At least 40 migrants died this week, and nearly 30 others were seriously injured, in a fire at a government-run migrant detention facility in the border city of Juarez, Mexico, across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) blamed the blaze on occupants in the facility, who were protesting their impending deportations. The incident underscores the dangers of illegal immigration, and should (but thus far hasn’t) cast a spotlight on President Biden’s feckless and mercurial border policies.
Mexican Migrant Detentions. The Associated Press explains this is the third such incident in detention facilities south of the border since the fall, but the only one that resulted in fatalities:
Mostly Venezuelan migrants rioted inside an immigration center in Tijuana in October that had to be controlled by police and National Guard troops. In November, dozens of migrants rioted in Mexico’s largest detention center in the southern city of Tapachula near the border with Guatemala. No one died in either incident.
Interestingly, the AP report continues:
Mexico has emerged as the world’s third most popular destination for asylum-seekers, after the United States and Germany. But it is still largely a country that migrants pass through on their way to the U.S.
In that vein, the Wall Street Journal reports that nearly 450,000 migrants were apprehended in Mexico and detained in government facilities there in 2022.
A researcher for Human Rights Watch quoted by the paper complains that AMLO’s administration “has significantly expanded immigration enforcement efforts, including the detention of people who are trying to reach the U.S., leading to record breaking numbers of people held in immigration detention centers, which are often over capacity”.
The “often over capacity” part aside, that suggests the Mexican government is doing more to secure the Southwest border than the Biden administration is. In the past five months alone, Border Patrol has released some 375,000 illegal migrants at the Southwest border into the United States, to await removal hearings that may take more than a decade to complete.
Biden’s Border Blame. Ultimately, however, the reason the Mexican government has been forced to apprehend and detain 450,000 illegal migrants is that the Biden administration’s “catch and release” policies are encouraging migrants from around the world to cross through Mexico illegally on their way to the United States.
You don’t have to trust me on this point, however. In a March 8 opinion in Florida v. U.S., a case brought by the state of Florida challenging Biden’s migrant release policies, federal district court Judge T. Kent Wetherell II said the same thing:
Collectively, [the Biden administration’s migrant release policies] were akin to posting a flashing “Come In, We’re Open” sign on the southern border. The unprecedented “surge” of aliens that started arriving at the Southwest Border almost immediately after President Biden took office and that has continued unabated over the past two years was a predictable consequence of these actions. Indeed, [Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz] credibly testified based on his experience that there have been increases in migration “when there are no consequences” and migrant populations believe they will be released into the country.
Note that the Biden administration hasn’t appealed Judge Wetherell’s order in Florida, so that finding is final. That’s the feckless part.
The mercurial part of the Biden border policies is a shift away from releasing aliens who have entered illegally to a brand-new regime in which those would-be migrants are funneled instead through the ports of entry (after which most if not all will be released into the United States) in an attempt to hide the scope of the utter chaos at the Southwest border.
You may hear that those port migrants have “entered legally” or are “doing it the right way”, but in reality an alien without documents paroled from a port of entry is every bit as removable — and hence, “here illegally” — as aliens who crossed the border illegally without proper documents (which is why they crossed illegally to begin with).
In fact, illegal entrants and aliens at the ports without proper documents are charged under and inadmissible on the exact same ground of removability — section 212(a)(7)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) (“Documentation requirements”).
Leveraging the preexisting CBP One app — which was originally created to expedite the inspection of lawful travelers to limit their exposure to Covid-19 — the administration is encouraging those would-be illegal migrants to now make appointments at the ports through the app instead of entering illegally.
The Biden administration contends it’s releasing those migrants because it lacks detention space to hold tens of thousands of them per month (while asking Congress to cut its detention funding), but when faced with the same detention issues in FY 2019, the Trump administration responded with the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), better known as “Remain in Mexico”.
Under MPP, “other than Mexican” (OTM) migrants apprehended entering illegally were sent back across the border to await their removal hearings, which were held in “tent courts” at the ports of entry. If they were granted asylum, they were admitted. If those migrants were denied, they were removed.
Remain in Mexico successfully slashed the number of migrants entering illegally, because it imposed the sorts of “consequences” Chief Ortiz described (namely, denying illegal migrants the ability to live and work here indefinitely while applying for asylum).
In fact, in an October 2019 assessment of MPP, DHS called it “an indispensable tool in addressing the ongoing crisis at the southern border and restoring integrity to the immigration system”.
Biden’s DHS secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, shut MPP down, however, asserting:
Significant evidence indicates that individuals awaiting their court hearings in Mexico under MPP were subject to extreme violence and insecurity at the hands of transnational criminal organizations that profited by exploiting migrants’ vulnerabilities. It is possible that such humanitarian challenges could be lessened through the expenditure of significant government resources currently allocated to other purposes. Ultimately, however, the United States has limited ability to ensure the safety and security of those returned to Mexico. [Emphasis added.]
That is a facially reasonable concern. But only facially.
Here’s the problem: DHS admits migrants are spending three months on the other side of the border waiting for their CBP One app port appointments, a wait likely growing by the day. Under MPP, migrants waited two to four months for their initial hearings, and the courts completed nearly 13,000 cases in just over four months after Remain in Mexico had gone fully operational.
Whether it’s full completion of the asylum case under MPP, or simply starting the process through the CBP One app, the wait times on the other side are roughly equivalent. Thus, Biden has kept the least positive impact of Remain in Mexico, while eliminating the main benefit — the finality of the alien’s case MPP was meant to ensure.
I don’t question — for purposes of this analysis, at least — that Biden had migrants’ best interests in mind when he ditched the Trump administration’s successful border policies (first and foremost MPP), but the results have been calamitous.
As Judge Wetherell’s opinion shows, migrants — especially OTMs — have been drawn here by the “Come In, We’re Open” sign erected by the hash that the administration has made of U.S. border security. The consequences have not just been assaults on the rule of law and fiscal costs to cities and states. Biden’s border policies have inflicted a human toll, as well.
The Journal notes, “U.S. authorities recovered the bodies of more than 890 migrants” at the border in FY 2022, not counting 53 migrants “found dead inside the back of a sweltering tractor trailer found parked in San Antonio” in July. And those are just the deaths we know about. You can now add the 40 migrants who died in the fire at the Juarez shelter to the toll.
In the wake of the fire, Guatemala’s National Migration Institute “urged potential migrants to reconsider trips from which many times ‘there is no return’”. There’s no return from border deaths, but the president can at least backtrack on the border policies drawing those migrants to undertake the journey.