MEXICO CITY – Fewer migrants are arriving at the U.S. border than in recent years. The US government’s secret weapon to block illegal crosswalks?
Mexico.
Analysts say Mexico is holding the line thanks to a carefully negotiated but unwritten agreement between its neighbors that the Biden-Harris administration struck late last year. They argue it is being held because it is in Mexico’s economic interest to protect the border from disruption and divert exports northward. This is also because the political stakes for Mexico in the next US presidential election are high.
Illegal border crossings have been a centerpiece of Republican Donald Trump’s campaign.
Immigration is seen as one of Democrat Kamala Harris’ weaknesses. If Mexico lifts its checkpoints and eases enforcement, it could sink Harris and boost Trump, whose campaign has capitalized on fears and frustrations among Americans at the border.
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Mexico’s former ambassador to the United States, Arturo Zarkán, said Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, recognizes her country’s role in stopping immigration and Mexico’s influence in the U.S. presidential election.
“I don’t claim that they have explicitly decided to intervene or play a role in how Americans vote, but I think they are very aware of the role that Mexico plays in the context of U.S. elections,” he said. said. “As Americans go to the polls in less than a month, we will work to ensure that the influx of migrants at the border does not impact this issue,” Scheinbaum said.
The number of migrants encountered at the U.S. border has fallen from nearly 250,000 in December, when emergency negotiations began, to below 60,000 last month, according to data provided to USA TODAY by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. This was the lowest monthly total. safety.
At the same time, Mexican immigration authorities reported a 160% increase in encounters with migrants in the first seven months of this year, according to federal data.
Refugees are denied entry to the border
Evidence of this policy shift can be seen in the historic center of Mexico’s capital, 1,000 miles south of the U.S. border.
Mari Eduvid Sarmiento and Samuel Malabe Sarmiento spent weeks trying to sneak through a southern state in Mexico, hiding from Mexican immigration officials and federal authorities on their way to the U.S. border with their 12-year-old son. spent. They could only reach the capital.
The Venezuelan family’s journey echoed the tales of sneaking into the United States that immigrants often tell. “Our passports had no value,” Eduvid Sarmiento said. “We tried again and again.”
They took taxis for short trips and once walked 13 hours through Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas to avoid highways and “La Migra,” a term once reserved for the U.S. Border Patrol. They sold coffee on the roadside until they reached Veracruz, where they climbed onto the roof of a freight train, a decision that still gives Edvid Sarmiento chills.
“It was like staring death in the face,” she said.
Ten years ago, and even five years ago, the Mexican government issued the Sarmiento family a seven-day travel visa, which many immigrants may have used to reach the U.S. border by bus or plane. . They can travel unhindered, except for occasional enforcement actions when the United States becomes dissatisfied, or when Mexico itself wants to reduce the number of immigrants within its territory. Ta.
Instead, the family only made it as far as Mexico City, where in late September they were forced to live in tents in a square filled with dozens of tents and lean-tos, where people from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, Angola and other countries congregated. . Everyone was struggling to stay out of the rain.
If they had traveled nine months earlier, they might have encountered fewer obstacles in Mexico on their way to their dream destination of New York.
In December 2023, approximately 10,000 migrants per day were reaching the US border.
Structure of the US-Mexico agreement on immigration
President Joe Biden called the president in Mexico four days before Christmas last year.
Months of record migration has caused a humanitarian disaster in U.S. cities from El Paso, Texas, to Denver, Chicago and New York. The surge in migrants was already overwhelming city services and threatened to turn into a political disaster for Democrats less than a year after the U.S. presidential election. A border security bill was being debated in Congress, but its prospects looked bleak.
This wasn’t the first time Biden has discussed the border with Mexico. The two countries had made promises, including a promise by Mexico to spend $1.5 billion over two years on infrastructure development along the northern border starting in 2022. However, the number of illegal crossings remained at record high levels.
Six days after the phone call with the president, the Under Secretary of State said: Antony Blinken, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and White House adviser Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall boarded the plane to the Mexican capital.
“I believe that what Blinken, Mayorkas and Sherwood Randall brought to the table was a combination of carrots and sticks,” said Tony Payan, director of the U.S.-Mexico Center at Rice University’s Baker Institute. That’s because they tend to be managed in a similar manner.” .
One “whip” halted traffic at five ports of entry between the United States and Mexico, including two major commercial railroad crossings into Texas.
Mexico sends more than 80% of its exports to the United States, worth more than $475 billion annually, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Mexico’s economy takes a direct hit whenever commercial traffic across the border slows.
“The demonstration to close bridges to trade was important because Mexico is so dependent on trade,” Payan said.
The U.S. delegation came to Mexico with “specific requests,” according to State Department officials who spoke freely to USA TODAY on condition of anonymity to discuss the discussions. These included increasing immigration enforcement on freight rail and passenger bus lines and for Mexico to “decongest” its northern border with the United States.
Repeating a Trump administration tactic, the Biden-Harris administration in December redeployed Customs agents to help Border Patrol process migrants. One State Department official said the port closure “got everyone’s attention.”
In response, Mexico took a series of measures, including imposing visa requirements on immigrants of certain nationalities and making it harder for some immigrants to apply for asylum in Mexico, which they had used to get safely to the U.S. border. Measures were taken quickly.
The country has increased deportation flights to Guatemala and Honduras. Mexico has also launched a sweeping immigration crackdown along the routes north (buses, planes, trains), but it’s not over yet. Mexican immigration officials transport the migrants to Mexico’s southern regions, where they begin their journey north again.
“People are being dumped on the streets,” said Gretchen Kuner, director of the Mexico City-based Women’s Migration Institute.
Mexico “has always had merry-go-rounds,” she says, “but they were there to pick up Central Americans and give them right back. Now they’re using the same idea and just tiring people out.” It leaves all the room open for extortion, violence, and kidnapping.” ”
The immigrant “merry-go-round”
Eduvid Sarmiento believes there is no way to leave Mexico City without a reservation issued by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on the CBP One app. The CBP One app is one of the “legal pathways” created by the Biden-Harris administration to encourage migrants to present themselves at ports of entry. The family applied in August but has yet to receive a response.
Earlier this week, another group of Venezuelans (dozens of people) tried to board a northbound freight train. A young man named Yampia Sánchez took a cellphone photo of himself wearing a Los Angeles ball cap with the landscape flowing in the background. He said Mexican immigration officials stopped the train outside the city less than two hours later and put them on a bus bound for Villahermosa in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco.
The same week, a video circulated on social media showing Mexican migrants attacking 10 apartments where migrants were staying in the autonomous region of Mexico City. Local news reports said investigators loaded at least 60 people onto a bus, also bound for Villahermosa.
Sarmiento, her husband and son found informal work selling boxer shorts at a food stall along a busy boulevard in Mexico City’s historic center. They weaved their way through crowds of cars and people selling clothes, pajamas, blankets and aprons. Sex workers were waiting by the roadside.
She said she was relieved that the city was relatively safe compared to traveling through Mexico.
“Every day was scary,” said her husband, Malave Sarmiento. “It’s too much psychological trauma.”
My 12 year old son was sitting in a plastic chair. It had been several months since he went to school.
“We were so afraid of him,” she said.
‘Weaponizing’ immigrants and putting people at risk
Sarkhan, a former ambassador, said Mexico is “weaponizing” migration and turning an issue that requires “shared responsibility” into a political exploit.
“I have never seen this type of influence in the hands of Mexico in modern U.S.-Mexico relations,” he said.
At the same time, Mexico has sacrificed the values that underpin its immigration laws, Sarkhan said.
“Mexico has abdicated its obligations under international treaties to adequately address the problems migrants face from organized crime and the unscrupulous authorities who prey on them,” he said.
Andrew Selley, president of the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said there is little written agreement between the U.S. and Mexico, except for trade.
“It’s always an understanding,” he said. “What Mexico decided to do was a merry-go-round that the United States never thought about. It was Mexico’s decision. There are policy debates, but ultimately each government makes its own decision. There is.”
Mexico’s immigration authorities have not spoken publicly about its tactics, and a spokesperson for Sheinbaum’s transition team declined an interview request.
Without a written agreement, it is unclear how much the United States will support Mexico’s tactics.
The United States does not pay for Mexico’s immigration enforcement program, according to State Department officials. The United States provided nearly $87 million in “humanitarian assistance to refugees, asylum seekers, and vulnerable immigrants in Mexico” in fiscal year 2023, according to a State Department spokesperson.
Immigration crisis is under control – for now
The first two years of the Biden administration saw immigrant encounters hit record highs, topping 2 million each year in 2021 and 2022. The surge was driven in part by pent-up job demand after the global pandemic shut down travel and tanked the economy.
Along the U.S.-Mexico border, the number of migrants encountered by Border Patrol agents was cut in half shortly after ministers rushed to Mexico City.
Migrant encounters plummeted again after the White House issued an executive order in June restricting asylum at the U.S. border. In July, August, and September, the number fell below 60,000.
On September 30, the Biden-Harris administration further strengthened the executive order with final rules restricting asylum access at the U.S. border.
It is an open question whether Mexico and Sheinbaum’s newly formed government will maintain an executive structure. Last week, he named a new director for the country’s National Immigration Institute, whose current director faces criminal charges over a 2023 migrant detention center fire that killed 40 migrants.
State Department officials told USA TODAY that Mr. Sheinbaum has privately committed to continuing enforcement in Mexico.
“They recognize that what they are doing on the ground in Mexico has a potential impact on the outcome of the November election, for a variety of political reasons,” said Sarkhan, the former ambassador. Ta.
Lauren Villagran can be reached at lvillagran@usatoday.com.
