Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: 2024 campaign, Darién Gap, Migration, fentanyl, and human rights in Texas

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:

• 2024 campaign notes

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump used a visit to Aurora, Colorado—site of recent claims of Venezuelan gang activity—to call for a large-scale deportation campaign, probably using the U.S. military and relying on the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. In Arizona, Trump proposed adding 10,000 agents to Border Patrol, a force that is struggling to hire enough agents to rise above 20,000. In a FOX News interview and other campaign appearances, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris has continued to avoid positions on the border and migration that could be considered progressive.

• Migration increased in the Darién Gap, led by more Venezuelan citizens, in September

After two months of sharp declines, data from Panama showed a 51 percent increase, from August to September, in migration through the treacherous Darién Gap region. This included a 69 percent jump in migration of citizens of Venezuela, where the government has ratcheted up repression after rejecting a very probable opposition victory in July 28 elections. Reports from Refugees International and Colombian groups point to vastly unmet humanitarian needs, and high vulnerability to organized crime, among the population transiting the Darién.

• Possible early indicators of increased migration, fentanyl smuggling into Texas

Three and a half years into the Texas state government’s “Operation Lone Star” border crackdown, Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector (mid-Texas) is experiencing an increase in large groups of asylum seekers trying to turn themselves in. Although 96 percent of fentanyl seizures have been happening in California and Arizona, Mexican authorities raided a lab and seized 130,000 pills in recent days in Ciudad Juárez, across from the El Paso, Texas metropolitan area.

• Texas notes

A collection of links to other news about the situation along the Texas-Mexico border, noting the state’s dependence on undocumented migrant labor, the state’s security forces’ misuse of force on the borderline, and an ongoing legal offensive against nonprofits that assist migrants.

THE FULL UPDATE:

2024 campaign notes

Donald Trump

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump visited Aurora, Colorado on October 11, where he called for a campaign of mass deportations of migrants that, if elected, he would call “Operation Aurora.” The Denver suburb has received much attention in conservative media and Republican politicians’ statements because of the alleged presence of members of the Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization, in an apartment block.

Local Republican officials have said that the presence of Tren de Aragua is minimal; Mayor Mike Coffman (R, a former congressman) criticized Trump for exaggerating it. “The mayor said they were exaggerated. That means there’s got to be some element of truth here,” Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), said on ABC’s This Week.

The deportation blitz would rely on the Alien Enemies Act, part of the rarely used Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Civilian U.S. agencies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), lack the capacity to carry out Trump’s proposed mass deportation plan on their own. The candidate would use rarely invoked emergency authorities to have members of the U.S. military carry out deportation and border security duties.

It is very unusual to have soldiers carrying out non-defense duties on U.S. soil that put them in regular contact with civilians. But as an Associated Press analysis pointed out, “He [Trump] has pledged to recall thousands of American troops from overseas and station them at the U.S. border with Mexico. He has explored using troops for domestic policy priorities such as deportations and confronting civil unrest. He has talked of weeding out military officers who are ideologically opposed to him.”

At his Substack newsletter, Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck offered context about the Alien Enemies Act, concluding that courts are so likely to restrict its use that “this is almost certainly empty (if nevertheless disturbing) posturing by former President Trump.”

At an October 13 rally in Arizona, Trump brought up leaders of the National Border Patrol Council, the union representing most Border Patrol agents. The union’s new president, Paul Pérez, endorsed Trump, telling the crowd, “If we allow Border Czar [Kamala] Harris to win this election, every city, every community in this great country, is going to go to hell.”

The Republican candidate proposed a 10 percent pay raise for Border Patrol agents and a $10,000 signing bonus for recruits, in order to add 10,000 new agents to a force that currently has just under 20,000.

Border Patrol already had enough funds appropriated in 2024 to maintain a workforce of 22,000 but has barely been able to hire more agents than it loses to retirements and other attrition. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) continues to struggle to find recruits who can pass background checks, including a polygraph exam with a high failure rate. Already, the Washington Post pointed out, “new Border Patrol agents could be eligible for as much as $30,000 in incentives.”

Several news reports noted that in February, Trump urged Republican legislators to kill a compromise Senate bill that, among other provisions, would have hired about 1,500 new Border Patrol agents and CBP officers.

The New York Times pointed out the lack of detail with which Trump issues his hardline border security proposals.

Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, spent nearly half of a contentious interview with FOX News host Bret Baier discussing the border and migration. The New York Times noted that Baier, the FOX host, “repeatedly interrupted the vice president and tried to talk over her.”

Harris often returned to her central border talking point: Donald Trump’s opposition to the February border bill, which failed in the Senate following negotiations between Democratic and Republican senators, that in addition to hiring more border officers and agents, would have increased migrant detention and restricted access to asylum at the border.

Asked, “Do you regret the decision to terminate ‘Remain in Mexico’ at the beginning of your administration?” Harris did not address the controversial program but pointed out that, in its early days, the administration backed a comprehensive immigration reform bill (which failed to move through Congress in 2021).

At Vox, Christian Paz viewed Harris’s responses to Baier as ceding political ground to immigration hardliners: “The Vice President had a chance to defend immigrants on Fox News. She passed.”

Harris discussed immigration at an October 10 “town hall” event in Arizona hosted by Univisión. A woman asked Harris about how immigration policy forces undocumented people to live in the shadows, citing her mother who died recently without ever gaining documented status in the United States. While empathetic, the Vice President’s response “also underscored how much her hard-line immigration message has focused on enforcement rather than reform,” the New York Times observed.

Writing at the Atlantic, veteran political journalist Ronald Brownstein noted how a harder-line shift in public opinion, reflected in some recent polling, has led Kamala Harris to respond to some of Donald Trump’s most aggressive and racist comments about immigration “cautiously, and in a tone more of sorrow than of anger.” Harris, Brownstein added, “has almost entirely avoided any direct discussion of Trump’s most militant immigration ideas” like a mass deportation campaign. The column called for more forceful confrontation of such language to forestall a wave of xenophobia like the United States experienced after World War I.

The New York Times noted that Harris has been playing up her past performance as a prosecutor and attorney-general in a border state, California, which included many prosecutions of transnational organized crime groups. Her efforts to collaborate with other states and nations “led to the arrests of larger players in the drug trade and seizures of greater quantities of drugs and other illicit goods,” the Times reported. “Ms. Harris is leaning into that experience as she runs on the most conservative border and immigration platform of any Democrat in decades.”

The Wall Street Journal and Snopes examined the role that Harris played in migration and border policy as Vice President. The fact-checking website noted that claims Harris served as a “border czar” are “misleading,” as they “often conflate her role in addressing the root causes of migration with direct border security responsibilities.”

Migration increased in the Darién Gap, led by more Venezuelan citizens, in September

Panama’s migration authority released data about people transiting the treacherous Darién Gap region in September. It showed a 51 percent increase compared to August, which was one of the lightest months for migration in the past two years.

Of 25,111 migrants registered at the route’s end in September, 79 percent were citizens of Venezuela. Migration from Venezuela leaped 69 percent (19,800, up from 11,733 in August). This is a likely consequence of the Nicolás Maduro regime’s refusal to recognize a probable landslide defeat in July 28 elections, which it followed with a wave of political repression.

The increase is also happening despite the July inauguration of a new Panamanian president, Raúl Mulino, who promised during his campaign to shut down Darién Gap migration and step up deportations. Between early August and October 5, according to Witness at the Border, Panama carried out 16 flights removing 634 people, equivalent to about 1.4 percent of total migration.

25,111 migrants in a month are still low by the standards of the past few years: the third-smallest monthly total since February 2023. Migration fell after Mulino took office on July 1, but the September data seem to indicate that this lull is ending. It remains unclear whether the increase would once again reach more than 1,200 people per day, which was the Darién average between July 2022 and June 2024.

President Mulino’s administration, meanwhile, is allowing Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to return to the Darién Gap region to provide health services at posts receiving migrants at the end of the route. Panama’s previous government withdrew permission for MSF to operate in March, shortly after the group publicly denounced a sharp increase in the number of patients who suffered sexual violence while transiting.

Refugees International published an in-depth report about the current experience of migrants transiting the Panama segment of the Darién Gap route, the rest of Panama, and Costa Rica. Researchers Caitlyn Yates and Rachel Schmidtke warned that Panama’s and Costa Rica’s restrictive policies are exacerbating humanitarian crises without curbing migration, and they expect high levels of migration to persist.

The report finds that both countries’ busing system, which intends to reduce smuggling, leaves vulnerable migrants stranded due to high fees and inadequate financial support. Humanitarian needs are particularly acute in Costa Rica’s border regions.

The Colombian government’s Human Rights Ombudsman’s Office reported from the beginning of the route through the Darién Gap that, under organized crime dictates, migrants must pay US$350 each for boat fare, lodging, and “guides” on the Colombian side of the trail.

A report from the Venezuela Observatory at Colombia’s Universidad del Rosario highlighted some of the dangers that migrants face during the Darién journey in Colombia and Panama, especially predation by organized crime.

Possible early indicators of increased migration, fentanyl smuggling into Texas

The state government of Texas, led by Biden administration critic Gov. Greg Abbott (R), has spent over $11 billion on border security and migrant deterrence efforts since Joe Biden took office. This “Operation Lone Star” campaign has not reduced migration to Texas more than to Arizona, a border state carrying out no similar measures. Now, some indicators point to possible new setbacks for Abbott’s hardline approach.

Texas police reported apprehending a group of 204 migrants, including 47 unaccompanied children, near the border city of Eagle Pass. This is part of Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector, which is experiencing an increase in arrivals of large groups of migrants seeking to turn themselves in to authorities over the past few weeks.

Across from the El Paso, Texas, metro area, police in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, reported seizing 14 kilograms of fentanyl pills in the crime-plagued neighborhood of Anapra, along the border. This comes a few days after a local media report about a raid on a fentanyl lab in the same neighborhood.

This is notable because since 2019, 96 percent of CBP’s border-zone fentanyl seizures (71,883 of 74,953 pounds) have occurred in California and Arizona—far from the Ciudad Juárez area, which borders Texas and New Mexico.

The Mexican daily Milenio, citing information from CBP, reported that the Venezuelan-origin Tren de Aragua criminal group “has joined Mexican gangs that operate a network of safe houses in US territory used for human smuggling, particularly in the El Paso region of Texas.” CBP public affairs official Landon Hutchens said, “Most of our criminal smuggling activity is from Mexican cartels; in our region (El Paso) we have three main cartels: La Empresa, La Línea, and the Sinaloa Cartel. El Tren de Aragua is a new group.”

Texas notes

• At Texas Monthly, Jack Herrera found that for all the Texas state government’s political posturing about undocumented migration at the border, the state’s economy is heavily dependent on undocumented migrant labor. The investigation highlighted the state’s construction industry, where migrants fill acute labor shortages. “Today, Texas is home to some 1.6 million undocumented immigrants, according to a Pew Research Center study of 2022 census data,” Herrera noted. That means about 1 in 20 people in Texas were undocumented that year, compared to about 1 in 30 nationwide.
• The Huffington Post published a thorough review of human rights abuse allegations associated with Texas’s “Operation Lone Star” border crackdown. It focuses on Texas forces’ excessive use of force against non-threatening asylum seekers, many of them families, at the borderline. The alleged perpetrators are often National Guard military personnel. Jeremy Slack, the sociology and anthropology department chair at the University of Texas at El Paso, told the HuffPost that Texas state forces’ alleged abuses have increased sharply at a time when reports of abuse by Border Patrol agents have been dropping. “Border Patrol is a known quantity, and people have been working on the issue of Border Patrol accountability for decades… When you start a new agency doing this, especially in that shoot-from-the-hip, haphazard manner, with no clear mandate about what they’re actually trying to do, that’s a recipe for disaster.”
• The Dallas Morning News published a status report about the ongoing campaign of Texas’s state attorney general, Ken Paxton (R), against nonprofits assisting migrants in the state. Paxton accuses groups like El Paso’s respected Annunciation House shelter network of encouraging unauthorized migration by providing shelter and aid.
• A federal judge has at least temporarily halted Paxton’s legal offensive. In an unrelated case, magistrate Judge Mark Lane of the Western District of Texas granted an injunction stopping Paxton from using a “request to examine” statute in Texas law, determining that it is unconstitutional. The statute empowers Texas prosecutors to require companies and organizations (like legal aid groups or shelters) to “immediately permit” the attorney general to inspect their records.

Other News

• “By mid-2024, more than 20.3 million forcibly displaced and stateless people were hosted in the Americas,” according to a new UNHCR factsheet.
• The Associated Press reported on the alarming recent increase in migrant deaths along the border in New Mexico, especially in areas not far from El Paso. Among the causes, Dylan Corbett of the El Paso-based Hope Border Institute cited “systematic” organized crime activity, Texas’s state border crackdown, and the Biden administration’s recent curbs on asylum access.
• NBC News revealed that 30 percent of the Border Patrol’s Remote Video Surveillance System (RVSS) cameras aren’t working. According to a leaked internal Border Patrol memo, this means “roughly 150 of 500 cameras perched on surveillance towers” along the U.S.-Mexico border are inoperable due to “several technical problems.” The RVSS is not Border Patrol’s only system of cameras along the border but is still its “primary” program.
• Troy Miller, the CBP official performing the duties of the commissioner, said that border ports of entry are now using scanners to inspect 50 percent of cargo, the Tucson Sentinel reported. In March, Miller told NBC News that CBP was able to scan 20 percent of commercial vehicles, but hoped to get to 70 percent by the end of 2025.
• Aaron Heitke, who served as chief of Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector and is now retired, alleged in a recent congressional hearing that Biden administration officials had “pushed him” to hide groups of asylum-seeking migrants “out of sight” of cameras as they waited between layers of the border wall to turn themselves in. A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official speaking on background to Voice of San Diego denied Heitke’s allegations. Lilian Serrano of the Southern Border Communities Coalition said that Heitke’s claim confirmed humanitarian groups’ suspicions that Border Patrol “hides migrants from our view…so that we don’t see violations” of policies for humane treatment of people waiting to turn themselves in.
• The DeConcini border port of entry in Nogales, Arizona was closed for a few hours on October 16 after a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer shot and wounded a man who attempted to drive through a vehicle lane at the crossing.
• In Guatemala, a court is considering the case of 23 National Police agents accused of collaborating with “La RS,” an illegal migrant smuggling organization. The police allegedly helped move 10,000 migrants in exchange for bribes, primarily transporting them from Guatemala’s border with El Salvador to its border with Mexico.
• EFE reported on the reduction in migration at the U.S.-Mexico border due to Mexico’s crackdown on in-transit migration and the Biden administration’s restrictions on asylum access. “Now, usually very few people arrive. For the most part, they are unaware that you use a (mobile) app to make an appointment and get an interview to request asylum,” said Pedro Ríos of the American Friends Service Committee. Ríos pointed out, however, that the wait time for appointments at ports of entry using the CBP One app can be eight or nine months.
• At USA Today, Lauren Villagrán examined Mexico’s crackdown on in-transit migration, which began at the beginning of the year. “Mexico is holding the line, analysts say, thanks to a carefully negotiated—but unwritten—agreement” with the U.S. government.
• These policies are increasing pressure in Chiapas, Mexico’s southernmost state, where large groups have formed this month into so-called “ caravans.” The groups, numbering as many as 1,000 each, are walking through Chiapas, Oaxaca, and Tlaxcala states and intend to reach Mexico City, either to petition Mexican authorities for faster asylum processes or other documentation, or to disperse and seek to reach the U.S. border from there.
• Spain’s El País reported from the city of Tapachula, Chiapas, where people trying to use the CBP One app to obtain appointments at the U.S. border are subject to “heightened violence” while they struggle to earn money to survive. Many arrive already traumatized by the journey through the Darién Gap and Central America.
• Ecuador’s El Universo told the story of Melissa Barzola, a Guayaquil resident who migrated to Mexico via the Darién Gap and secured a CBP One appointment in Ciudad Juárez, only to be kidnapped from the bus in which she was traveling in mid-September, likely in Mexico’s northern states of Durango or Chihuahua. The kidnappers demanded $5,000 from her family in Ecuador; they mortgaged their house to pay the ransom, but Barzola has not been released.
• Mexican soldiers who fired on a vehicle carrying migrants in Chiapas on October 1, killing six of them, “will be tried under military laws, a key issue for human rights activists who say the process lacks transparency,” Reuters reported. A Mexican military press release stated that two soldiers began shooting after hearing “detonations.” Reporter Lizbeth Díaz spoke to three residents of the area where the incident occurred, who “said they heard no explosions.”
• The Mexican government’s independent Federal Institute of Public Defense (IFDP) reported that it has not been able to obtain information about the migrants who were killed and wounded in the Chiapas incident. According to Proceso, the IFDP “denounced that the people transferred to the hospital were sent to the ‘Siglo XXI’ migrant detention center, ‘which revictimizes and violates the principle of non-repetition of acts of violence and discrimination faced by people in mobility.’”
• At Foreign Affairs, Andrea Flores of FWD.us, a former Biden administration official, pointed out the failure of repeated crackdowns to control migration or bring security to the border. While fixing the U.S. asylum system would help greatly, she argued, it is no substitute for fundamentally updating U.S. immigration laws that mostly date back to 1990. “The overwhelmed asylum system is not the cause of the border crisis but rather a consequence of the United States’ failure to develop a coherent response to global shifts in irregular migration,” Flores wrote.
• The American Immigration Council’s (AIC) Aaron Reichlin-Melnick published an overview of “the current state of the border” at the organization’s Immigration Impact blog. It noted that crackdowns in Mexico and in U.S. asylum access have brought Border Patrol apprehensions to relatively low levels, a “fragile equilibrium” threatened by “signs that the slow-down in migration is ending” in the Darién Gap and through Central America.
• The AIC also published an explainer about the Shelter and Services Program (SSP). This program reimburses local governments and charities that help to receive recently arrived migrants and prevent them from ending up on U.S. cities’ streets. After two devastating hurricanes, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and other politicians have been alleging that the SSP has diverted funds away from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) disaster response; the AIC piece debunks that claim.
• After 15 suicides of Border Patrol agents in 2022, the agency “overhauled its approach to mental healthcare for employees,” including hiring licensed clinicians, Anna Giaritelli reported at the Washington Examiner. Annual suicide totals have fallen to the single digits.