whether Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, “flip-flopped” on border wall construction—as an Axios story put it—when she endorsed bringing back the Border Act, a compromise Senate bill that failed, following months of bipartisan negotiations, last February. Among provisions in that bill on which Republicans insisted was language committing the U.S. government to spending out unspent border-wall money—estimated at about $650 million, enough to build about 26 miles—that was appropriated during the Trump administration.

At MSNBC, Steve Benen pointed out that Harris’s endorsement of the larger bill does not equate to endorsing “the merits of a border wall.”

• Steve Benen, “As the Gop Targets Harris’ Border Wall Stance, the Details Matter” (MSNBC, August 28, 2024).
• Jeremy Yurow, “Republicans Accuse Kamala Harris of Changing Her Stance on the Border” (USA Today, August 28, 2024).
• Brigham L. Tomco, “Will a Wall Solve the ‘Border Crisis’?” (Deseret News, August 28, 2024).

“Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S. are on edge expecting that family and friends who are still in Venezuela will flee their homes in the coming weeks and months” amid turmoil and repression following President Nicolás Maduro’s illegitimate claim to have won July 28 elections, reported the Washington Examiner.

• Anna Giaritelli, “Venezuelan Instability Could Send Countless More Migrants to Us Border” (The Washington Examiner, August 29, 2024).

On the Right

• Adam Shaw, Elizabeth Heckman, Nikolas Lanum, “Residents Along the Border Trust Trump Over Harris on Border Security” (Fox News, August 28, 2024).
• Bethany Blankley, “Under Biden, Obrador Administrations, Nearly 3 Million Mexican Illegal Border Crossers” (The Center Square, August 28, 2024).
• Emily Hallas, “Abbott Says Texas ‘Solved’ Border Problem but Country Is Stuck Without New President” (The Washington Examiner, August 28, 2024).