Mexico–United States border crisis

Mexico–United States border crisis
The Mexico–United States border crisis is an ongoing migrant crisis in North America concerning the migration of undocumented immigrants from Latin America, through Mexico, and into the United States.
Migration into the United States through the Mexico–U.S. border began to surge in late 2020, reaching a record number of 1.73 million migrant encounters in 2021, 2.76 million in 2022, and more than 2.8 million in fiscal year 2023. The migrants, who are mostly of Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran, and Venezuelan citizenship, are reported to be escaping economic hardship, gang violence and environmental disaster in their home countries (particularly acute in the Guatemala and Honduras) to seek asylum in the US.
The number of migrant encounters reached a peak on December 2022, when Border Patrol reported over 220,000 apprehensions. During the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump administration used Title 42 to expel migrants from the United States with a stated aim of reducing public health risks. Towards the end of 2022, a large camp of migrants had formed on the Mexican side of the border waiting for Title 42 to be lifted. The conditions they were living in were described as "dire." As of September 2023, the number of migrant encounters has returned to a level near the peak, with about 9000 migrants apprehended daily.
Unlike the demographic of migrants in the preceding years, an increasing proportion of current migrants arriving at the Mexico–US border are children, most of whom are unaccompanied children. Policies related to the care and custody of such children have been controversial.
Background
The number of migrants attempting to cross the Mexico–US border has been steadily increasing since April 2020. Every year, tens of thousands of unaccompanied children arrive at the Mexico–US border, igniting debate on how to react.
The agents of the US Border Patrol (USBP), a federal law enforcement agency, are tasked with deterring, detecting, and apprehending any person crossing into the US illegally at any point not designated as a port of entry by the US attorney general. Additionally, agents interdict and seize contraband smuggled into the US through non-ports of entry. USBP agents are both immigration and customs officials.
Death along the border
Being one of the world's "most lethal land borders", hundreds of migrants die per year along the Mexico–US border while attempting to cross into the US from Mexico illegally. The USBP reported 294 migrant deaths in the fiscal year 2017 (ending September 30, 2017), which was lower than in 2016 (321), and any year during the period 2003–2014. Exposure (including heat stroke, dehydration, and hyperthermia) were the leading cause.
According to the estimates by group Border Angels, about 10,000 people have died in their attempt to cross border since 1994. The statistics reflect only known deaths and do not include estimates for those who have never been found. Some migrant deaths may go unreported even when they are brought to the attention of officials.
USBP reported that 3,221 migrants were rescued in the fiscal year 2017.
Timeline
Obama administration
In 2014, the US declared a crisis at the border due to an influx of unaccompanied minors and women making their way through checkpoints. The US southern border had long struggled with implementing policies that aim to prevent immigration-related tragedies. With a decline in unlawful immigration from Mexico, the crisis predominantly concerned increased immigration from the Northern Triangle of Central America (NTCA), encompassing Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. Academics claimed the immigration crisis was a result of US interventions in Central America during the Cold War, with high amounts of political instability, violent crime, and poverty stemming from the US's support of authoritarian regimes.
In several places, dangers including kidnapping, murder, and sexual assault threatened thousands of Central American migrants who had been clustered in Mexican border cities like Matamoros, Tamaulipas, for months, blocked from seeking asylum in the US because of new restriction policies. The US government and United Nations provided free transportation to return refugees to their homes in Central America, but many others who were stuck in Matamoros said that desperation had led them to consider treacherous and potentially life-threatening methods of illegal entry—crossing the river, climbing into tractor-trailers driven by human smugglers, or both. In 2019, as the USBP reported, the number of migrants caught hiding in tractor-trailers along the border had risen by 40 percent that year.
Trump administration
In September 2019, the US Supreme Court allowed a new ruling to take effect that could curtail most asylum applications at the border. The ruling would demand that most asylum seekers who pass through another country first will be ineligible for asylum at the US's southern border. Mark A. Morgan, acting commissioner of the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), stated the ruling was set to take effect on the week of October 8, 2019. In an interview with Time, Donald Trump criticized the Obama administration for the separations immigration policy. As the Trump administration stated, the policy is necessary to decrease the "fraudulent" asylum claims among the entrance of Central American families coming to the border.
The Trump administration tried to stop migrants from getting into the US at all, asking them to take a number at the border and to wait until they are called for a chance to have their asylum cases heard. As a result, in September 2019, the US immigration court faced over one million waiting for their cases to be heard, matching the highest backlog seen in the US.
Biden administration
In the fiscal year 2021, the USBP confirmed more than 1.6 million encounters with migrants along the Mexico–US border, more than quadruple the number in the previous fiscal year and the largest annual total on record.
On January 13, just one week prior to Biden's inauguration, more than 3,000 people departed Honduras and El Salvador for the US. That number grew to approximately 7,000–8,000 one week later. On January 16, Guatemala and Mexico deployed the military to their borders, in an attempt to stop the migrant caravan from transiting through their countries on the way to the US to no avail. On January 20, 2021, soon after his inauguration, President Biden halted the construction of Trump's Mexican border wall, ending the national emergency declared by the Trump administration in February 2019.
Early during President Joe Biden's tenure, a surge in migrants at the US border stirred controversy. According to a 2021 Politico report, Republicans expected prior to Joe Biden taking office that there would be a border surge at the start of 2021 (due to seasonal patterns and regional crises) and planned to make it a central issue in the leadup to the 2022 midterm elections. The number of migrants arriving in the US from Central America had been rising since February 2021. The USBP reported an increase in encounters with unaccompanied children from the month before. The reported 5,858 encounters in January to 9,457 in February constituted the largest one-month percentage increase in encounters with unaccompanied children since CBP began recording data in 2010.
In February 2021, a group of migrants was found massacred in northern Mexico. A few months later, the US Customs and Border Patrol reported that various colored bracelets with writing on them being used as a method to track a migrant's payment status to their coyote and drug cartels that control various parts of Mexico. The bracelets reportedly are used for tracking status of protection from cartel actions such as death, kidnapping, and the right to be in cartel controlled territory or to cross the border into the US.
In March 2021, amid a rise in migrants entering the US from Mexico, Biden told migrants: "Don't come over." He said that the US was arranging a plan for migrants to "apply for asylum in place", without leaving their original locations. In the meantime, migrant adults "are being sent back", Biden said, in reference to the continuation of the Trump administration's Title 42 policy for quick deportations but made no efforts to follow through and migrants continued to cross into the US. Biden earlier announced that his administration would not deport unaccompanied migrant children; the rise in arrivals of such children exceeded the capacity of facilities meant to shelter them (before they were sent to sponsors), leading the Biden administration in March to direct the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help manage these children, but facilities are being overwhelmed because of the numbers of adults and children coming into the country.
On March 24, 2021, Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris to reduce the number of unaccompanied minors and adult asylum seekers. She is also tasked with leading the negotiations with Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. In June 2021, Vice President Harris visited Guatemala and Mexico in an attempt to address the root causes of migration from Central America to the United States. During her visit, in a joint press conference with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, Harris issued an appeal to potential migrants, stating "I want to be clear to folks in the region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come."
In September 2021, over 30,000 Haitian migrants crossed the border in the Del Rio, Texas, sector. At one point, a migrant camp beneath the Del Río–Ciudad Acuña International Bridge contained over 15,000 temporary residents. The squalid conditions in the camp attracted widespread international attention. Photos of horse-mounted USBP agents allegedly mistreating migrants led to an incident conservative media referred to as Whip Gate.
The USBP made more than 1.7 million arrests of migrants crossing the Mexico–US border illegally in the 2021 fiscal year, the highest number ever recorded. In November 2021, only 31 percent of Americans approved the president's handling of immigration.
CBP officers at eight South Texas ports of entry seized a significant amount of narcotics, unreported currency, weapons, and uncovered numerous immigration violations during fiscal year 2021, most notably a 1,066-percent increase in fentanyl and a 98-percent increase in cocaine seized. Fiscal year 2021 began October 1, 2020, and ended September 30, 2021.
Progressives have pressed the Biden administration to impede the expulsions and provide asylum to migrants who have legitimate claims of persecution in their homelands. It stated in April that the order would be lifted on May 23, with new plans in place to deal with the influx.
In June 2022, 53 migrants were found asphyxiated in and around a tractor-trailer near Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas in what has been described as the deadliest smuggling incident in US history.
See also
Mexico–United States border
Brooks County, Texas
References
Further reading
Borders of Mexico
Borders of the United States
International borders
Mexico–United States border
Contemporary migrations
Illegal immigration to the United States
Haitian emigrants to the United States