Despite June lull, migrant encounters at border up 50% this fiscal year

In the Tucson Sector, the increase from one fiscal year to the next, was just higher than 40%, the CBP’s website shows. The Tucson Sector begins at the Arizona-New Mexico border and ends at the Yuma County line. It includes Cochise County.

In fiscal year 2021, federal agents working the Tucson Sector came upon 138,769 undocumented migrants attempting to cross into this country. This fiscal year that number was 195,112 persons intercepted.

On its own, June 2022 saw a drop in migrants encountered at both the entire Southwest border and in the Tucson Sector.

The number of people attempting to come into the U.S. last month along the entire Southwest border was 191,898. That was a decrease from May’s 224,200, CBP said.

There was also a decrease in the Tucson Sector with 21,267 people encountered by federal agents in June, as compared to 25,939 in May.

It’s unknown why the numbers dropped. But in the last few weeks CBP officials have been rolling out information sessions warning migrants against crossing the Arizona desert during its most scorching month when temperatures exceed 100 degrees.

Despite the admonitions about the unforgiving desert, advocates for migrants have pointed out that Title 42 remains in place. Also, at the end of June, the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration, giving it discretion on how the Remain In Mexico policy that had been instituted under the Trump administration is used. But advocates for the undocumented say that does not automatically translate into allowing migrants across the border to await their asylum claims inside the U.S. instead of in Mexico.

Title 42 refers to removals by the U.S. government of people who have recently been in a country where a communicable disease was present. The extent of authority for contagion-related expulsions is set out by law in 42 U.S.C. § 265. Title 42 was set in motion in March 2020 by the Trump administration. Under the law, asylum seekers coming into the U.S. from Mexico were immediately expelled back into that country.

The Remain In Mexico policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, allows the U.S. government to send migrants seeking asylum in the U.S. back to Mexico to wait for their asylum hearings. That policy was set in place in 2018 and began taking hold in early 2019.

Soon after he took office, Biden sought to end the Remain In Mexico program.

According to an article in the New York Times, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 ruling issued at the end of June, said “an immigration law gave the president discretion to return migrants arriving by land to the country from which they came. But that discretion, he continued, did not amount to an obligation.”

Anther story in the Washington Post said Roberts wrote that the lower courts “had gone too far in requiring Biden to keep in place policies that intruded on his ability to carry out the nation’s immigration procedures and foreign policy.” According to the article, “ ... the key provision, the chief justice wrote, used the word “may” rather than “shall.” That provision, he wrote, “means what it says: ‘May’ means ‘may.’

The Remain In Mexico rule forced hundreds of asylum seekers from various countries to wait in Mexico until their asylum case was called in the U.S. The wait could be as long as two or three years and asylum seekers often lived under harsh and dangerous conditions.

In the summer of 2019 for example, there were dozens of migrants from Eastern Europe, Central America and the Caribbean crammed into a tent that had been pitched against the steel border wall that separates Douglas from Agua Prieta, Sonora.

The tent was a few feet from the Port of Entry into the U.S. and people slept in cots lined up inside the structure next to strangers. It was either sweltering inside the makeshift camp or wet from the monsoon rains. Their stay extended into the winter months when temperatures dipped into the 30s at night.

Toddlers and infants were included in the mix, and some of the older children often had vacant looks on their faces, the feeling likely fueled by the upheaval in their families’ lives.

The tent was the waiting place for those being called at the border for their asylum cases, U.S. and Mexican officials told the Herald/Review. A reporter interviewed a handful of people inside the tent in 2019 who said they could not leave the dismal temporary shelter for fear they would lose their place in line to seek asylum.

Some of the individuals staying inside the tent ended up entering the U.S. after waiting for weeks; others gave upon and went back to their countries, advocates for migrants said.

Beto Ramos, an advocate for migrants who works with Frontera de Cristo in Douglas to help undocumented individuals, says the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision could mean little.

“It’s very interesting what the feds (in the U.S.) say and what the local authorities (in Arizona) are actually doing,” Ramos said. “Douglas has not opened its doors to people seeking asylum. These are people that we have personally walked to the Port of Entry and they have been denied entry.”

Additionally, because Title 42 remains in place, more migrants are being caught just outside Agua Prieta in Douglas, and they’re being sent back into Mexico via Agua Prieta, Ramos says.

Ramos is coordinator of the Centro de Recursos al Migrante (Resource Center for Migrants), which is located just a few yards from the U.S. Port of Entry.

Ramos said again this week he is getting more than 100 migrants daily at the center who are expelled back into Mexico under Title 42. The majority, single men, are helped with one kind of service or another — anything from a cup of soup and a cot to sleep in for a few hours to assistance with paperwork for asylum or returning to their homeland.

“So far in June alone, we have helped 3,680 migrants at this center,” Ramos said in Spanish during a telephone interview. “Among those, there were 712 women.”.

Between January and June the center has provided assistance to 30,000 migrants, Ramos said.

He said the shelter that he helps run with Frontera de Cristo and several other church ministries is a few blocks from the migrant service center and is known as C.A.M.E, Centro de Atención al Migrante Exodus (Center for Migrants in Exodus). It recently helped transport 49 people to Guatemala who gave up on seeking asylum in the U.S.

Ramos said he had been told by the Mexican Consulate in Douglas that CBP agents have been given the authority to exercise their discretion on who can and cannot enter the U.S. to seek asylum.

CBP officials in Tucson said that is not the case.

Interestingly, on Thursday morning, the Southern Borders Community Coalition, in conjunction with the U.S. Immigration Policy Center at the University of California San Diego, held a short briefing on Zoom regarding the public’s lack of trust in federal border agents.

In early July, the university sponsored a survey among 1,038 people nationwide. The participants were Republican, Democrat and Independents, said Tom Wong, associate professor of political science at UCSD and USIPC Director, during the online meeting.

The survey, titled “Voters Distrust Border Agency, Want More Oversight and Accountability,” shows that among those polled, the majority disapprove of the way that Biden and the CBP are handling issues at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Additionally, the results reveal a majority of the poll participants do not trust Border Patrol will protect people’s constitutional rights nor that border agents will be held accountable for abuse or misconduct.

But the results also reveal a solution, said officials from both SBCC and USIPC: “A large majority of voters agree that respecting the constitutional rights of everyone, including migrants, travelers and residents, would increase trust in border agents; and voters also support prosecutors reviewing abuse cases for possible obstruction of justice.”

Wong, who was relaying the results of the recent survey said, “We expected this to fall among partisan lines, but (the results) crossed partisan lines.”

Some of the results included: 13% of those polled said they believe the situation at the Southwest border is the most pressing issue in the U.S.; 23% trust CBP agents to manage issues at the Southwest border and 47% believe that Border Patrol agents are not held accountable when they abuse a person’s constitutional rights.