How the U.S. and Mexico drove border crossings down

TEXAS – The Wall Street Journal reports that when illegal migration surged across the U.S.-Mexico border last fall, Phoenix’s largest migrant shelter was so busy that cots filled the cafeteria and lined the hallways. Today the shelter, housed in a converted elementary school, is empty. The U.S. has experienced a stark decline in illegal border crossings in the past six months, thanks to a newly sprung security gantlet migrants encounter traveling to the U.S. border through Mexico. On the Mexican side, security checkpoints dot highways. Mexico’s National Guard patrols the southern banks of the Rio Grande, aiming to prevent mass concentrations of migrants. Thousands of asylum seekers caught heading north have been put on buses and sent back to southern Mexico near Guatemala. Aid organizations liken the busing strategy to the board game Chutes and Ladders, as migrants are moved around the country. The policy aims to discourage them from heading north. Many decide to return to South America, migrants say.

The Americans also have a new tool. An order issued by President Biden in June disqualifies migrants from winning asylum if they enter the U.S. illegally. As a result, many more of them can be deported quickly, and far fewer have been released into the U.S. The moves mark an unprecedented level of cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico, both motivated by presidential elections this year, to bring down illegal border crossings in hopes of diverting attention away from the issue. The effort has worked beyond anything the U.S. could have predicted, at least so far. The progress gives Vice President Kamala Harris a potential counter to efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies, who are painting her as the face of failed U.S. policies on immigration. The U.S. recorded about 57,000 illegal crossings in July, according to a person familiar with unpublished government data, down from around 250,000 in December, when they reached an all-time high. That is the lowest monthly figure since 2020, when crossings were still relatively low because of the Covid-19 pandemic. “This is just what the administration wanted,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “Not that Democrats are going to win on this issue, but that chaos at the border won’t be on the front pages anymore.”