The number of migrants in border towns and cities has plunged

TEXAS – NBC News reports that shelters on the southern U.S. border and in some major cities that were inundated with migrants a year ago say they are seeing sharp declines in migrants seeking refuge, some reporting drops as high as 60% in just the past few months. In July, the White House said that the number of migrants apprehended at the southwest border had dropped 50% in the month since President Joe Biden’s executive action in June limiting asylum claims went into effect. Now the effect of Biden’s order is being felt by the emergency shelter infrastructure that has developed over the past few years to manage what was a record surge of migrants. The long Texas border with Mexico was one of the busiest for migrant crossings a year ago. But in Del Rio, Texas, Tiffany Burrow of the Val Verde Humanitarian Border Coalition said the flow of migrants needing shelter is now “drastically, drastically less.”

At the Rescue Mission of El Paso this week, there were about 80 to 90 people using beds, compared with about 200 the same week a year ago, CEO Blake Barrow said. At the nearby Annunciation House shelter, Executive Director Ruben Garcia said he had received only seven migrants needing beds from the Border Patrol that day and 25 people the day before — a drastic decrease from last year, when the Border Patrol would send migrants in the hundreds to shelters like his. But Garcia said the drop wasn’t all due to Biden’s executive action. “We started seeing a much clearer reduction after Biden’s executive order went into effect,” he said, “but we were already seeing a decline because of Mexico’s enforcement. I think if Mexico stopped its energetic enforcement, it would make Biden’s executive order very hard to enforce.” After negotiations with the Biden administration, the government of Mexico under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his like-minded successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, who takes office on Oct. 1, has stepped up efforts to stem the flow of migrants northward through Mexican territory. Data from Mexico’s National Institute of Migration shows how critical Mexico’s enforcement role has been in blocking, interdicting and, in some cases, deporting U.S.-bound migrants.