October 7, 2024

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Developments

CBS News and the Washington Examiner reported preliminary Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data indicating that Border Patrol apprehended 53,881 migrants in September between U.S.-Mexico border ports of entry. That would be the smallest total of the Biden administration, down from 56,399 in July and 58,038 in August. Another 48,000 in September came to the ports of entry, most of them with CBP One appointments.

The Border Patrol figure would be the fewest since August 2020, when Donald Trump was president, and less than the monthly average for 2019.

Fact-checks have debunked Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s claims that a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) program to shelter recently released migrants has “stolen” funds that would relieve victims of Hurricane Helene. FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program, which helps keep migrants from being released onto border cities’ streets, is funded through a separate channel, through CBP, and is less than 2 percent as large as FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund.

The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler noted that the only time that FEMA disaster funds were raided to fund migrant response was in 2019, when Trump was president.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operated 105 removal flights in September, according to the latest monthly report from Witness at the Border. That is the fewest since July 2023; reduced apprehensions at the border are a likely factor.

The report’s author, Thomas Cartwright, has also been tracking Panama’s stepped-up deportation flights—most of them supported by U.S. funding—of migrants apprehended exiting the Darién Gap. Between early August and October 5, the report notes 16 flights, 12 to Colombia, 3 to Ecuador, and 1 to India. Those planes carried 634 people, which Cartwright notes is equivalent to 1.4 percent of total migration through the Darién during that period.

Two girls from Egypt, aged 18 and 11, were among the 6 migrants killed on October 1 when Mexican soldiers fired on a pickup truck that was transporting them in the southern state of Chiapas. “Three of the dead were from Egypt, and one each from Peru and Honduras. The other has apparently not yet been identified,” the Associated Press reported. Milenio cited a victim from El Salvador, but not Honduras.

Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said that Mexico’s Army (National Defense Secretariat or SEDENA) initiated the legal complaint against the two soldiers who allegedly fired on the migrants’ vehicle, and that the civilian Attorney General’s Office is investigating the incident.

About 800 migrants formed a “caravan” or protest in Mexico’s southern border zone city of Tapachula, Chiapas. They began walking north in response to the October 1 incident in which Mexican soldiers killed six migrants, and because “migration procedures take months in the southern border region, and there are no jobs to sustain the wait,” La Jornada reported.

Migrants interviewed by EFE in Tapachula said they worry about failing to secure CBP One appointments before a possible election of Donald Trump.

President Sheinbaum has not yet named a successor to Francisco Garduño, the embattled head of its migration agency (National Migration Institute, INM), who faces criminal charges related to a March 2023 detention center fire that killed 40 migrants in Ciudad Juárez. Garduño, who has headed INM since 2019, remains at his post and has said he would be willing to stay on.

A U.S. federal government body that investigates inspectors-general submitted a report accusing Joseph Cuffari, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General, of “substantial misconduct,” including reprisals against whistleblowers and providing misleading information to Congress. Cuffari, a Trump appointee, has come under fire from non-governmental watchdogs, particularly the Project on Government Oversight, for weakening oversight of a department that includes most U.S. border law enforcement agencies.

Texas state police carried out two separate pursuits of vehicles suspected of smuggling migrants in the El Paso area on October 2; both ended with crashes.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is asking the state’s legislature for an additional $2.88 billion to fund the state government’s border security crackdown, known as “Operation Lone Star.” The Dallas Morning News pointed out that this is “the largest ask in the Republican governor’s appropriations request for the 2026-27 budget cycle.” Operation Lone Star has already cost $11 billion since 2021; Border Patrol migrant apprehensions have not declined faster in Texas than they have in Arizona, which has no similar crackdown.

Analyses and Feature Stories

Jonathan Blitzer, at the New Yorker, and Jamelle Bouie, at the New York Times, published critiques of the Trump-Vance campaign’s view that “mass deportation” could be a policy solution to address problems ranging from housing costs to crime. Blitzer raised concerns about deporting beneficiaries of documented statuses that depend on presidential approval, like humanitarian parole or Temporary Protected Status.

Tyche Hendricks of California Public Media interviewed Haitians who have settled in the San Diego area, who are “on edge” about losing Temporary Protected Status if Donald Trump is elected.

The Washington Post noted that while some pro-immigration organizations are unhappy with Democrats’ rightward turn on issues like asylum access, they are muting their criticism during the campaign between Vice President Kalama Harris and Donald Trump, who promises a much harder line.

InSight Crime and Pirate Wire Services published analyses contending that the threat of the “Tren de Aragua,” a gang that emerged from Venezuela’s prisons and has the attention of U.S. law enforcement, is exaggerated. “Their reputation far exceeds their capabilities,” wrote Colombia-based reporter Joshua Collins at PWS. “The gang’s reputation appears to have grown more quickly than its actual presence in the US,” concluded InSight Crime’s Venezuela Investigative Unit.

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