Posting to this site could be a bit infrequent or erratic over the next couple of days, because I’ve just been added as a witness to Thursday’s House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing about the U.S.-Mexico border and migration. Wish me luck, or come by the Capitol Visitors’ Center at 2:00PM Thursday and send good energy.
(You don’t have to do that. It will always be on YouTube.)
Next year is going to be more crucial than ever for rapid response and communications on border and migration issues. With that in mind, I’m trying out this daily links format: one-sentence explanations of key developments and analyses.
If the workflow of making these each weekday doesn’t stick, these updates will disappear and I’ll never speak of them again. In the meantime, though, I’ll also post these to our Border Oversight resource under “News.”
Six senators continue to negotiate the Biden administration’s supplemental budget request for Ukraine, Israel, and the border. As a condition for their support, Republican legislators are demanding legal changes that would sharply curtail access to asylum. “We’ve made progress on asylum,” said Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina), one of the negotiators, who added that Republicans continue to insist on limits to the presidential authority to grant humanitarian parole (which is not a border issue). “We have to get this done this week,” said Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut), the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee.
Yesterday ICE sent its sixth deportation flight to Caracas, Venezuela since October 18, following an October 5 agreement with the Venezuelan government to resume aerial deportations. “If averages hold that would be about 720 people deported to Venezuela,” wrote Tom Cartwright of Witness at the Border, who closely tracks deportation flights.
Citing large numbers of arriving migrants, CBP is closing a border bridge in Eagle Pass, Texas and reducing vehicle processing at the Lukeville, Arizona port of entry so that personnel can assist Border Patrol with processing.
CBP is adding new barrier at the point where the Tijuana River crosses into California, a site where a migrant from West Africa died during a large group incursion earlier this month.
An Army National Guardsman assigned to the Texas state government’s Operation Lone Star “was killed from ‘a self-inflicted wound while on duty by a public park'” in Laredo, Texas on Thanksgiving morning.
Over 29 months, state authorities operating under Texas’s “Operation Lone Star” have participated in vehicle pursuits that killed at least 74 people and injured at least 189 more, according to a report from Human Rights Watch. Unlike many law enforcement agencies (including CBP) that have developed policies to govern risky chases on public roads, Texas’s Department of Public Safety continues to leave pursuits up to the discretion of individual officers, the New York Times reported last Friday.
The Arizona Daily Star reported from the Mexican border town of Sásabe, Sonora, where the population has shrunk from 2,500 to less than 100 amid intense fighting between two factions of the Sinaloa Cartel. Closures of gaps in the border wall have made it difficult for people to flee into Arizona.
Criminals are using AI-doctored images and videos to defraud the families of missing migrants, portraying the migrants as kidnap victims and demanding ransom payments, EFE reported.
Next year is going to be more crucial than ever for rapid response and communications on border and migration issues. With that in mind, I’m trying out this daily links format: one-sentence explanations of key developments and analyses.
If the workflow of making these each weekday doesn’t stick, these updates will disappear and I’ll never speak of them again. In the meantime, though, I’ll also post these to our Border Oversight resource under “News.”
Congress is considering a package of supplemental 2024 spending, including Ukraine aid and $13 billion in new initiatives at the border. Republicans are demanding some hard-line border measures as a condition of passage. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colorado), one of a small group of senators negotiating a possible deal, appears open to the idea of tightening initial screening standards that asylum seekers must satisfy upon arrival at the border.
Volunteers are still doing most of the caring for more than 200 asylum seekers camped near a gap in the border wall in Jacumba Springs, in an “Open-Air Detention Center” along the central California border, as they await Border Patrol processing.
Factions of the Sinaloa Cartel are fighting over control of contraband and migration routes near Sásabe, Sonora, along the border with Arizona; residents who want to flee are trapped between criminals who control roads to the south and the border wall, and CBP officers denying access to U.S. ports of entry, to the north.
Things are so busy in Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona Sector—the part of the U.S.-Mexico border currently with the most migrants, about 15,000 per week—that the agency’s sector headquarters is minimizing its social media presence.
“The United States announced the implementation of Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) in Ecuador to process applications for regular entry to the country for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Colombia, who have been in Ecuador on or before 18 October,” reports a new UNHCR Ecuador Operational Update. “The SMOs operated in two phases, with the second one starting on 20 November for people from eligible countries to apply directly at www.movilidadsegura.org.”
Even as CBP tones down the extremity of its dangerous high-speed vehicle pursuits, Texas police participating in “Operation Lone Star” have stepped them up.
“Chinese citizens are more successful than people from other countries with their asylum claims in immigration court. And those who are not end up staying anyway because China usually will not take them back,” reported the New York Times.
David Bier and Ilya Somin of the Cato Institute, writing in USA Today, criticize the Biden administration’s “arbitrary” caps and “truly bizarre” obstacles to humanitarian parole and CBP One asylum appointments.
85 percent of Mexican manufacturing businesses surveyed said they are having trouble finding workers, and more migrants from elsewhere in the Americas are settling in Mexico and taking those jobs, Reuters reported.
Amid a thawing of relations with Venezuela, Colombia has become less welcoming to Venezuelan migrants, La Silla Vacía reported, which could lead some to opt to cross the Darién Gap and migrate to the United States.
(Events that I know of, anyway. All times are U.S. Eastern.)
Thanks to the Inter-American Dialogue for the opportunity to contribute to their Latin America Advisor publication, in which they seek input from a few people about a current question.
The question this week was about Ecuador: “Ecuadorean President-elect Daniel Noboa, who takes office next Thursday, has raised the possibility of using the military to fight drug traffickers and has said he would call for a referendum on the subject within his first 100 days in office. Noboa is taking office in the midst of a surge in narcotrafficking and violence, which has led the homicide rate to soar. Why has outgoing President Guillermo Lasso been unable to curb violence and the homicide rate, and what must Noboa do differently? Will voters approve using the military to fight drug traffickers? What challenges will Noboa face in improving security given that his term lasts only 18 months?”
“It’s hard to think of other jurisdictions where violent crime rates increased sixfold in just four years, but that is what has happened in once-peaceful Ecuador. Outgoing President Guillermo Lasso, who governed during the pandemic and a chaotic post-FARC realignment of Colombia’s trafficking networks, lacked the institutional tools to respond to criminal violence, which originated in prisons and along trafficking routes but has since metastasized. Like Lasso, Daniel Noboa now must address the challenge while able to employ only his government’s weak, neglected, corruption-riven security sector. Under those circumstances, sending in the military to fight crime may seem like an attractive option. But there are very few examples in the hemisphere of violent crime declining significantly after troop deployments, and many examples of such deployments increasing human rights abuses. Unlike insurgencies, organized crime is an ‘enemy’ that prefers not to fight the government. It operates by penetrating and corrupting the same state institutions that are supposed to be fighting it. That makes organized crime a far more challenging adversary, requiring a smarter approach than brute force. Instead of troops, Ecuador needs the capacity to identify criminal masterminds, track financial flows, respond to violence ‘hotspots,’ improve response times, support community-level violence initiatives, weed out corrupt officials and many other duties that an adequately resourced civilian security sector performs. Noboa has issued vague proposals to fill some of those long-term institutional needs. The concern is that he may neglect these—which do not yield short-term results—in favor of a military response, which offers the illusion of action and carries big human rights risks.”
Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.
I missed my usual weekend send date for this one because I was up to my eyeballs in border infographics, and I won’t send one this coming weekend because it’s the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. So this is the last e-mail until the beginning of December. It has a link to the Border Update, our memo about what’s happening in Congress, infographics about migration, and links to recommended readings.
If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.
At WOLA’s Border Oversight site, I’ve updated all of our giant collection of charts and graphics about border security and migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, and along the U.S.-bound migration route.
There’s about 90 charts there. That’s hard to navigate. In order to fix that, I’ve added a table of contents to the archive.
Here, through the magic of copy-and-pasting, is that table of contents:
Visualizations of data related to U.S. border governance and migration
The U.S. government’s 2023 fiscal year ended on September 30. Here’s a comparison of migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, by migrants’ nationalities, over the past three fiscal years.
From 2021 to 2023,
See also:
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.
For the first time since May to June, the number of migrants arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border declined from September to October. The main reason was a drop in migration of citizens of Venezuela, a likely “wait and see” reaction after the Biden administration, on October 5, announced a resumption of deportation flights to Caracas. Other trends included a rise in arrivals of Mexican families and a general westward shift in migrants’ destinations, with Arizona a particular focus.
Migration also declined in Panama’s Darién Gap region in October, led by a drop in Venezuelan citizens transiting the perilous jungle route. Migration through Honduras, however, jumped to over 100,000 people in October. The reason is an increase in aerial routes to Nicaragua, which does not require visas of most countries’ visiting citizens.
The state legislature of Texas, which is dominated by a Republican Party strongly critical of the Biden administration’s border policies, added the latest in a series of hardline measures: a law that would make it a state crime to cross the border irregularly from Mexico. The law raises questions about Mexico’s willingness to take back migrants expelled by Texas, the constitutionality of a state enforcing immigration laws, and a possible increase in racial profiling that today’s more conservative Supreme Court might uphold.
Read MoreFresh numbers from Panama show a 35 percent drop, from September to October, in the number of people migrating through the Darién Gap. The main cause was a 41 percent decline in the number of citizens of Venezuela (blue in the chart) who traveled through the treacherous jungle region.
2023 is still—by far—a record-breaking year for Darién Gap migration, though. 458,228 people migrated through the region during the first 10 months of the year, making it certain that the year-end total will surpass 500,000. 294,598 of this year’s migrants (64 percent, blue in the chart) have been Venezuelan.
Data from the United States and Honduras also show sharp drops in migration from Venezuela. The cause appears to be U.S. and Venezuelan governments’ October 5 announcement that they would be renewing deportation flights to Caracas. Though these flights are proving to be relatively infrequent so far, the mere possibility of being sent all the way back to Venezuela seems to have led many Venezuelan citizens considering migration to “wait and see” and delay their plans.
Honduras is the country that reports in-transit migration in the most current manner. Looking at weekly migration through Honduras shows a possible recovery in Venezuelan migration (blue) during the first full week of November. However, a single week’s data don’t necessarily point to a trend. Here is migration of citizens of Venezuela during each week between September 1 and November 9.
The chart also shows citizens of Haiti (green), whose numbers rose then fell during the same period. The recent drop owes to the Haitian government, at strong U.S. suggestion, banning charter flights to Nicaragua at the end of October.
See also:
New single from the co-founder of Dinosaur Jr. Love it.
Republican legislators have dug in and have given the Biden administration a list of demands. Aid for Ukraine and other items in the White House’s supplemental budget request will not get their approval, they say, unless the law is changed in ways that all but eliminate the right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Here, at WOLA’s site, is an analysis of this proposal and the unspeakable harm that it would do. We urge the administration and congressional Democrats to stand strong and reject it.
From the conclusion:
If the Senate Republicans’ November 6 proposal were to become law, it would deny asylum to almost all protection-seeking migrants, unless:
- That migrant sought asylum and received rejections in every country through which they passed en route to the United States.
- That migrant presented at a land-border port of entry (official border crossing), even though CBP strictly limits asylum seekers’ access to these facilities.
- The U.S. government could not send that migrant to a third country to seek asylum there.
- In an initial “credible fear” interview within days of apprehension, that migrant met a higher screening standard.
If an asylum seeker clears those hurdles, the Republican proposal would require them to await their court hearings in ICE detention—even if they are a parent with children—or while “remaining in Mexico.”
This proposal is extraordinarily radical. Congressional Republicans’ demands to attach it to 2024 spending put the Biden administration in a tough position. It is a terrible choice to have to secure funding for Ukraine and other priorities by ending the United States’ historic role as a country of refuge, breaking international commitments dating back to the years after World War II.
New CBP data for the U.S.-Mexico border is out through October. Combining migrants who came to ports of entry with migrants whom Border Patrol apprehended between the ports of entry, migration fell from 269,735 people in September to 240,988 in October (-11 percent).
Nearly all of the net reduction is citizens of Venezuela, whose numbers fell -39 percent (66,584 in September to 40,863 in October). The Biden administration’s October 5 announcement of resumed deportation flights to Venezuela probably explains the reduction. News of the resumption may have led some would-be migrants to pause their plans.
This drop will probably be short-lived, unless the Biden administration pursues a massive, costly, cruel, and politically absurd blitz of frequent aerial deportation flights to Caracas. (We see no signs of that happening yet.) As I wrote a couple of days ago, it is reasonable to expect Venezuelan migration to recover, as conditions in the country remain dire and as Venezuelans considering migration realize that the probability of aerial deportation is slim.
Here’s a new “weekly” e-mail about stuff I’ve been working on, for those who’ve signed up to receive them.
This one is full of stuff. A link to the Border Update, and to a photo collection. Updates about what’s happening in Congress. Some new infographics about migration. An event video. Links to recommended reading and to upcoming events.
If you visit this site a lot, you probably don’t need an e-mail, too. But if you’d like to get more-or-less regular e-mail updates, scroll to the bottom of this page or click here.
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