Daily Border Links: June 3, 2024
Adam Isacson
Developments
President Biden is expected to issue an executive order tomorrow (Tuesday June 4) at least partially “shutting down” the right to ask for asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. It is likely to enable U.S. border authorities to channel asylum seekers into rapid removal from the United States, at times when daily migrant arrivals exceed a certain threshold, probably 4,000 or 5,000 people per day. At busy moments along the border, the executive order could institute a policy similar to the pandemic-era Title 42 expulsions regime.
The administration is expected to claim that the new “shutdown” authority’s legal underpinning is Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), which allows the President to bar the entry of entire classes of non-citizens considered “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” However, courts have cast doubt on whether 212(f) can in fact be used to remove an asylum seeker already on U.S. soil and asking for protection, who are protected by Section 208of the INA.
It appears that the “shutdown” would only apply to asylum seekers apprehended between the land border ports of entry. Those with appointments made using the CBP One smartphone app would still be processed.
The move comes just after Sunday’s presidential election in Mexico, whose government will be expected to cooperate in receiving at least some of the migrants refused asylum access and sent back across the land border. Claudia Sheinbaum, the mayor of Mexico City and the candidate of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s MORENA party, won in a landslide.
At least two Texas border-city mayors are expected to be on hand in Washington for tomorrow’s executive order announcement.
- Myah Ward, “Biden Executive Action on the Border Could Come as Early as Tuesday” (Politico, June 2, 2024).
- Camila Dechalus, Kayla Tausche, Priscilla Alvarez, “Biden Administration Preparing to Announce Border Executive Action as Early as Tuesday” (CNN, June 1, 2024).
- Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Biden Executive Order Restricting Asylum Processing Along U.S. Border Expected on Tuesday” (CBS News, June 3, 2024).
- Valerie Gonzalez, “Border Mayors Heading to Dc for Tuesday’s Immigration Announcement” (Associated Press, Associated Press, June 2, 2024).
- Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada), “Rosen Urges President Biden to Finally Take Executive Action to Secure the Border, Ensure Orderly & Humane Asylum Process” (U.S. Senate, May 31, 2024).
CBS News and Fox News reported that Border Patrol agents at the U.S.-Mexico border apprehended about 118,000 migrants during May 2024, which would make May the third-lightest month for border migrant arrivals of the Biden administration’s 40 full months in office. This continues a trend of reduced migration, dating from January, that appears to owe a lot to the Mexican government’s migrant interdiction operations.
- Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Biden Executive Order Restricting Asylum Processing Along U.S. Border Expected on Tuesday” (CBS News, June 3, 2024).
- “Bill Melugin @billmelugin_ on Twitter” (Twitter, June 1, 2024).
ICE removed migrants to their countries of origin on 151 flights in May, the most in a month since August 2023 (153), according to the latest “ICE Air Flights” report by Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border. This added up to 6.6 deportation flights per weekday, “just over the prior 6-month average of 6.4.” 90 percent of those flights went to Guatemala (47), Honduras (29), Mexico (18), Ecuador (17), El Salvador (13), or Colombia (12). For its part, Mexico carried out nine deportation flights: five to Honduras, three to Guatemala, and one to Colombia.
- Thomas H. Cartwright, “Ice Air Flights 6/2/24” (Witness at the Border, June 2, 2024).
“The United States is in talks with Venezuelan authorities to resume direct repatriation flights” to Caracas, noted the Venezuelan opposition-aligned daily Tal Cual.
- Luna Perdomo, “Mexico Trabaja para Retomar Vuelos de Repatriacion de Venezolanos Expulsados Desde Eeuu” (Tal Cual (Venezuela), June 2, 2024).
For the second straight week, the chief of Border Patrol’s Tucson, Arizona sector reported more migrant apprehensions than did the chief of Border Patrol’s San Diego, California sector. Tucson had been the border’s number-one migration destination, measured by apprehensions, between July and March, but was outpaced by San Diego in April. A Fox News correspondent cited preliminary Border Patrol data indicating that Tucson apprehensions exceeded those of San Diego in May by a margin of 33,000 to 32,000.
- “John R. Modlin @USBPChiefTCA on Twitter” (Twitter, May 31, 2024).
- “Chief Patrol Agent Patricia D. McGurk-Daniel @USBPChiefSDC on Twitter” (Twitter, May 29, 2024).
- “Bill Melugin @billmelugin_ on Twitter” (Twitter, June 1, 2024).
Corrupt Mexican migration (INM) agents operating a checkpoint at the Tijuana airport have been using it to extort money from migrants passing through, and this has happened “for years,” municipal migration official Enrique Lucero told Border Report.
- Salvador Rivera, “Immigration Checkpoint at Tijuana Airport Used to Extort Newcomers, Official Says”(Border Report, May 31, 2024).
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced the completion of construction at a state government military base near Eagle Pass. 300 Texas National Guard soldiers are now quartered there, a number that will rise to 1,800.
- “Governor Abbott Welcomes Texas National Guard to New Forward Operating Base in Eagle Pass” (Texas Governor’s Office, May 31, 2024).
- Rose L. Thayer, “Texas National Guard Troops Move Into New Base on Mexico Border” (Stars and Stripes, May 31, 2024).
Abbott also reported that since April 2022, Texas has bused over 117,900 released migrants to the Democratic Party-governed cities of Washington DC, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Denver, and Los Angeles, without first coordinating with or informing those cities’ municipal officials.
- “Texas Establishes Permanent Presence on the Southern Border” (Texas Governor’s Office, May 31, 2024).
Analyses and Feature Stories
The New York Times detailed an election-year spike in threats and infiltration attempts suffered by humanitarian organizations, like shelters, assisting migrants on the U.S. side of the border. It identifies James O’Keefe of the provocateur organization Judicial Watch as a ringleader of the campaign against border charities.
- Miriam Jordan, “Faith-Based Groups That Assist Migrants Become Targets of Extremists” (The New York Times, June 2, 2024).
In 2023, only 56 percent of unaccompanied migrant children defending their cases in U.S immigration court had attorneys representing them, ABC News noted. The immigration court system does not guarantee a right to counsel, even for parentless children, so “minors are left to navigate the different avenues of relief alone, fill out documents in a foreign language, and argue their case before a judge.”
- Laura Romero, “Unaccompanied Minors Are Representing Themselves in Immigration Court, Alarming Advocates” (ABC News, June 3, 2024).
At the New Yorker, Stephania Taladrid profiled Mexico’s foreign minister, Alicia Bárcena, who has sought to defend Mexico’s interests and to push for more action on migration’s “root causes” amid U.S. pressure to crack down on migration transiting Mexico. That pressure has intensified this year, the article notes, as perceptions of border security and migration could determine some voters’ decisions in a tight U.S. election. An unnamed Mexican official described the Biden administration’s approach to migration policy as “schizophrenic.”
- Stephania Taladrid, “Will Mexico Decide the U.S. Election?” (The New Yorker, June 1, 2024).
At the San Diego Union-Tribune, Wilson Center analysts Alan Bersin and Diego Marroquin Bitar predicted that Mexico’s approach to the border and migration will change little with the June 2 electoral victory of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s chosen candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum.
- Alan Bersin, Diego Marroquin Bitar, “Mexico’s Monumental Election Isn’t Expected to Bring Big Changes at the U.S.-Mexico Border” (Wilson Center, The San Diego Union-Tribune, May 31, 2024).
The Nicaraguan opposition-aligned investigative media outlet Onda Local identified some of the officials directing a thriving human smuggling route through Nicaragua, which does not require visas for most visiting nationalities. It alleges that the director of Air Transportation of Nicaragua’s Civil Aeronautics Institute, Róger Martínez Canales, “has the task of collecting the ‘fee’…from the money generated by human trafficking, which amounts to several million dollars, since for each migrant a sum of between $5,000 and $10,000 is charged then distributed among those involved, the airlines and international companies indirectly involved in the business.”
- “Revelan Pistas Sobre Quienes Manejan el Trafico de Migrantes en Nicaragua” (Onda Local (Nicaragua), May 31, 2024).