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Developments

The chief of Border Patrol’s San Diego, California sector reported that agents there apprehended migrants 9,513 times over the seven days ending April 23. That is a 6 percent increase over the previous week and a 36 percent increase over two weeks prior. For the first time since the late 1990s, San Diego is almost certainly the busiest of Border Patrol’s nine U.S.-Mexico border sectors.

Volunteers providing humanitarian aid to asylum seekers waiting in open-air sites along the California border say that numbers are increasing there; donors are encouraged to contribute needed items on an Amazon wishlist.

• “Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. Mcgurk-Daniel @Usbpchiefsdc on Twitter” (Twitter, April 24, 2024).

Five centrist Democrats who had voted last Saturday for a very strict Republican-led border bill issued a statement yesterday doubling down on their position. The Democrats called on President Biden to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy and to begin Title 42-style expulsions of asylum seekers, while full-throatedly endorsing the Border Patrol union’s hardline stance on border security.

• Andrew Solender, “Centrist Democrats Want to Refocus on Border Security” (Axios, April 24, 2024).
• “Andrew Solender @AndrewSolender on Twitter“ (Twitter, April 24, 2024).

In Mexico’s northern border state of Chihuahua, national guardsmen detained 150 Central American migrants who were staying in a hotel in the state capital. In Ciudad Juárez—Chihuahua’s largest city, across from El Paso—guardsmen, immigration agents, and municipal police carried out an operation to prevent 400 migrants who had arrived atop a cargo train from reaching the borderline.

• Julian Resendiz, “Hundreds of Migrants on Trains Arrive at el Paso-Juarez Border” (Border Report, April 24, 2024).
• Jesus Estrada, “Detienen en Chihuahua a 150 Centroamericanos” (La Jornada (Mexico), April 24, 2024).

The Biden administration has paused court-ordered remediation of environmental damage caused by Trump-era border wall construction, citing litigation in a separate case involving the state of Texas. The Sierra Club, Southern Border Communities Coalition, and ACLU announced yesterday that they are seeking to intervene in the Texas case in order to restart remediation projects.

• “Sierra Club, Southern Border Communities Coalition, and Aclu Act to Protect Border Wall Remediation Settlement Amid Texas Court Decision” (Southern Border Communities Coalition, April 24, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

The National Immigration Forum and other centrist groups (Niskanen Center, Hispanic Leadership Fund, Mormon Women for Ethical Government, State Business Executives, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, Border Perspective) published a proposed “border security and management framework” document. It calls for creating a corps of asylum officers to adjudicate most protection claims at the border in less than two months, along with increased resources for U.S. border security agencies and drug interdiction technologies.

• “Coalition Border Security & Management Framework” (National Immigration Forum, April 24, 2024).
• Sandra Sanchez, “Groups Release ‘Pragmatic’ Proposal for Border Security Framework Plan” (Border Report, April 24, 2024).

CalMatters reported on lengthening wait times at the San Ysidro port of entry south of San Diego, amid increased cross-border traffic and longstanding CBP Field Operations staffing and infrastructure deficiencies.

• Wendy Fry, “Long Border Waits” (CalMatters, LAist, April 24, 2024).

Wait times for cargo at the busy commercial port of entry in Laredo, Texas have also been worsening, though Mexican government software glitches seem to be much of the cause.

• Sandra Sanchez, “Laredo Officials Vow to Better Tame Truck Backlog on Border Roadways” (Border Report, April 24, 2024).

On the Right

• John Binder, “Joe Biden’s Latest Billions for Ukraine Could Build Entire U.S. Border Wall” (Breitbart, April 24, 2024).
• Jordan Boyd, “Biden’s Trafficking Czar Ignores Human Trafficking on U.S. Border” (The Federalist, April 24, 2024).

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Developments

Mexican migration agents pulled 400 migrants off of a cargo train in rural Chihuahua, Mexico, leaving them stranded in the desert, the human rights organization Derechos Humanos Integrales en Acción (DHIA) denounced. The group included 150 children and 7 pregnant women. Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) stepped up its operations in Chihuahua, the northern border state that includes Ciudad Juárez, at the beginning of April.

• Veronica Martinez, “Frena Inm Tren Con Migrantes en Desierto de Samalayuca, Deja a las Personas Sin Agua y Alimentos” (La Verdad (Ciudad Juarez Mexico), April 23, 2024).
• “DHIA, A.C. @DhiaAc on Twitter“ (Twitter, April 22, 2024).

Asylum seekers who do arrive in Ciudad Juárez are now seeking to turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents at Gate 40 along the El Paso border wall on the bank of the Rio Grande. This is east of Gate 36, where Texas state police and National Guard have set up a large presence, with several coils of razor wire, to prevent asylum seekers from approaching federal authorities.

• Blanca Elizabeth Carmona, “Migrantes Llegan a Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua” (Milenio (Mexico), April 23, 2024).

A group of 141 migrants who had breached the Texas state barrier in El Paso on March 21 were indicted yesterday on misdemeanor rioting charges. The Texas state grand jury’s ruling came one day after a county judge had thrown out the charges, finding insufficient probable cause. The March 21 incident, showing migrants pushing past guardsmen to reach the border wall and Border Patrol agents, was caught on video and circulated widely on social media.

• “Migrants Indicted in Texas Over Alleged Border Breach After Judge Dismissed Charges” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 23, 2024).
• Julian Resendiz, Tirza Ortiz, “Judge Finds No Probable Cause to Hold Migrants in County Jail on State Riot Charges” (Border Report, April 23, 2024).

El Paso’s police have applied for a $2.8 million state grant to help it combat the Venezuelan-originated “Tren de Aragua” criminal organization. “We haven’t had contact with that gang (in criminal cases), but that’s not to say they are not here in El Paso,” a police spokesman told the El Paso Times.

• Daniel Borunda, “Tren de Aragua: Venezuelan Gang Raises Concerns on el Paso, Juarez Border” (The El Paso Times, April 23, 2024).

So far this calendar year, Mexican authorities have deported 5,689 Guatemalan citizens by land and another 1,831 by air. U.S. authorities returned 22,887 Guatemalans.

• Cesar Perez Marroquin, “Calor Sofoca a Arizona y Migrantes Guatemaltecos Corren Riesgo de Muerte” (Prensa Libre (Guatemala), April 23, 2024).

A group of relatives of missing Central American migrants traveled to Tijuana to search for them. “It took more or less a year for them to add his file as a case for search in Mexico, because the communication from my country did not go through,” said the wife of a Guatemalan man whom she last heard from in Sonora in 2021.

• Khennia Reyes, “Buscan a Migrantes Centroamericanos Desaparecidos” (El Imparcial (Tijuana Mexico), April 23, 2024).

The International Committee of the Red Cross said it met with Mexico’s National Search Commission to seek improved exchange of forensic information about migrants who have gone missing in Mexico and Central America, especially fingerprints.

• “Cicr Urge a la Coordinacion Regional Atender Desaparicion de Migrantes” (Milenio (Mexico), April 23, 2024).

The Biden administration released the 771-page text of a final rule to govern the treatment of unaccompanied migrant children in the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

• “Kathleen Bush-Joseph @kathleenbushjo2 on Twitter” (Twitter, April 23, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A new data report from TRAC Immigration notes that U.S. immigration judges are ordering 50 percent more deportations now than in 2019, the peak year of the Trump administration. In the first half of fiscal year 2024, judges ordered 136,623 immigrants deported.

In 2019, 32 percent of migrants appearing in immigration court had attorneys; that has dropped to 15 percent this year.

38 percent of 2024’s rulings were asylum cases. Of those instances, only 21 percent were ordered removed; the rest received asylum or some other status allowing them to remain in the United States.

• “Top Places With the Most Immigrants Recently Ordered Deported” (TRAC Immigration, April 23, 2024).

An explainer from the National Immigration Forum dug into existing efforts and pending proposals to have USCIS asylum officers—not immigration judges—adjudicate more asylum cases for migrants who arrive at the border.

• Adjudication by Uscis Asylum Officers: Explainer (National Immigration Forum, Monday, April 22, 2024).

The Border Chronicle’s Melissa del Bosque interviewed Zachary Mueller of America’s Voice about the controversial and possibly illegal activities of “Border 911,” a pro-Trump group whose members include former top officials of Border Patrol, CBP, and ICE.

• Melissa del Bosque, “Border 911 and the Cruelty and Chaos Agenda” (The Border Chronicle, April 23, 2024).

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Developments

Panama’s government posted statistics showing that 110,008 people migrated through the Darién Gap during the first 3 months of 2024. That is 26 percent more migration than Panama measured during the first 3 months of 2023, a year in which 520,085 people ended up traveling through the Darién Gap.

22 percent of this year’s migrants were children. Of the adult population, 36 percent were women. 64 percent of this year’s total have been citizens of Venezuela, followed by Ecuador (8%), Haiti (7%), Colombia (6%), and China (6%).

The pace of migration has been unusually steady, averaging 1,161 migrants per day in January, 1,282 in February, and 1,188 in March. Last year, migration in the Darién jumped 55 percent from February to March.

• “Tránsito Irregular por Darién 2024“ (Panamá Migración, April 2024).

Between January 1 and April 16, Guatemalan authorities expelled 7,735 mostly U.S.-bound migrants into Honduras and 177 into El Salvador. In this respect, the new government of Bernardo Arévalo has made no changes to its predecessors’ approach to in-transit migration. Of this year’s expulsions, 77 percent have been citizens of Venezuela. Other frequently expelled nationalities include Colombia (9%), Ecuador (6%), and Haiti (2%). Guatemala’s expulsions included 44 citizens of China and 18 citizens of Turkey.

• Yesica Pena, “Migracion Ha Rechazado a Mas de 7,900 Extranjeros por Ingresar al Pais de Manera Irregular” (La Hora (Guatemala), April 22, 2024).

Some of the migrants whom Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) paid to have flown to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts in September 2022 have been granted “U” visas, a status for victims of crimes that are currently being investigated or prosecuted, the Miami Herald reported. A U.S. district judge in Massachusetts also found recently that the private contractor Florida hired to run the flight, Vertol Systems, may have “participated in a scheme to recruit vulnerable individuals through deceit so they could unwillingly and publicly be used as a prop in an extremely divisive national debate,”

• Ana Ceballos, “Some Migrants Flown by Desantis to Martha’s Vineyard Qualify for Victim Visas, Feds Say” (The Miami Herald, April 22, 2024).

Eight dead bodies abandoned along a highway near Chihuahua, the capital of Mexico’s northern border state of the same name, may be related to turf battles between migrant smuggling organizations in the area, Border Report reported.

• Julian Resendiz, “8 Dead in Fight for Control of Migrant Smuggling” (Border Report, April 22, 2024).

“Of Costa Rica’s 5.2 million inhabitants, one million are relatively recent migrants. Twenty percent of births are to Nicaraguan mothers and 20 percent of prisoners are of Nicaraguan origin,” said Costa Rica’s foreign minister, Arnoldo André Tinoco.

• “Canciller de Costa Rica: Con Nicaragua Tenemos “Magnifica” Relacion de Frontera Pero No en Derechos Humanos” (EFE, Confidencial (Nicaragua), April 22, 2024).

The independent Nicaraguan outlet Nicaragua Investiga reported on the two years of red tape and indifference that a family suffered as it tried to repatriate from Texas the remains of a young man who died of drowning in the Rio Grande in May 2022.

• “Familia Lucho Casi Dos Anos para Repatriar Cuerpo de Nicaraguense Fallecido en el Rio Bravo” (Nicaragua Investiga, April 22, 2024).

The jury was unable to agree on a verdict in the trial of Arizona rancher George Alan Kelly, who allegedly shot and killed Mexican migrant Gabriel Cuen-Buitimea on his property in January 2023. The judge in the case declared a mistrial.

• Anita Snow, “Arizona Judge Declares Mistrial in the Case of a Rancher Accused of Fatally Shooting a Migrant” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 22, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Speaking to analysts about migration patterns, a National Public Radio piece concluded that Mexico’s ongoing efforts to block migration will not reduce arrivals at the U.S. border for long, as flows into Mexico from the south remain robust.

• Sergio Martinez-Beltran, “Despite a Fortified Border, Migrants Will Keep Coming, Analysts Agree. Here’s Why.” (National Public Radio, April 22, 2024).

In a third in-depth report about U.S.-bound migration published in the past 10 days, the Honduran digital outlet ContraCorriente reported on the increasing diversity of nationalities of migrants taking the very risky journey through Mexico atop the “La Bestia” cargo train.

• Bryan Avelar, “Caminar Con la Mordida de ‘la Bestia’” (ContraCorriente (Honduras), April 22, 2024).

“The notion that there is a crisis caused by the border is fallacious,” economist James Gerber, author of the new book Border Economies: Cities Bridging the U.S.-Mexico Divide, told Sandra Dibble at Voice of San Diego. “There is a crisis in U.S. immigration policy, that’s the crisis. People are going to migrate and they’re going to migrate in bigger numbers over time because of the climate crisis. This is something that we need to learn how to manage better.”

• Sandra Dibble, “Border Report: The Tale of Twin Cities and Their Economies” (Voice of San Diego, April 22, 2024).

Even immigration restrictionist groups avoid using the term “invasion” to describe migration—as many Republican politicians are doing—because it is “inaccurate and incendiary,” reported Rafael Bernal at The Hill.

• Rafael Bernal, “Even Immigration Restrictionists Stay Away From Gop’s ‘Invasion’ Rhetoric” (The Hill, April 23, 2024).

“When we encounter someone fleeing starvation, political repression and threats to their life and liberty, we should see ourselves in them,” wrote Shmuly Yanklowitz, a rabbi who often works at the border in Arizona, in a Passover reflection published by the Chicago Tribune.

• Shmuly Yanklowitz, “The Border Crisis Demands Our Humanity. Passover Reminds Us How.” (The Chicago Tribune, April 23, 2024).

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Developments

Congressional Republicans’ effort to attach hardline border measures to Ukraine aid legislation formally ended on Saturday, when the House of Representatives approved a Ukraine and Israel aid bill with no border or migration content.

The GOP demand, issued last fall, spurred a months-long Senate negotiation process, yielding a deal that would have changed the law to, among other provisions, halt asylum access at the border when migration reached certain levels. That deal failed when Republican senators rejected it in early February.

In a gesture to border hardliners, House Republican leadership allowed a separate bill to come to a vote on Saturday that would have effectively shut down the right to seek asylum at the border. H.R. 3602, the “End the Border Catastrophe Act,” included most of the provisions of H.R. 2, a strict bill that the House passed in May 2023 without a single Democratic vote. Because it was rushed to the floor in suspension of the House’s rules, H.R. 3602 failed by a 215-199 vote on Saturday. Unlike H.R. 2, though, it got 5 Democratic “yes” votes.

• Jon Michael Raasch, “House Border Security Measure Spectacularly Fails, Democrats Tank Vote” (The Daily Mail (UK), April 20, 2024).

Border Patrol’s San Diego, California Sector experienced a weekly jump in migrant apprehensions and now firmly leads the Tucson, Arizona Sector as the apparent busiest region of the U.S.-Mexico border. While both sectors saw increases last week, San Diego reported 8,959 apprehensions during April 10-16 (28 percent more than the previous week) and Tucson reported 7,500 during April 12-18 (12 percent more than the previous week).

• Jeanette Quezada, “Large Group of Migrants, Including Children, Cross Us-Mexico Border Near San Ysidro” (NBC San Diego, April 19, 2024).
• “Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. McGurk-Daniel @USBPChiefSDC on Twitter” (Twitter, April 17, 2024).
• “John R. Modlin @USBPChiefTCA on Twitter” (Twitter, April 19, 2024).

An Albuquerque Journal report from New Mexico’s Cibola County Correctional Center noted an increase in the number of Venezuelan migrants being deported from the Center into Mexico.

• Austin Fisher, “Venezuelan Refugees Detained in Nm Fearful of More Deportations to Mexico” (The Albuquerque Journal, April 19, 2024).

Edixon Del Jesus Farias-Farias, a 26-year-old citizen of Venezuela and a detainee in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility in Conroe, Texas, died on April 18. “An autopsy is pending to determine the official cause of death,” reads an ICE release.

• “Venezuelan National Passes Away in Ice Custody” (Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), April 19, 2024).

Though licensed cannabis is now legal in New Mexico, Border Patrol continues to seize the drug, which remains illegal on the federal level, at the agency’s interior checkpoints in the state, the Associated Press reported. This “prompted a discussion this week” between Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

• Morgan Lee, “Cannabis Seizures at Checkpoints by Us-Mexico Border Frustrate State-Authorized Pot Industry” (Associated Press, Associated Press, April 19, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

A greater share of this year’s reduced population of migrants is coming to the border in states west of Texas. The Texas Tribune examined Gov. Greg Abbott’s (R) claims that his state government’s hardline border policies are causing the westward shift, concluding that the reasons “are much more complicated” and that the trend is probably temporary.

• Naomi Choy Smith, Sumi Somaskanda, “Us Migrant Crisis Shifts From Texas to California Border” (BBC (UK), April 21, 2024).
• Alejandro Serrano, “Migrant Apprehensions Are Down at the Texas Border. Have State Policies Had an Impact?” (The Texas Tribune, April 22, 2024).

Gov. Abbott’s office reported busing 112,700 migrants to Democratic-governed cities since April 2022.

• “Operation Lone Star Combats Drug, Human Smuggling Across Border” (Texas Governor’s Office, April 19, 2024).

A significant cause of the border-wide decline is the Mexican government’s 2024 crackdown on migration transiting the country. However, “uneven enforcement and widespread corruption” ensure that Mexico rarely “blocks” migrants: its actions “make migrants’ journey north riskier, costlier, and slower,” Christine Murray reported at the Financial Times.

• Christine Murray, “How Mexico’s ‘Kabuki Pantomime’ Fails to Stop Us-Bound Migrants” (Financial Times (UK), April 21, 2024).

Despite rhetoric about terrorists potentially crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, “since 1975, the annual likelihood of an American being murdered in a foreigner-committed terrorist attack is about one in 4.5 million,” recalled the Cato Institute’s Alex Nowrasteh.

• Alex Nowrasteh, “The Manufactured Crisis of Migrant Terrorists at the Border” (Cato Institute, Reason, April 19, 2024).

Ecuadorian migrants transiting Mexico who spoke to Agénce France Presse said that they were nervous about identifying themselves to Mexican authorities as citizens of Ecuador, two weeks after Ecuador’s government raided the Mexican embassy in Quito, triggering a breakdown in diplomatic relations.

• “Migrantes Temen Que Ruptura de Relaciones Complique su Camino a Eu” (Agence France Presse, Milenio (Mexico), April 19, 2024).

While most of the thousands of migrants per week transiting Honduras pass through the country quickly, some need to stay and seek temporary work, medical assistance, and shelter, the Honduran online outlet ContraCorriente reported. While some formal shelters and humanitarian aid exist, many migrants rely on informal shelters provided by local citizens or stay in rented rooms in private homes.

• Daniel Fonseca, “Un Lugar para Refugiarse en el Camino” (ContraCorriente (Honduras), April 19, 2024).

“The next administration in Mexico will inherit an incomplete and deficient action plan to deal with migration” from Central America, wrote Brenda Estefan of IPADE Business School at Americas Quarterly, calling for a renewed and more collaborative focus on “root causes” of migration after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador leaves office at the end of the year.

• Brenda Estefan, “Mexico Needs a New Strategy for the Northern Triangle” (IPADE Business School, Americas Quarterly, April 22, 2024).

Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pennsylvania) penned a column endorsing the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill that includes border and migration provisions that reflect some priorities of border hardliners and some priorities of migrant rights defenders.

• Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pennsylvania), “It’s Time to Do Something About the Southern Border” (The Morning Call, April 20, 2024).

On the Right

• Adam Shaw, “Border State Lawmaker Sounds Alarm on Bloodthirsty Venezuelan Gang Entering Us: ‘They Have No Rules’” (Fox News, April 19, 2024).

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Developments

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) yesterday returned a planeload of 52 Haitian citizens to their country, even though governance has collapsed and violence is rampant there. The plane landed in the northern city of Cap-Haïtien because the airport in the capital, Port-au-Prince, is too unsafe.

During the first six months of fiscal 2024, Haiti was the number-fifteen nationality of migrants who crossed the U.S.-Mexico border between ports of entry, well behind even China, India, and Turkey. 97 percent of Haitians seeking protection at the border in 2024 have instead reported to ports of entry, in nearly all cases using the CBP One smartphone app.

“Just where are these deportees supposed to go?” William O’Neill, the UN independent human rights expert on Haiti, asked the Miami Herald. “I would just ask the United States and all countries to halt immediately all deportations to a country that cannot guarantee anyone’s security, where 1.5 million people are facing famine and where embassies are evacuating most of their personnel.”

In March, a letter from 481 organizations (including WOLA) had urged the Biden administration to suspend deportation flights to Haiti.

• Jacqueline Charles, “Biden Administration Resumes Deportation Flights to Haiti Amid Ongoing Violence” (The Miami Herald, April 18, 2024).
• Hamed Aleaziz, “U.S. Restarts Deportation Flights to Haiti” (The New York Times, April 18, 2024).
• Gloria Oladipo, Luke Taylor, “Us Resumes Deportation Flights to Haiti Despite Continuing Bloodshed” (The Guardian (Uk), April 18, 2024).
• Jillian Kestler-D’amours, “‘Unconscionable’: Us Sends Dozens to Haiti on Deportation Flight” (Al Jazeera, April 18, 2024).

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) alerted that its personnel in Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras saw more cases of sexual violence against migrants during the first quarter of 2024 (over 250) than they did in all of 2023 (232). Most cases occurred in Mexico’s organized crime-influenced U.S. border state of Tamaulipas.

MSF reported in March that it had counted 676 cases of sexual violence in the Darién Gap in 2023, and another 120 in January 2024. Shortly afterward, Panama’s government suspended the organization’s operations in the country.

• Enric Sitja Rusinol, “Msf Mexico Reporta Mas Violencia Sexual Hacia Migrantes en 2024” (EFE, EFE, April 18, 2024).

Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Communications Luis Miranda said that the average wait for a CBP One appointment right now is about 10 weeks. This contrasts with recent reports of appointments routinely taking six or even eight months at some border crossings.

• Arturo Sanchez Jimenez, “Conseguir una Cita Con Cbp One Tarda unas 10 Semanas, Asegura Funcionario de Eu” (La Jornada (Mexico), April 18, 2024).

“I am concerned that hate, bigotry and xenophobia are clouding our potential to prosper together,” Mexico’s foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena, wrote in a Dallas Morning News column directed at Texas state authorities. Bárcena is currently visiting Texas border cities.

• Alicia Barcena, “Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Secretary: State Law Jeopardizes Cooperation With Texas” (The Dallas Morning News, April 18, 2024).
• “Mi Prioridad Es Proteger y Empoderar a la Comunidad Mexicana en Texas: Alicia Barcena” (Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores (Mexico), April 18, 2024).

Interviewed by CBS News, Cuba’s deputy foreign minister said that his government would be willing to accept more than the current tempo of one U.S. deportation flight per month.

• Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Top Cuban Official Says Country Open to More U.S. Deportations, Blames Embargo for Migrant Exodus” (CBS News, April 18, 2024).

Colombia has fallen behind on regularizing the status of Venezuelan migrants who arrive without passports, and this is incentivizing many Venezuelans to migrate to the United States, reported Manuel Rueda at PRX’s The World.

• Manuel Rueda, “‘I’ll go for the American dream’: After struggling to get legal status in Colombia, many Venezuelan migrants are heading to the US” (The World, April 18, 2024).

Two South Texas legislators, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D) and Rep. Monica de la Cruz (R), alleged that Catholic Charities of San Antonio misused federal funding by paying for released migrants’ airfare to destination cities in the U.S. interior.

• Sandra Sanchez, “San Antonio Nonprofit ‘Misused’ Federal Funds to Buy Migrants Airline Tickets, Lawmakers Say” (Border Report, April 18, 2024).

Analyses and Feature Stories

Reporting from San Luis Rio Colorado, Sonora, a border city near Yuma, Arizona, the BBC’s Linda Pressly focused on the powerful criminal organizations increasingly extorting and kidnapping migrants there. “These extortionists and hostage-takers are not only professional criminals—some are also law enforcement,” Pressly noted.

• Linda Pressly, “Extortion and Kidnap – a Deadly Journey Across Mexico” (BBC (UK), April 18, 2024).

Ariel Ruiz Soto of the Migration Policy Institute told the Voice of America that “root causes” strategies have their limits: “For example, if Microsoft wanted to set up a hub in Guatemala, they would need not only to include money to build the building, to hire workers, provide training, but also a counterpart allocation from the Guatemalan government to build the roads, to have the infrastructure for the electricity, to have broadband internet.”

• Aline Barros, “White House Says Plans to Address Causes of Migration Show Results” (Voice of America, April 18, 2024).

“A vast enforcement crackdown is likely to harm economic opportunity in the United States,” reads a column from the Peterson Institute for International Economics’ Michael Clemens, author of a new statistical study of how the availability of lawful pathways reduces unlawful border crossings. “A rational way out of this crisis would be to set up a system expanding legal access for immigrants to the United States while retaining some categories as unlawful.”

• Michael A. Clemens, “Offering More Lawful Pathways for Us Border Crossings Reduces Unlawful Crossings” (Peterson Institute for International Economics, April 18, 2024).

On the Right

• “Texas Border Operation Captures Half a Million Illegal Immigrants, Thousands of Felons” (Judicial Watch, April 18, 2024).

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