Border Update

Mexico halts visa-free travel for Peru: expect more Peruvians in the Darién Gap. Panama seeks to defend its management of Darién migration. Border fentanyl seizures are down 27 percent from 2023.

Secretary Mayorkas says deportations to China may increase, and criticizes Texas’s use of concertina wire. As Congress returns, don’t expect any high-profile Senate action on Mayorkas’s impeachement.

Court rules that Border Patrol must care for children awaiting processing in outdoor California camps. Alarming reports about attacks on migrants in Tamaulipas, Mexico and the Darién Gap.

The 5th Circuit hears arguments on Texas’s SB4 law. Details emerge about a Guatemalan woman’s fatal fall from the border wall. Mexican guardsmen abusing migrants along the border with California.

Mexico deploys immigration agents to Ciudad Juárez. Donald Trump amplifies anti-migrant invective. Human Rights Watch publishes a big new Darién Gap report.

Leaked data indicate that migration declined 2% at the border from February to March. Must-read essays published about humanitarian migration, “invasion” claims, and migration from specific countries.

Migration is dropping in Tucson and steady in the Darién Gap. A federal court hearing looked at San Diego’s open-air detention sites. Eight Chinese migrants died off the coast of Oaxaca.

Reports from open-air holding sites east of San Diego, from Mexico City, and from Chiapas.

SB4 remains on hold. Migration is increasing in Ciudad Juárez. A growing number of Venezuelan migrants are stuck in Mexico. Migrants who were raped while in Mexico cannot obtain abortions in some U.S. states.

CBP data for the first 21 days of March point to a very rare springtime reduction in migration at the border since February. Stepped up interdiction in Mexico may be the reason.