Developments
Adding to a scoop reported yesterday by CBS News, NewsNation and Border Report published more detail about Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in February. CBS had reported 140,000 apprehensions last month, an increase over 124,220 in January but the 7th-fewest of the Biden administration’s 37 full months. The new reporting points to 140,709 apprehensions, with Tucson (49,474) and San Diego (31,570) the busiest of Border Patrol’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors.
As normally occurs in spring, migration is increasing. The first three days of March saw migrant encounters reach 7,000 per day, and 5,500 on March 4.
- Fernie Ortiz, “Migrant ‘Spring Surge’ Underway, Cbp Sources Say” (Border Report, March 5, 2024).
8,368 people applied for asylum in Mexico’s system in February, reported Mexico’s Refugee Assistance Commission (COMAR). That is fewer than in February 2022 (10,192) and February 2023 (11,321).
During the first two months of the year, COMAR is behind its 2023 pace but about the same as 2022, when it ended the year with 119,225 asylum applications. (They totaled a record 140,948 in 2023.) So far this year, at least 1,000 migrants have sought asylum in Mexico from Honduras, Cuba, Haiti, and El Salvador.
- “La Comar en Numeros Febrero 2024” (Comisión Mexicana de Ayuda a Refugiados, March 1, 2024).
NBC News reported that, lacking congressionally appropriated funds, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been unable to install already-purchased scanners at border ports of entry that would be able to detect more smuggled fentanyl. The agency needs “approximately $300 million [to] actually put the technology in the ground,” said Acting Commissioner Troy Miller.
- Didi Martinez, Julia Ainsley, Laura Strickler, “Scanners That Spot Smuggled Fentanyl at the Border Sit Unused Because Congress Hasn’t Provided the Cash to Install Them” (NBC News, March 5, 2024).
The Cato Institute’s David Bier reported that known successful evasions of Border Patrol, also known as “gotaways,” have declined—in the agency’s estimate—from 2,671 per day the week before the Title 42 policy ended last May to about 800 per day in fiscal year 2024.
- David J. Bier, “Border Patrol: 70 Percent Drop in Successful Evasions Since Title 42 Ended“ (The Cato Institute, Monday, March 4, 2024).
Candidate Donald Trump and billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk posted outrage at a Daily Mail article “revealing” a “secret” activity to fly 320,000 “illegal” migrants to the United States. The activity is in fact the Biden administration’s very public humanitarian parole program for citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who have U.S.-based sponsors. It is authorized by a 1950s law, and beneficiaries buy their own tickets on regular commercial flights.
- “Sawyer Hackett @Sawyerhackett on Twitter” (Twitter, March 5, 2024).
- Katelyn Caralle, Emma Richter, “Elon Musk says ‘the groundwork is being laid for something far worse than 9/11’ after Biden administration ADMITTED flying 320K unvetted migrants into the US has national security ‘vulnerabilities’“ (The Daily Mail, March 5, 2024).
The House of Representatives’ Republican majority has not yet officially sent to the Senate its articles of impeachment for Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, because they apparently want assurances that the Senate—which is certain to acquit Mayorkas—will hold an actual trial. In a February 13, vote, Republican legislators accused Mayorkas of high crimes and misdemeanors for his management of the border and migration.
- “Annie Grayer @Anniegrayercnn on Twitter” (Twitter, March 5, 2024).
The Department of Justice has ordered members of the immigration judges’ union not to speak without approval to outside sources. The National Association of Immigration Judges has been critical of flaws in the immigration adjudication system and migrants’ rights protections. No constraints have been announced about the Border Patrol agents’ union, whose statements and social media issue constant and vociferous attacks on Joe Biden and his administration.
- Elliot Spagat, “Immigration Judges Union, a Frequent Critic, Is Told to Get Approval Before Speaking Publicly“, (Associated Press, Associated Press, Monday, March 4, 2024).
Analyses and Feature Stories
At the Christian Science Monitor, Whitney Eulich spoke to Father Pat Murphy of Tijuana’s Casa del Migrante, and other service providers in the city, about how border cities’ migrant shelters have adapted to the past ten years’ sharp changes in the size, nationality, and demographics of the population they serve.
- Whitney Eulich, “Migrants – and Mexican Aid Groups – Adapt to Shifts at Us Border” (The Christian Science Monitor, March 5, 2024).
New arrivals of migrants from China to New York have risen to their highest levels in more than a decade, the New York Times reported, amid growing numbers of Chinese citizens who have traveled overland on a route beginning in South America and passing through the Darién Gap to the U.S.-Mexico border.
- Jeffrey E. Singer, Winnie Hu, “From China to New York, by Way of the Southern Border” (The New York Times, March 6, 2024).
A Bloomberg Law analysis recalled that federal courts repeatedly reject conservative state officials’ claims that large arrivals of migrants at the border meets the Constitution’s definition of an “invasion.” However, some judges on the federal judiciary’s deeply conservative Fifth Circuit, which covers Texas and Louisiana, and possibly on today’s more conservative Supreme Court, may sympathize with the “invasion” thesis.
- Ellen M. Gilmer, Ryan Autullo, “Texas Deploys War Logic About Border: Invasion Clause Explained” (Bloomberg Law, March 5, 2024).
Though Texas authorities are preventing most Border Patrol agents from entering Eagle Pass’s riverfront Shelby Park, they are granting access to “far-right media personalities,” reported Avery Schmitz at the Border Chronicle.
- Avery Schmitz, “In Shelby Park, Far-Right Content Creators Are Welcome” (The Border Chronicle, March 5, 2024).