Fwd: Migrant encounters this summer rise in other states, drop in New Mexico

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Aug 14, 2021, 8:32:11 PM8/14/21
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Border Report: Migrant encounters this summer rise in other states, drop in New Mexico

Reyes Mata III
For the Sun-News
August 13, 2021

More people are bypassing the process of seeking asylum at the U.S. Border and are turning to “coyote” guides instead, preferring the risks of criminal gangs, the towering border wall and the drought-plagued Chihuahuan desert over their chances of finding favor from U.S. officials.

“The Biden Administration has made it clear that our borders are not open,” said Landon Hutchens, spokesman from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Public Affairs. But the illegal path into the country is a dangerous one, he said, where migrants must endure “difficult terrain, dehydration, dangerous wildlife, and abandonment by callous smugglers.”

The perils of crossing are familiar to Molly Malloy, a respected research librarian with a specialty in immigration, Latin America and border issues. In regular communication with migrant shelters along the New Mexico and Texas borderlands, she has first-hand knowledge of how frequently shelters care for people injured “jumping or falling from the wall.”

“There was a young woman with a child, and she had fallen trying to cross the wall somewhere in the Sunland Park area, and she had broken her back,” Malloy said. “I actually met this person and heard her story. She was really seriously injured and the people at this shelter … were taking care of her. That's been happening frequently.”

Government numbers released Aug. 12 help illustrate the situation of people attempting to cross the desert illegally. More than 10,000 of them so far this fiscal year have had to be rescued by U.S. Border Patrol, said Hutchens. “This is more than double what we have seen in each of the previous two years.”

More:Woman who fell from Sunland Park border wall leaves behind three girls, distraught family

The new numbers show that since October of last year, the U.S. Border Patrol has had 1,331,822 encounters at the southwest border — which is 155 percent higher than the number of encounters in 2018, more than 36 percent higher than 2019, and 190 percent higher than last year.

During a news conference that same day in South Texas, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas put it bluntly: “We are encountering an unprecedented number of migrants at our Southwestern border.”

In New Mexico, there have been 98,409 U.S. Border Patrol encounters with people entering the United States illegally since last October. Border Patrol officials said that 93,246 of these encounters, nearly 95 percent, are with single adults, and 2,932 are families entering the state. Unaccompanied children — those who are dropped over the wall, pushed through an opening, or abandoned somewhere along the international line — account for 2,231 of these New Mexico encounters.

A family enters Yuma, Ariz., to turn themselves in to U.S. Border Patrol agents on May 13, 2021.

This is a giant leap from last year, at the height of the pandemic, when 27,326 people attempted to enter the United States illegally through New Mexico, government records show.

During his news conference, Mayorkas highlighted the increase in numbers along the Southwest border by citing the figures from June to July of this year.

“In July, we encountered 212,672 migrants attempting entry into the United States. This represents a 13 percent increase from what we saw in June,” he said.

New Mexico numbers decrease in recent months

While government data indicates that the numbers of encounters across the Southwest border are surging this year, a deeper look at the numbers also show that only about half of the regions patrolled by the U.S. Border Patrol had an increase in migration numbers over the past few months. 

The Rio Grande Valley of Texas showed the biggest jump with a 57 percent increase in encounters from May to July, followed by Yuma in Arizona with a 21.6 percent increase, then Del Rio in Texas at 19 percent, then San Diego in California with 6 percent, and then the El Paso and Hudspeth County region with a 5 percent increase in encounters.

The state of New Mexico was among the five regions — which include Big Bend, Laredo, El Centro and Tucson — that actually had a decrease in illegal migration during that same time period. Government records show that New Mexico had 15,252 U.S. Border Patrol encounters in May, then 14,473 in June and 13,173 in July, for a drop of 13.6 percent.

More:A day on the border: Border Patrol agents in Texas detain thousands of migrants each day as illegal crossings hit record highs

But this recent downward trend in New Mexico’s illegal immigration cycle has not stopped the political wrangling around the issue of illegal border crossings. 

Congresswoman Yvette Herrell, R-N.M., a steady critic of the policies of New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, in an Aug. 9 letter to the governor expressed concern about migrants who might have COVID-19 “pouring across our border.” In the letter, Herrell labeled “illegal immigrants” as “a clear and present threat to our citizens, our recovery, and our return to normal” and requested that the governor employ the New Mexican National Guard to “help deal with this growing humanitarian, health, and national security catastrophe.”

U.S. Rep. Yvette Herrell, R-N.M., amid steel stockpiled by a contractor in Luna County after construction on segments of the U.S.-Mexico border wall was halted by the Biden Administration. Pictured Monday, April 12, 2021.

When asked to comment on the letter, Nora Meyers Sackett, press secretary for Gov. Lujan Grisham, in a written response stated that “the governor is deeply grateful for the selfless service of the National Guard members to their fellow New Mexicans in combating the effects of COVID-19, which continue to be exacerbated by partisan fear-mongering and disinformation about vaccines.” 

Meyers Sackett concluded: “We encourage the congresswoman and her partisan colleagues to most effectively address her own concerns — the ones based in reality, that is, and not those that are based in intentional disinformation or xenophobia — by directing them to the federal agencies working on the issue.”

Herrell also sent a letter on Aug. 10 to the Congressional Committee on Oversight and Reform. In the letter, which was co-signed by every Republican Committee Member, Herrell requested “that a field hearing be held in New Mexico along the southern border … on the pressing issue of illegal immigration, the related threat of Covid-19, and the need to keep Title 42 border health protections in place.”

Title 42 and Mexico's response

For New Mexico, the United States, and Mexico, the overlap of immigration politics and the pandemic is Title 42 — the CDC public health initiative that bars new entries through the southern border as a way of curtailing the spread of COVID-19. 

The controversial policy, which was extended by the CDC again on Aug. 2, had the attention of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who was in Ciudad Juárez Aug. 7-9 to inaugurate a new national guard facility. He was affected enough by the Title 42 extension that he said he would speak to U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris about lifting it. 

The two spoke by telephone on Aug. 9, but the phone call transcript provided by the White House did not indicate that anything specific was addressed regarding Title 42.

More:Overwhelmed Texas border city sends migrant families to Austin, Dallas, Houston bus stations

But President Lopez Obrador during an Aug. 11 press conference in Mexico City provided a little more detail about his recollection of the phone conversation.

“The call is being made to open the border,” he said. “In that tenor, they agree.”

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador gives his daily press conference in the border city of Ciudad Juarez on Monday August 9, 2021. Lopez Obrador was asked about security issues, COVID-19 vaccines for the border communities and other local issues by the local press. The Mexican president visited the state of Chihuahua where he inaugurated a new facility for the National Guard in the border city.

And on his Twitter feed, he posted about the call with Harris: “We dealt with the immigration issue, the complete opening of the northern border to reactivate our economies and continue with mutual cooperation to face the pandemic of Covid 19.”

With Title 42 still in place, and migrants taking their chances by crossing illegally through the New Mexico desert, the U.S. Border Patrol in the coming year will be installing 15 “rescue beacons” in the desolate parts of the state, said U.S. Border Patrol Supervisory Agent Richard Barragan.

“The U.S. Border Patrol is committed to saving the lives of migrants often placed in danger by transnational human smugglers when they abandon migrants in the desert,” he said.

Reyes Mata III is a freelance journalist who writes about the issues of the U.S.- Mexico border. Born and raised in El Paso, he is a graduate of New Mexico State University. His email address is rmata...@gmail.com. Story ideas are always welcomed.

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