Developments
A “handshake agreement” between congressional leaders and the White House appears to have resolved differences over the 2024 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appropriation, the largest federal budget sticking point that negotiators needed to overcome to avoid a partial government shutdown after Friday (March 22).
Details of the Homeland Security budget compromise are not yet available, but should be coming shortly. It will be an actual appropriations bill for 2024, instead of—as some reporting had indicated was likely—a “continuing resolution” freezing the Department at 2023 levels through the end of the year.
A group of 41 ultraconservative House Republicans wrote a letter urging their colleagues to reject a bill that doesn’t include “core elements” of H.R. 2, a bill approved on party lines last May that would, among other things, all but end the right to seek asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. It is unclear (but unlikely) whether hardliners in either congressional chamber will have opportunities to offer amendments this week.
- Mychael Schnell, “Congressional Leaders Strike Deal on Homeland Security Funding Ahead of Shutdown Deadline” (The Hill, March 18, 2024).
- Ellen M. Gilmer, Erik Wasson, Jack Fitzpatrick, “Us Lawmakers Reach Deal to Keep Government Open Through Sept. 30” (Bloomberg Government, March 18, 2024).
- Caitlin Emma, Jennifer Scholtes, “White House, Johnson Close Out Homeland Security Negotiations Holding Up Final Funding Deal” (Politico, March 18, 2024).
- Aris Folley, “Freedom Caucus Urges Gop to Reject Government Funding Deal Without Border Reforms” (The Hill, March 18, 2024).
Minutes after a 5:00 deadline expired, the Supreme Court indefinitely suspended application of Texas’s draconian new state immigration law, S.B. 4, while lower-court appeals continue. S.B. 4 would allow Texas law enforcement, anywhere in the state, to imprison or deport non-citizens who cross the border improperly—allowing the state to enforce federal immigration law and possibly enabling “show me your papers” scenarios statewide.
S.B. 4 was to go into effect on March 5. The Biden administration Department of Justice, the ACLU, and other organizations sued to challenge the law, and on February 29 a federal district judge blocked its implementation. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals “un-blocked” the law, staying the lower-court judge’s decision while considering Texas’s appeal, but gave time for the Supreme Court to decide whether to keep it blocked. Justice Samuel Alito temporarily suspended S.B. 4’s implementation twice—through March 13 and through March 18—but this latest stay is open-ended.
- J. David Goodman, “Supreme Court to Weigh in on Texas Immigration Law” (The New York Times, March 18, 2024).
- Lindsay Whitehurst, “Supreme Court Extends Block on Texas Law That Would Allow Police to Arrest Migrants” (Associated Press, Associated Press, March 18, 2024).
- Benjamin Wermund, “Supreme Court Delays Texas Deportation Law for a Second Time” (The Houston Chronicle, March 18, 2024).
- Anna Giaritelli, “Supreme Court Prevents Texas From Implementing Sweeping Immigration Law” (The Washington Examiner, March 18, 2024).
- Maria Mendez, “Texas and the Feds Are at Odds Over the State’s New Immigration Enforcement Law. Here’s What It Would Do.” (The Texas Tribune, March 18, 2024).
A new report and database from No More Deaths, an organization that has mainly worked in Arizona, provided the first documentation of migrant deaths in Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector, which includes far west Texas and New Mexico. Its mapping finds that a majority of deaths are happening not in remote areas of the Chihuahuan Desert, but in the immediate environs of El Paso and neighboring Sunland Park, New Mexico. This means many migrants are dying painful and preventable deaths within a short distance of help.
The report confirms local organizations’ longstanding contention that Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) estimates of migrant deaths on U.S. soil, which total over 9,500 between 1998 and 2022, under-report the true number.
- “El Paso Sector Migrant Death Database” (No More Deaths, March 18, 2024).
Yesterday, Border Patrol agents found the remains of a migrant not far from Sunland Park.
- David Ibave, “Border Patrol Finds Body in Sunland Park Desert” (KFOXTV, March 18, 2024).
CBP yesterday released its own reporting on migrant deaths—for fiscal year 2022, which ended nearly 18 months ago. The agency’s Border Rescues and Mortality Data document reported the recovery of 895 migrants’ remains in 2022, a record by far.
Of remains whose gender could be identified, 79 percent were men. Where cause of death could be identified, 43 percent were heat-related and 20 percent were water-related (mainly drowning). The deadliest of Border Patrol’s nine sectors was Del Rio, Texas (29 percent), where drownings in the Rio Grande are frequent, followed by the Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and Arizona’s Tucson. Of the 23 nationalities that could be identified, 64 percent were citizens of Mexico.
- “Border Rescues and Mortality Data” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, March 18, 2024).
- “Fiscal Year 2022 Office of Professional Responsibility Cbp-Related Deaths Report” (U.S. Customs and Border Protection, March 18, 2024).
Migration will be on the agenda next Monday (March 25) when Guatemala’s new president, Bernardo Arévalo, meets with Vice President Kamala Harris. Arévalo plans to host a regional ministerial meeting on migration in April.
- “Bernardo Arevalo se Reunira Con la Vicepresidenta de Ee. Uu. Kamala Harris” (ACAN-EFE, Prensa Libre (Guatemala), March 19, 2024).
Texas state national guardsmen prevented a large group of asylum-seeking family migrants from turning themselves in to federal agents at the border wall’s Gate 36 in El Paso.
- Ruben Villalpando, “Decenas de Migrantes Intentaron Cruzar por la Fuerza Hacia el Paso” (La Jornada (Mexico), March 19, 2024).
An internal Border Patrol memo recounted the apprehension of a Lebanese man in El Paso on March 9 who told agents he had come to “try to make a bomb.”
- Priscilla Alvarez, Rosa Flores, “Feds Investigate Terror Claims After a Lebanese Migrant Is Apprehended at Us Southern Border” (CNN, March 18, 2024).