August 6, 2024

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Developments

Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants between ports of entry dropped below 1,500 on August 4, roughly equal to the daily number of CBP One appointments available at ports of entry (1,450 plus a handful of “walk-ups”). The weekly average “is inching towards the 1,500 [per day] threshold that would deactivate President Biden’s partial asylum ban,” noted Camilo Montoya-Gálvez of CBS News.

• “Camilo Montoya-Galvez @Camiloreports on Twitter” (Twitter, August 5, 2024).

Over the previous 10 days, four Border Patrol officials told the Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli, migrant apprehensions had ranged from 1,670 to 2,500 per day.

• Anna Giaritelli, “Biden’s Border Turnaround? Illegal Immigration Drops to Trump-Era Levels” (The Washington Examiner, August 3, 2024).

CBP is making an adjustment to the feature on its CBP One app allowing asylum seekers in Mexican territory to make appointments at U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry. Since the feature debuted in January 2023, it has been available only to people inside Mexico from Mexico City northward. That geolocation restriction is to expand: soon, people will also be able to use CBP One to make appointments while in Mexico’s southernmost states.

• Maria Verza, Rebecca Santana, “In a Win for Mexico, Us Will Expand Areas for Migrants to Apply Online for Entry at Southern Border” (Associated Press, Associated Press, August 3, 2024).
• “Statement From Cbp on Cbp One™ Appointment Scheduling” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, August 4, 2024).

DHS has suspended the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela due to suspected fraud in some of the applications for U.S.-based sponsors. The program allows up to a combined 30,000 citizens of these countries to receive a two-year documented status in the United States without having to come to the U.S.-Mexico land border.

Due in part to this pathway’s availability, Border Patrol apprehensions of these countries’ citizens fell to just 3,349 at the U.S.-Mexico border in June, down from a high of 84,208 in December 2022. If the suspension is prolonged, there is some probability that this number will increase again.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “U.S. Pauses Migrant Sponsorship Program Due to Fraud Concerns” (CBS News, August 2, 2024).
• Maria Sacchetti, “Homeland Security Dept. Pauses Biden Parole Program for Four Countries” (The Washington Post, August 2, 2024).
• Jacqueline Charles, Syra Ortiz Blanes, “Biden Parole Program Migrants With Already-Approved Travel Should Be Able to Fly to U.S.” (The Miami Herald, August 4, 2024).
• Salome Ramirez Vargas, “Incertidumbre en Solicitantes al Parole Humanitario Tras Suspension de Permisos de Viaje” (Voz de América, Tal Cual (Venezuela), August 6, 2024).

The frequency of ICE flights removing migrants to other countries dropped a bit from June to July, reverting “to a more typical level of 6.3 per weekday from the one-month evaluation to 7.2 in June, and closer to the prior 6-month average of 6.5,” according to the latest monthly report from Tom Cartwright at Witness on the Border. Two-thirds of flights went to Mexico (16 of 146 in July), El Salvador (12), Guatemala (46), and Honduras (24). Colombia (17) and Ecuador (18) also saw double-digit numbers of ICE removal flights.

• Tom Cartwright, “July 2024 and Last 12 Months” (Witness at the Border, August 4, 2024).

Analyses at Bloomberg, the Center for Engagement and Democracy in the Americas, and the American Conservative relayed expectations that migration from Venezuela is poised to increase following the authoritarian government’s extremely dubious claim to have won July 28 elections.

• Marcelo Rochabrun, Valentina Fuentes, “Venezuela’s Neighbors Fear ‘Exodus That We Cannot Accommodate’” (Bloomberg, msn.com, August 4, 2024).
• “Migration Will Serve as a Clear Indicator of the Evolving Crisis in Venezuela” (Center for Engagement and Advocacy in the Americas, August 2, 2024).
• Joseph Addington, “Chaos in Venezuela May Exacerbate U.S. Border Crisis” (The American Conservative, August 6, 2024).

Nineteen Democratic members of Congress signed a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other officials voicing serious concerns about the humanitarian impact of the Biden administration’s June 2024 rule severely limiting asylum access at the border.

• Rep. Jesus Chuy Garcia (D-Illinois), “Garcia, Barragan, Ramirez, Grijalva Call for Rescission of New Asylum Interim Rule” (U.S. House of Representatives, August 2, 2024).

Mexico’s Milenio toured one of the Mexican government migration authority’s new “remodeled” detention centers, where single adult migrants are held for up to 36 hours. The article describes it as “a place without armed guards, prison-like cells, rooms free of padlocks and bars, and no families or minors in sight.”

• Ivan Cabanzo, “Remodelan Centros en Busca del Bienestar de Migrantes” (Milenio (Mexico), August 4, 2024).

In Starr County, in south Texas, landowner Florentino Luera has filed a federal lawsuit to prevent CBP and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from seizing his land to build a segment of border wall. The Biden administration is building a stretch of wall in Starr County because it is compelled to do so by appropriations legislation passed during the Trump administration.

• Sandra Sanchez, “South Texas Landowner Sues Cbp After Agency Twice Tries to Take Land for Border Wall” (Border Report, August 5, 2024).
• Dina Arevalo, “Starr Man Sues Feds Over Land Taken for Border Wall” (The Brownsville Herald, August 2, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The Atlantic has published a deeply reported feature about migration through the Darién Gap, by Caitlin Dickerson, who won a Pulitzer for her coverage of the Trump administration’s family separation policy. Dickerson walked the entire length of the treacherous Darién trail and spoke to many migrants and officials about the untenable situation there. She concludes that attempting to deter migrants by making the trip more miserable does not reduce migration, but it does result in more death and suffering.

• Caitlin Dickerson, “Seventy Miles in the Darien Gap” (The Atlantic, August 6, 2024).

At the Wall Street Journal, Michelle Hackman and Santiago Perez dive into how a “chutes and ladders” migration crackdown in Mexico, combined with the Biden administration’s June 5 ban on most asylum between border ports of entry, has led migrant arrivals at the border to plummet this year.

• Michelle Hackman, Santiago Perez, “How the U.S. and Mexico Drove Border Crossings Down in an Election Year” (The Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2024).

Faced with new obstacles to northward migration, like a suspension of visa-free arrivals to Ecuador, U.S.-bound citizens of China “are now attempting to start their overland journeys from as far away as La Paz, Bolivia, roughly 7,000 miles and nine border crossings from Tijuana,” the Wall Street Journal reported.

• Wenxin Fan, “Chinese Migrants Rush to Find Way to U.S. Border Before Doors Close” (The Wall Street Journal, August 4, 2024).

The Atlantic’s Caitlin Dickerson (in another piece), Eduardo Porter of the Washington Post editorial board, and former officials at the Center for American Progress published analyses of Kamala Harris’s record on hemisphere-wide migration policy. The CAP authors touted the success of Harris’s approach to “root causes” of migration from Central America, while Porter questioned its relevance to larger U.S. border and migration challenges. Dickerson pointed out that people’s often agonized decisions to migrate rarely have anything to do with the current state of U.S. immigration policy.

• Caitlin Dickerson, “There’s No Such Thing as a Border Czar” (The Atlantic, August 2, 2024).
• Eduardo Porter, “Harris’s Border Portfolio Was Irrelevant to America’s Immigration Challenges” (The Washington Post, August 5, 2024).
• Dan Restrepo, Debu Gandhi, Tom Jawetz, “Vice President Kamala Harris and Migration in the Americas: Setting the Record Straight” (Center for American Progress, August 5, 2024).
• Emily Hallas, “Vance Fashions Himself as New ‘Border Czar’ in Plot Twist Against Harris” (The Washington Examiner, August 2, 2024).

People close to the Harris campaign told NBC News that the Vice President plans to lean into the border and migration issue between now and Election Day, even though some polling has showed it as a potential liability. At MNSBC, the Cato Institute’s David Bier urged Harris to run on a platform of defending immigrants.

• Gabe Gutierrez, “Harris Is Talking About Immigration More, and Her Allies Think It Could Be a Political Advantage” (NBC News, August 5, 2024).
• David J. Bier, “Kamala Harris Shouldn’t Ignore Immigration. She Should Run on It.” (Cato Institute, MSNBC, August 4, 2024).

“We can’t have border control without gun control,” Jean Guerrero wrote at the New Republic, noting the southbound flow of U.S. weapons to organized crime in nations to the south from which large numbers of people migrate. Guerrero called on Kamala Harris “and every major Democrat” to “beat the drum about this as often as the Republican Party spews hate against immigrants.”

• Jean Guerrero, “Kamala Harris Should Reframe Immigration as a Gun Control Issue” (The New Republic, August 5, 2024).

Writing in the Los Angeles Times after participating in a borderland humanitarian water drop, novelist Laura Pritchett lamented the “proximity principle,” which reduces people’s empathy for suffering—like that of migrants risking death in the desert—that they do not witness firsthand.

• Laura Pritchett, “When It Comes to the U.S.-Mexico Border, Can People Think Beyond Politics?” (The Los Angeles Times, August 5, 2024).

On the Right

• “Terror at Our Door: How the Biden-Harris Administration’s Open-Borders Policies Undermine National Security and Endanger Americans” (U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, August 5, 2024).
• Sen. Tommy Tuberville, “The Kamalafornia Republic” (The American Conservative, August 6, 2024).
• Jennie Taer, “Greg Abbott Says Kamala Harris Has ‘Failed Miserably’ on the Border — Claims Past Comments Are a ‘Magnet to More Illegal Immigrants’” (The New York Post, August 4, 2024).
• Timothy h.j. Nerozzi, “Biden’s Immigration Obsession” (The American Conservative, August 5, 2024).