EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – Illegal border crossings continue to plummet in West Texas and Southern New Mexico as triple-digit heat, fast-track removals and Mexico’s crackdown on train riders slow northbound foot traffic.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection data shows border agents in the El Paso Sector are reporting an average of 560 daily migrants encounters, compared to the 750 daily apprehensions and surrenders logged in May. Most apprehensions involve Mexican, Guatemalan and Venezuelan nationals, the agency said.
Other sources are telling NewsNation the San Diego Sector reported only 648 migrant encounters on Monday while Tucson, Arizona, logged 485. Along the Southwestern border, a total of 2,070 Border Patrol encounters were reported on Monday, 2,460 on Sunday and 2,840 last Saturday, the sources told NewsNation.
That’s a far cry from December’s record high 8,057 daily encounters and coincide with the Biden administration threat to stop processing asylum claims between ports of entry when daily illegal border crossings remain above 2,500 for seven consecutive days.
A federal official told Border Report a combination of factors is leading to the decrease.
Cooperation with Mexico is one such factor, as Mexican immigration agents prevent migrants from getting on top of cargo trains headed to the border. In Juarez, across the border from El Paso, soldiers and police officers are now patrolling the banks of the Rio Grande and telling potential asylum-seekers to go to a shelter — or anywhere else but the river.
Another deterrent is the federal government’s messaging that the U.S. border is not open, followed by an increase in repatriation flights, the official said.
An Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officer walks towards the first deportation flight of undocumented Venezuelans after a US-Venezuelan agreement in Harlingen, Texas, on October 18, 2023. (Photo by VERONICA G. CARDENAS/AFP via Getty Images)
“Because we have additional holding capacity that was surged to us by the Secretary of Homeland Security, we can hold people longer without having to do decompression (release them with a notice to appear later in court) and thus give them their asylum interview while they’re still in holding,” the official said.
A third factor is expedited removals under a 1996 federal law that allows border agents to send those without a valid claim to remain in the United States back across the border without the need to go before an immigration judge.
“The U.S. Border Patrol continues to enforce federal immigration law and applies consequences to those who do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States. The Border Patrol processes people found to have crossed the border illegally between ports of entry using Title 8 authority, which carries significant consequences including removal and barring people from re-entry for a minimum of five years,” the agency said in a statement to Border Report.
Another obvious deterrent is the heat. The streak of triple-digit or near-triple-digit heat has contributed to many of the 82 fatalities recorded so far this year in the El Paso Sector.
Officials in the past attributed a seasonal dip in illegal border crossings in summer along the Southwest to the heat. That was a given until irregular migration started its record climb in 2019.
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