Developments
A helicopter crash near Rio Grande City, Texas claimed the lives of a Border Patrol agent and two members of the New York National Guard. A third New York National Guardsman is seriously injured. The cause of the UH-72 Lakota crash, while on a routine flight, is as yet unknown. The Guard personnel were working with Joint Task Force-North, a decades-old Defense Department Northern Command component that supports Customs and Border Protection (CBP)—not the state National Guard mission within Texas’s separate, state-funded “Operation Lone Star.”
- “Statement From Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Commissioner Troy A. Miller on Helicopter Crash and Death of U.S. Border Patrol Agent in Texas” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, March 10, 2024).
- “2 National Guard Soldiers, 1 Border Patrol Agent Killed in Texas Helicopter Crash Are Identified” (Associated Press, Associated Press, March 10, 2024).
- Ali Watkins, “New York State Trooper Among Those Killed in Military Helicopter Crash” (The New York Times, March 10, 2024).
- Adeel Hassan, Carol Rosenberg, “Army Investigators Search for Answers After Helicopter Crash That Killed 3” (The New York Times, March 8, 2024).
In the televised Republican response to President Joe Biden’s Thursday State of the Union address, Sen. Katie Britt (R-Alabama) told a harrowing story about migration and the border. Further coverage revealed that Britt left out key context and manipulated the narrative.
Speaking from her kitchen, the senator told of meeting a woman in the border town of Del Rio, Texas, who told of being a victim of human trafficking and suffering thousands of rapes from the age of 12.
Sen. Britt used the story as an example of the failure of Joe Biden’s border policies, but closer scrutiny—led by a TikTok video from former AP reporter Jonathan Katz—revealed that the crimes happened more than 15 years ago, during the Bush administration. The victim, activist Karla Jacinto Romero, has spoken publicly about what was done to her, including in U.S. congressional testimony, and the crimes happened in Mexico, not the United States.
- Robert Tait, “Journalist Says Katie Britt’s Story About Child Sex Abuse ‘Out-and-Out Lie’” (The Guardian (Uk), March 9, 2024).
- Emily Wagster Pettus, “Katie Britt Used Decades-Old Example of Rapes in Mexico as Republican Attack on Biden Border Policy” (Associated Press, Associated Press, March 10, 2024).
- Mariana Alfaro, “Britt Defends Use of Graphic Sex-Trafficking Story From 20 Years Ago to Attack Biden” (The Washington Post, March 10, 2024).
- Ken Bensinger, “Britt Tells Misleading Border Story in State of the Union Response” (The New York Times, March 9, 2024).
- Maggie Astor, “Amid Criticism, Britt Seeks to Defend Her Misleading Border Comments” (The New York Times, March 10, 2024).
- Ramon Antonio Vargas, “Katie Britt Defends Sex Trafficking Story She Falsely Links to Biden Presidency” (The Guardian (Uk), March 10, 2024).
President Biden voiced regret about using the word “illegal” to refer to a migrant who allegedly killed a Georgia nursing student in February, in an off-the-cuff response to Republican heckling during the State of the Union address.
- Alexandra Marquez, “Biden Says He Regrets Referring to ‘an Illegal’ and Defends Direct Criticism of Supreme Court in State of the Union” (NBC News, March 9, 2024).
- Hamed Aleaziz, “Address Showed Biden Seeking Tricky Balance on Immigration” (The New York Times, March 8, 2024).
- Isabela Dias, “Biden’s “an Illegal” Remark Is More Than Just a Slip” (Mother Jones, March 8, 2024).
A federal district court judge in Texas threw out a lawsuit from Texas and 20 other Republican-led state governments that sought to block President Biden’s use of a 1950s humanitarian parole authority to give a temporary documented status in the United States to citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela with passports and U.S.-based sponsors. (The “CHNV” program has allowed 365,000 citizens of those countries—up to 30,000 per month permitted—to fly to the United States since late 2022.)
Judge Drew Tipton, a Trump nominee, ruled that Texas lacks legal standing to stop Biden’s use of the policy because the state government failed to demonstrate that it “suffered an injury,” particularly since the parole program is linked to a drop in arrivals of those countries’ citizens at the border. Texas can still appeal.
In a separate decision on a suit brought by Texas and other Republican-led state governments, Tipton temporarily blocked the Biden administration from stopping Trump-era border wall construction and redirecting money to environmental remediation. The administration can still appeal.
- Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Judge Rejects Texas Lawsuit Against Immigration Policy Central to Biden’s Border Strategy” (CBS News, March 8, 2024).
- Maria Sacchetti, “U.S. Judge Rejects Gop Lawsuit That Tried to Stop Biden From Paroling in Migrants” (The Washington Post, March 8, 2024).
- Miriam Jordan, “Judge Upholds Biden Program Giving Some Immigrants Short-Term Legal Status” (The New York Times, March 8, 2024).
- Uriel J. Garcia, “Texas Federal Judge Dismisses Ken Paxton’s Lawsuit Against Biden’s Immigration Program” (The Texas Tribune, March 8, 2024).
A March 9 video from Samira Gozaine, the director of Panama’s Migration Service, said that more than 82,000 people have migrated through the Darién Gap so far this year. That is nearly equal to the total Panama measured for the entire first three months of 2023 (87,390). During all of 2023, Panama counted over 520,000 migrants, a previously unthinkable sum for a route that rarely exceeded 1,000 before the mid-2010s.
Of 2,600 migrants put on buses to Costa Rica on March 8, Gozaine said that about 2,100 were citizens of Venezuela, followed in number by citizens of Ecuador, China, Colombia, and Haiti.
Panama has not yet posted February data about Darién Gap migration.
- “Migración Panamá @migracionpanama on Twitter“ (Twitter, March 9, 2024).
- “Mas de 82.000 Migrantes Han Cruzado el Darien en 2024, en su Mayoria Venezolanos” (EFE, Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela), March 9, 2024).
There is no new word on Panama’s controversial decision last week to ban Doctors Without Borders, which has been providing essential health services at reception posts where the Darién Gap jungle trail ends. The organization has been the only source about many hundreds of reports of sexual violence committed against migrants on this route.
- Luke Taylor, “Panama Orders Msf to Stop Treating People Who Crossed Darien Gap” (The Guardian (Uk), March 8, 2024).
Migration has begun to rise in Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which includes far west Texas and New Mexico. CBP is averaging 1,113 migrant “encounters” per day, up from less than 700 in January, according to the El Paso municipal government’s migration dashboard. Migrant shelter occupancy across the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juárez has increased by 30 percent in the past few days as more people arrive in the region, EFE reported.
The Spanish news agency indicated that word-of-mouth spread about federal courts delaying Texas’s implementation, originally scheduled for March 5, of a draconian state law that would imprison or deport migrants who cross the border irregularly. That law, S.B. 4, will go into effect on Wednesday March 13, unless the Supreme Court decides to keep it on hold while appeals proceed.
- Julian Resendiz, “Migrant Crossings Ticking Up in el Paso” (Border Report, March 8, 2024).
- “Retraso de Ley Antimigrante sb4 Satura Frontera de Mexico y Eu” (EFE, Milenio (Mexico), March 10, 2024).
Mexico’s government is about to open a new migrant detention facility about 50 miles south of Ciudad Juárez, nearly a year after a March 2023 fire that destroyed a facility in the city, taking the lives of 40 migrants whom guards left locked inside.
- “Mexico Alista Nueva Estacion Migratoria Tras Incendio en Ciudad Juarez Que Dejo 40 Muertos” (EFE, Efecto Cocuyo (Venezuela), March 9, 2024).
At a March 9 party convention in Oklahoma City, 225 state-level Republican leaders voted by a wide margin to censure their senior U.S. senator, James Lankford, for having negotiated the bipartisan “border deal” that failed a month ago in the face of Republican opposition.
- Josh Dulaney, “Why Are Republicans Attacking Lankford on Border Bill? What We Know” (The Oklahoman, March 10, 2024).
Analyses and Feature Stories
A Los Angeles Times column from Brown University’s Ieva Jusionyte links the heavy southbound flow of illegal U.S. weapons into Mexico and Latin America with the northbound flow of migrants. The link between arms trafficking and migration is the subject a forthcoming book by the column’s author.
- Ieva Jusionyte, “The Border Crisis Factor No One Talks About: American Guns” (Brown University Watson Center, The Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2024).
On the Right
- Steven Nelson, “House Republicans Demand Biden ‘Terminate’ Flights That Have Let 320k Migrants Avoid Border” (The New York Post, March 8, 2024).
- Douglas Schoen, “If Biden Is Serious About Border Security, He Must Start With Venezuela” (Real Clear Politics, March 8, 2024).
- Adam Shaw, Bill Melugin, “Bloodthirsty Venezuelan Gang Tren de Aragua Sets Up Shop in US as Border Authorities Sound Alarm” (Fox News, March 8, 2024).