Developments
Salon obtained CBP’s still-unreleased report on unidentified migrant remains found in fiscal year 2022. It reports a record 895 known migrant deaths that year. Humanitarian workers say that this is a significant undercount.
- Levi Stallings, “The Desert “Erases People:” Volunteers Try to Count Migrant Deaths, but the True Number Is Unknown” (Salon, February 18, 2024).
Heavily armed men attacked vehicles carrying migrants late last Thursday night in Sonora, Mexico, near the Arizona border. They killed a 4-year-old Ecuadorian boy and injured 10 others.
- Marco A. Flores, “Ataque a Caravana en Sonora Deja un Nino Ecuatoriano Muerto” (Milenio (Mexico), February 17, 2024).
- Cristina Gomez Lima, “Ataque Armado a Migrantes en Sonora” (La Jornada (Mexico), February 17, 2024).
Heavy rainfall has turned outdoor migrant tent shelters in Reynosa and Matamoros, across from McAllen and Brownsville, Texas, into seas of mud, reported Border Report.
- Sandra Sanchez, “Migrants at Muddy Border Camp Brace for More Rain” (Border Report, February 16, 2024).
A Government Accountability Project whistleblower complaint alleges that CBP’s chief medical officer, Dr. Alexander Eastman, pressured his staff to order “fentanyl lollipops” to bring along on a September trip to the United Nations, and secured narcotics for a friend who is a pilot in CBP’s Air and Marine Operations division. The Chief Medical Officers office and its contractor, Loyal Source Services, have been under fire for alleged negligence leading to the May 2023 death of a Honduran-Panamanian girl at a south Texas Border Patrol station.
- Andrea Meza, Dana L. Gold, “Following Years of Internal Whistleblower Disclosures and the Death of a Child in Custody, Government Accountability Project Calls on Congress to Investigate Cbp Medical Contracts” (Government Accountability Project, February 16, 2024).
- Julia Ainsley, “The Top Doctor for Cbp Tried to Order Fentanyl Lollipops for a Helicopter Mission in New York, Whistleblowers Say” (NBC News, February 16, 2024).
- Ben Mathis-Lilley, “Border Patrol Official Accused of Demanding “Fentanyl Lollipops” for Work Trip on a Helicopter” (Slate, February 16, 2024).
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced the construction of an 80-acre state National Guard forward operating base near Eagle Pass. It will be able to house between 1,800 and 2,300 soldiers.
- Nicholas Slayton, “Texas Is Building an 80-Acre Forward Operating Base for the National Guard at the Border” (Task & Purpose, February 17, 2024).
- Edgar Sandoval, “Texas Governor Announces New Military Base Camp on Border” (The New York Times, February 16, 2024).
- Rose L. Thayer, “Texas to Spend Nearly $131m on New National Guard Base at Border With Mexico” (Stars and Stripes, February 16, 2024).
- Valerie Gonzalez, “Texas Will Build Camp for National Guard Members in Border City of Eagle Pass” (Associated Press, Associated Press, February 16, 2024).
Now that Mexican national guardsmen have set up a camp near a break in the border wall where asylum seekers frequently crossed near Jacumba Springs, California, they “are now crossing the border at another spot four miles east,” CBS News reported.
- Aliza Chasan, Guy Campanile, Lucy Hatcher, “Mexico Sets Up Checkpoint Near San Judas Break After Migrants Cross Into U.S. Through Border Fence Gap” (CBS News, February 18, 2024).
The San Diego and Tijuana-based legal group Al Otro Lado filed a lawsuit against CBP for records surrounding the January 2023 in-custody death of Cuban migrant Idania Osorio Dominguez. Ms. Osorio’s daughter “first learned of her mother’s death through a press release on CBP’s website after weeks of attempting to get answers from the agency regarding her mother’s whereabouts.”
- “Al Otro Lado @alotrolado_org on Twitter” (Twitter, February 16, 2024).
DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas discussed migration with Guatemala’s new president, Bernardo Arévalo, at the Munich Security Conference.
- “Mayorkas Meets With Guatemalan Leader Arevalo Following House Impeachment Over Immigration” (Associated Press, Associated Press, February 17, 2024).
Analyses and Feature Stories
In Tijuana, several shelters have faced direct attacks and threats from criminal groups, forcing closures and increased security measures, according to Global Sisters Report.
- Jorge Nieto, Yolanda Morales, “Shelters for Migrants on Mexico’s Border Tighten Security” (Global Sisters Report, February 19, 2024).
The New Yorker’s Jonathan Blitzer published an 8,000-word profile and interview with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was impeached last week by House of Representatives Republicans who disapprove of his, and the Biden administration’s, approach to border security and migration.
- Jonathan Blitzer, “The Trials of Alejandro Mayorkas” (The New Yorker, February 17, 2024).
The New York Times’s Eli Saslow visited Arizona borderland ranchers Jim and Sue Chilton, whose remote desert land, long traversed by smugglers and migrants seeking to avoid detection, has now become a destination for asylum seekers, many of them families, from numerous countries.
- Eli Saslow, “A Family Ranch, Swallowed Up in the Madness of the Border” (The New York Times, February 18, 2024).
At the Progressive, Jeff Abbott reported on Guatemala’s decision to dissolve its national police force’s border unit, DIPAFRONT, amid widespread accusations that its members extort migrants to allow them to keep going north. Abbott noted that DIPAFRONT members have received training funded by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.
- Jeff Abbott, “U.S.-Trained Border Security Unit in Guatemala Accused of Extortions Scheme” (The Progressive, February 16, 2024).
“Washington’s failure to oversee where migrants go after entering the U.S. is causing particular pain to New York—and not just because the city has received the largest number of migrants from Texas buses,” wrote Jerusalem Demsas at the Atlantic, but “for political reasons, the Biden administration has abdicated its responsibility to coordinate where asylees from the southwestern border end up.”
- Jerusalem Demsas, “Something’s Fishy About the ‘Migrant Crisis’” (The Atlantic, February 19, 2024).
PolitiFact published an explainer about migrant encounters at the border and the asylum process.
- Sophie Carson, “Politifact – What’s Going on at the Us-Mexico Border, and What Are Asylum and Parole?” (PolitiFact, February 16, 2024).
On the Right
- “Editorial: Biden Alone Owns the Border Crisis — and the Chaos It’s Caused” (The New York Post, February 17, 2024).