Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: Asylum rule, Mexico data, CBP One, 2024 campaign, migrant deaths

With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.

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THIS WEEK IN BRIEF:

• Administration considers toughening its asylum rule further

The Biden administration’s June rule keeps asylum out of reach for most people who cross between ports of entry, but would restore asylum access if migrant encounters average 1,500 per day for a week. With encounters averaging over 1,800 per day, the administration is now reportedly considering moving the goalposts, requiring the average to remain below the 1,500 threshold for a month and including unaccompanied children in the count.

• Mexico’s migrant encounters remain near all-time highs

Though migrant encounters have dropped in recent months in the United States, Panama, and Honduras, Mexico recorded its fifth-largest-ever number in July as a crackdown on in-transit migration continues. In July, for the first time, Mexico’s migrant encounters exceeded U.S. authorities’ southern-border encounters.

• Mexico to ease transportation for some CBP One appointments

Mexico announced that it will provide security to buses transporting migrants who have secured a limited number of appointments at U.S. ports of entry using the CBP One smartphone app. Escorted buses will depart the southernmost states of Chiapas and Tabasco. The measure raises hope for a reduction in organized crime groups’ ransom kidnappings of northbound migrants.

• Harris calls for “consequences” for unauthorized border crossings

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, continues to voice strong support for the “Border Act,” a bill that failed in the U.S. Senate in February 2024 following negotiations that led to a bipartisan compromise. The bill includes measures, conceded to Republican legislators, that the Democratic Party did not support during the Trump years, like asylum restrictions, more migrant detention, and some wall-building.

• Notes on migrant deaths and humanitarian responses

Links to updates and analyses about Border Patrol’s flawed missing migrant program, humanitarian groups’ efforts to rescue migrants and locate remains, a tragic train derailment near Ciudad Juárez, and other items.

THE FULL UPDATE:

Administration considers toughening its asylum rule further

The Biden administration may alter the language of its June 4 proclamation and rule on asylum access in a way that would place protection further out of reach for most migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry.

U.S. law states that people on U.S. soil who fear return to their country may apply for asylum “whether or not” they arrived “at a designated port of arrival.” The June rule altered that—in a way that is now facing challenges in federal court—by “shutting down” asylum access whenever Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) migrant encounters at the border, not counting unaccompanied children and “CBP One” appointments, exceed a weekly average of 2,500 per day. People who cross between ports of entry are placed into expedited removal, a rapid process that denies a hearing; if they specifically express fear of return, they may get an interview with an asylum officer but must quickly meet a very high standard of fear.

The June rule would reinstate the right to asylum between ports of entry two weeks after the daily average drops below 1,500 per day for one week. The changes that the Biden administration is reportedly considering would require the 1,500-per-day average to sustain for 28 days or even “several weeks,” and the daily count could expand to encompass unaccompanied minors. This new standard “would make President Biden’s tough but temporary asylum restrictions almost impossible to lift, people familiar with the plans” told the New York Times.

Asylum is currently “shut down” because numbers have not dropped to 1,500 per day. In July, the average was 1,797 per day. (56,408 Border Patrol apprehensions, minus 5,625 unaccompanied children, plus 4,917 people who came to ports of entry without CBP One appointments, divided by 31 days.)

In August, Border Patrol apprehended about 1,870 people per day: the Associated Press revealed, citing preliminary CBP numbers, that Border Patrol apprehended about 58,000 people last month between ports of entry. That is a slight increase over July (56,400), indicating that the drop that followed the rule’s imposition has “bottomed out” and may be gradually reversing. Reporting from Nogales, CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez found that, three months after the Biden administration began implementing this rule, deportations into Mexico have accelerated.

Mexico’s migrant encounters remain near all-time highs

The August U.S. figure, a slight increase, would be the first monthly uptick in Border Patrol apprehensions since January-to-February 2024. Numbers of migrants transiting Panama and Honduras have also declined. Mexico, however, is bucking the trend.

Mexico’s government published data showing that July 2024 was its 5th busiest month ever, with 116,626 encounters with undocumented migrants. In the seven months since January 2024, when Mexico launched a crackdown on migration transiting the country, its reported monthly encounters have ranged between 113,839 (January) and 125,499 (May). Before this year, Mexico’s all-time monthly record was 97,969 (November 2023) and it never exceeded 70,000 apprehensions before July 2023.

In July 2024, for the first time, Mexico’s reported migrant encounters exceeded the United States’ encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border (116,626 compared to 104,116), combining Border Patrol apprehensions and CBP’s encounters at ports of entry, including appointments made using the CBP One smartphone app.

Mexico to ease transportation for those with CBP One appointments

Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) announced that the country’s security forces will accompany buses transporting asylum seekers who have pending CBP One appointments at U.S. border ports of entry. Buses will depart from Mexico’s southern-border states of Chiapas and Tabasco to the U.S. border.

WOLA and other organizations have received reports of people—many with appointments at U.S. ports of entry—being kidnapped by organized crime while trying to travel across Mexico to attend appointments made using CBP’s app. INM calls the route an “Emergent Secure Mobility Corridor”; those boarding the buses will receive a document granting 20 days’ permission to be in Mexico.

The University of Texas Strauss Center’s latest quarterly report on border asylum processing found that waits for CBP One appointments—which CBP has held steady at 1,450 per day since June 2023—now reach 8 or 9 months in some cases. The Associated Press reported that the growth of asylum seekers awaiting appointments has led to a proliferation of migrant encampments throughout Mexico City.

The mayor of Ciudad Juárez, Cruz Perez Cuellar, welcomed the INM announcement and said the city’s migrant shelters currently have ample space to receive those with appointments. CBP currently accepts about 200 appointments daily at the Paso del Norte bridge between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso.

Following the Mexican government’s announcement, 100 people with confirmed dates at U.S. ports of entry lined up outside a migration facility in Tapachula, in Mexico’s southernmost state of Chiapas. One man from Guatemala told EFE that he managed to secure an appointment in only four days—a highly unusual case. A woman from Honduras told EFE that she began attempting to apply for an appointment last December.

The Mexican daily Milenio meanwhile reported on a criminal group that is kidnapping U.S.-bound migrants for ransom as they cross into Mexico from Guatemala near Tapachula. One Venezuelan man released from the group’s custody told of “25 criminals in charge and practically a hundred kidnapped people” being held in a wire cage. Chiapas’s state attorney-general’s office, which is charged with investigating and documenting migrant kidnappings, “only had two investigation files registered in 2023, one in 2019, and another in 2020,” Milenio found.

Harris calls for “consequences” for unauthorized border crossings

In a prime-time CNN interview alongside running mate Tim Walz, Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, voiced support for stricter border enforcement and for addressing “root causes” of migration from Central America.

Harris reiterated strong backing for the “ Border Act of 2024,” a bill that failed in the Senate in February after months of negotiations between Democratic and Republican senators. As it sought Republican buy-in, that bill included tougher provisions than Democrats would normally support, like severe limits on asylum access between ports of entry, more migrant detention capacity, and expenditure of Trump-era border wall money. (WOLA discussed the Border Act in a September 4 video.)

“I will make sure that it comes to my desk and I would sign it,” Harris said of the Border Act, recalling that Donald Trump pressured Republican senators to oppose the bill as it neared consideration. “I believe there should be consequences” for crossing the border without authorization, Harris added.

The Vice President has not specifically said she would carry out border wall-building if elected, but in supporting the “Border Act”, she has backed a bill that—in one of several concessions to Republicans—would spend $650 million in previously appropriated funds on wall construction, enough to build about 26 miles. A CNN review of Harris’s past social media posts found that “she criticized the border wall more than 50 times during the Trump administration, calling it, among other things, ‘stupid,’ ‘useless,’ and a ‘medieval vanity project.’”

Harris’s opponent continues to occupy far more extreme ground on the border issue. Roll Call spoke to former officials and security experts about how Donald Trump, if he wins, might use the U.S. military to carry out deportations and build up border security. Tom Homan, who was acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under Trump and remains an enthusiastic Trump backer, raised the possibility of redeploying active soldiers from overseas to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Notes on migrant deaths and humanitarian responses

• At a time of near-record high migrant deaths on the U.S. side of the border, an investigation by Tanvi Misra at High Country News explored the complexities of Border Patrol’s Missing Migrant Program. It highlights that “some aid workers and border researchers see a conflict of interest between the agency’s primary mandate, which is to detain and deport migrants, and the humanitarian goal of saving lives.” Records show a surprisingly small number of 911 calls from migrants resulting in rescue missions.
• A cargo train derailed late on September 3 in Chihuahua, Mexico south of Ciudad Juárez. About 15 migrants were riding aboard. A 4-year-old Venezuelan child died, his mother’s foot was severed, and a 17-year-old boy suffered head injuries.
• A lack of response from Border Patrol and Mexican authorities left a 60-year-old man lying on the ground with a compound leg fracture for more than 24 hours after falling from the Mexico side of the border wall. Eventually, firefighters from Arivaca, Arizona sawed through the wall to rescue him.
• The Times of London accompanied the Águilas del Desierto, an Arizona-based humanitarian group that searches for migrants in need of aid, and recovers the remains of some of the hundreds who perish in the state’s deserts each year.
• Searchers for disappeared victims of Mexico’s organized crime groups have found 14 sites with skeletal remains in the vicinity of Mexico’s northern border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, across from south Texas.

Other news

• The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) restarted registrations for the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, which had been suspended since the beginning of August due to potential fraud concerns. Since January 2023 this program has allowed up to a combined 30,000 citizens of these countries per month to apply for a two-year protected status in the United States, and to fly to U.S. airports instead of crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. It has contributed to a sharp drop in unauthorized crossings of these countries’ citizens at the border.
• The Washington Examiner revealed that Texas’s state government gave transportation companies $221 million in taxpayer funds to transport 119,700 migrants to Democratic Party-governed cities in the U.S. interior. That adds up to $1,848 per bus ticket, more than a first-class one-way flight often costs.
• A Texas state judge ruled that Team Brownsville, a short-term shelter that receives migrants released from CBP custody, does not have to participate in a deposition demanded by Texas’s attorney-general, who has been carrying out a legal offensive against groups that assist migrants in the state. Judges have similarly slowed Ken Paxton’s (R) efforts so far against El Paso’s Annunciation House, Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, and the Houston-based immigrant rights defense group FIEL.
• From Witness at the Border, Thomas Cartwright’s latest monthly report on August’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation flights documented a second consecutive monthly drop in the planes’ operational tempo, from 7.2 removal flights per weekday in June to 6.3 in July and 6.1 in August. Of 135 removal flights last month, 64 percent—similar to previous months—went to Mexico (13), El Salvador (8), Guatemala (37) and Honduras (29).
• Cartwright also noted Panama’s U.S.-backed acceleration of removal flights, which began on August 20. The first four flights, between August 20 and 29, carried 117 people, 30 to Ecuador and 87 to Colombia. “Panama indicated the first charter to Colombia was at a cost of $17,000,” Cartwright added. That would be about $600 per passenger; the U.S. government has allocated about $6 million (the equivalent of 10,000 such passengers) to support Panama’s flights. 231,089 people had migrated through the Darién Gap in 2024, as of August 25.
• Migrants who were aboard Panama’s August 29 repatriation flight to Ecuador told the Guayaquil daily El Universo of the dangers of the Darién migration route. “In the middle of the jungle some hooded men appear,” one said. “They ask you for money, they steal everything; they kidnap and rape women.”
• Venezuelan media outlets Efecto Cocuyo and La Nación reported on slight but notable increases in the number of people migrating away from Venezuela, as repression and uncertainty increase following the Nicolás Maduro regime’s false claim to have won July 28 presidential elections. The Cúcuta, Colombia-based Fundación Nueva Ilusión told Efecto Cocuyo that many of those fleeing are young people who say “they were targeted by the authorities due to the political persecution.” In the border town of Pacaraima, Brazil, the overall cross-border flow is similar to before, but the number of Venezuelan crossers requesting protection has increased.
• UNHCR surveys of 560 travel groups at Costa Rica’s northern border with Nicaragua during the first half of 2024 found 74 percent of respondents were from Venezuela, and 84 percent of them hoped to migrate to the United States. 92 percent said they left their countries of origin due to “lack of employment or income,” 79 percent cited fear of violence or insecurity. At Costa Rica’s southern border with Panama, 82 percent of respondents had departed from Venezuela, 87 percent hoped to migrate to the United States, 83 percent left their countries of origin due to “lack of employment or income,” and 39 percent cited fear of violence or insecurity.
• DHS announced the allocation of $380 million in FEMA Shelter and Services Program funding to 50 nonprofits and state or local governments assisting migrants released from CBP custody.
• The Associated Press reported that some migrants from China are deciding to settle in Mexico instead of the United States. Baja California state until recently was home to Mexico’s largest Chinese-Mexican population, but the largest number of Chinese immigrants are now in Mexico City.
• Mexico’s Army and National Guard captured a top boss of the organized crime group that dominates criminality in the dangerous border city of Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, across from Laredo, Texas. Carlos Alberto Monsiváis Treviño, alias “El Comandante Bola,” has been the maximum leader of the Northeast Cartel, an offshoot of the once-powerful Zetas, since the 2022 capture of his cousin, Juan Gerardo Treviño. As often occurs when a top organized crime leader is brought down, the already tense security situation in Nuevo Laredo may complicate further in coming weeks.
• Border district Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is discussing with the Department of Defense the possible transfer of up to a dozen new, upgraded surveillance blimps that would be tethered along the border. NewsNation reported over the weekend that CBP’s blimp program was shutting down after being reduced to four aircraft last year. However, Cuellar told Border Report, “The Department of Defense has some newer aerostats that they’re willing to transfer,” though this might not happen until after 2025. “The monthly operational cost for one unit can cost $400,000,” Border Report noted.
• The Washington Post published a profile of a Biden administration official who has been a driving force behind restrictive policies that have caused recent declines in arrivals at the border. “Data-driven technocrat” Blas Nuñez-Neto, who served as Assistant Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy before a recent move to the White House, “was laser-focused on border crossings, checking enforcement data daily.”
• At the Border Chronicle, Todd Miller recounted an August 14 Border Patrol vehicle stop in Arizona, during which an agent shut a filmmaker and an author, both Mexican-American, in the back of his truck while verifying their citizenship. They were accompanied by a local humanitarian worker, who is not Latino and was not asked for his identification.