Weekly U.S.-Mexico Border Update: Harris visits, asylum rule tightens, vice-presidential debate, fatal Chiapas incident, Texas updates
by
Adam Isacson
Adam Isacson
Adam Isacson
With this series of weekly updates, WOLA seeks to cover the most important developments at the U.S.-Mexico border. See past weekly updates here.
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Vice President Kamala Harris paid her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since becoming the Democratic presidential candidate. She was in Douglas, Arizona, on September 27. While there, she praised the contributions that immigrants have made to the United States, but also promised to maintain or strengthen curbs on access to asylum at the border.
With a September 30 proclamation and final rule, the Biden administration tightened curbs on migrants’ access to the U.S. asylum system if they cross the border without securing one of a limited number of appointments at land-border ports of entry. The rule’s original version, issued June 4, halts most asylum access when Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions average 2,500 per day, and would restore asylum access when apprehensions average less than 1,500 per day over 7 days. The revised rule would require that average be maintained for 28 days, further cementing the asylum ban.
Candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz argued over migration in an October 1 vice-presidential debate. Walz incorrectly claimed that Donald Trump built “less than 2 percent” of border wall. Vance incorrectly claimed that there are “20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country,” that “we have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost,” that the CBP One program is illegal, and that migrants are a cause of the fentanyl crisis. Walz, like Harris in Arizona, attacked Donald Trump for torpedoing compromise legislation that would have hired more border agents, built more border wall, and placed curbs on asylum.
In Mexico’s southern state of Chiapas, Mexican Army soldiers chased, then fired on, a pickup truck carrying 33 migrants on the evening of October 1, killing 6 of them and wounding 12. A military statement contended that soldiers fired at the vehicle after hearing “detonations.” The deceased victims were reportedly from Nepal, Egypt, and Pakistan. The incident heightens concerns about the Mexican government’s expanding placement of combat-trained soldiers in internal law-enforcement roles.
Recovered migrant remains totaled a record-breaking 175 in Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector as fiscal 2024 drew to a close. More reports of Texas National Guard soldiers firing projectiles at migrant families who pose no threat. Texas’s Attorney-General opened a fifth investigation into a group assisting migrants in the border region. FBI data show violent crime rates in Texas border cities are lower than all cities’ average.
Vice President Kamala Harris paid her first visit to the U.S.-Mexico border since becoming the Democratic presidential candidate. She was in Douglas, Arizona, on September 27, where she met with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel at the port of entry, spoke with relatives of victims of fentanyl-related deaths, and gave remarks before a small audience.
“I reject the false choice that suggests we must choose either between securing our border and creating a system that is orderly, safe, and humane,” the Vice President said. “We can and we must do both.” Harris noted that the United States is “a sovereign nation” and “also a nation of immigrants” who have “enriched” the country.
Harris staked out a tougher position on the border and migration in what the Financial Times called “a stark departure from her party’s traditional rhetoric on the subject.” Harris promised “further action” to prevent border crossings between ports of entry, including a continuation or tightening of limits on asylum access and “more severe criminal charges” for people who cross into the United States without inspection.
“If someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum,” Harris said, without noting that CBP limits daily access to ports of entry. “While we understand that many people are desperate to migrate to the United States, our system must be orderly and secure, and that is my goal.”
Harris repeated a promise to sign a reintroduced “ Border Act” if it reaches her desk. That bill, which failed in the Senate in February, included provisions to improve border governance and migration adjudication, like adding capacity at ports of entry and in the asylum system. As it sought Republican buy-in, that bill included stricter provisions than Democrats would typically support, like severe limits on asylum access between ports of entry, more migrant detention capacity, and expenditure of Trump-era border wall funds. Harris renewed attacks on Republican opponent Donald Trump for urging his party’s senators to oppose the bill, which she called “sabotage.”
A version of the Border Act’s asylum-denial provision is now in place, pending court challenges, under an early-June Biden administration proclamation and rule that was further toughened this week (see the next section).
Much of Harris’s message centered on cross-border fentanyl smuggling, which overwhelmingly occurs in vehicles at land-border ports of entry. She called for hiring more CBP personnel and buying more detection equipment at the ports.
Recent polls have shown Harris narrowly trailing Republican opponent Donald Trump in Arizona, a “battleground state” where competition for electoral votes is tight.
In a speech the next day in Wisconsin, Trump called Harris’s remarks “bulls—,” adding that she is “letting in people who are going to walk into your house, break into your door. These people are animals.”
The Biden administration published a revised proclamation and a final rule tightening restrictions, first issued on June 4, on migrants’ ability to access the U.S. asylum system without making appointments at official border crossings (ports of entry). Since then, most who cross between the ports of entry and enter Border Patrol custody are ineligible for asylum.
The rule’s first version revoked asylum access whenever the daily average of Border Patrol’s migrant apprehensions exceeds 2,500 over a 7-day period, and would have restored asylum when Border Patrol apprehensions fall below 1,500 over a 7-day period, excluding unaccompanied children.
The new version cements the asylum restrictions further: the daily average would now have to remain below 1,500 per day over 28 days—not 7—and unaccompanied children now count toward the total.
According to Border Patrol data from July, August, and (preliminarily) September, the agency averaged 1,831 apprehensions per day during those months, including 194 unaccompanied children per day (in July and August). That is well over the 1,500-per-day threshold below which apprehensions would need to fall, over 28 days, in order to “turn back on” the right to seek asylum again between ports of entry.
(CNN reported on September 30 that Border Patrol was on track to apprehend about 54,000 migrants —1,800 per day—at the border during September. That would be down slightly from 56,399—1,819 per day—in July, and from 58,038—1,872 per day—in August.)
For the foreseeable future, then, the only option for seeking asylum, which requires a physical presence on U.S. soil, is to secure one of 1,450 daily appointments at land-border ports of entry using the CBP One smartphone app. Doing so often requires a wait inside Mexico of several months.
Section 208 of the Immigration and Nationality Act guarantees the right to seek asylum to all who are physically present in the United States “whether or not at a designated port of arrival.”
The UN Refugee Agency voiced “profound concern” about the tightened asylum regulation, which “severely curtails access to protection for people fleeing conflict, persecution, and violence, putting many refugees and asylum seekers in grave danger without a viable option for seeking safety.”
The border and migration were the third topic that CBS News moderators posed to candidates JD Vance and Tim Walz in an October 1 vice-presidential debate.
Asked about the Trump campaign’s “mass deportation” plans, Vance replied that, if elected, Donald Trump would first focus on deporting migrants with criminal records in the United States; the Ohio Senator did not address the question’s inquiry about whether this operation would separate families. Vance blamed Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden for “94 executive orders suspending deportations, decriminalizing illegal aliens, massively increasing the asylum fraud that exists in our system, that has opened the floodgates,” and sought to tie that to fentanyl smuggling.
Walz, the governor of Minnesota, repeated the Harris campaign’s charge that Donald Trump torpedoed the “ Border Act of 2024,” the compromise bipartisan border security bill that failed in the Senate in February after months of negotiations between a group of Democratic and Republican senators. Vance did not address the “Border Act,” which he voted against.
Walz incorrectly claimed that Donald Trump built “less than 2 percent” of border wall (the net increase in fenced-off miles was about 4 percent of the entire border, but Trump built new pedestrian fencing over 14 percent of the border). Vance incorrectly claimed that there are “20, 25 million illegal aliens who are here in the country” (there were 11 million in 2022); that “we have 320,000 children that the Department of Homeland Security has effectively lost” (32,000 children—starting in 2019, when Trump was president—have missed immigration hearings but aren’t necessarily “missing,” while another 291,000 haven’t been issued Notices to Appear but aren’t “missing”); and that the CBP One program is illegal (it employs humanitarian parole, a presidential authority dating back to 1952). As has been documented by a Cato Institute review of obtained official documents, among other sources, over 80 percent of fentanyl is smuggled by U.S. citizens, and most of the rest by non-citizens with border-crossing credentials who are not migrants.
The segment ended with CBS moderator Margaret Brennan fact-checking Vance’s claim that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are not legally in the United States (nearly all have documentation, mainly humanitarian parole or Temporary Protected Status). “The rules were that you guys were going to fact-check,” Vance complained; the border-migration discussion ended when moderators muted the candidates’ microphones.
Washington Post columnist Philip Bump rebutted claims, including those made by Vance in the debate, that migrants are contributing to crime, fentanyl smuggling, and higher U.S. housing costs. PolitiFact, the Associated Press, and Melvis Acosta at Mother Jones addressed other spurious claims made in the debate, including the allegation about the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) having “effectively lost” 320,000 children.
Mexican Army soldiers chased, then fired on, a pickup truck carrying 33 migrants on the evening of October 1, killing 6 of them and wounding 12. The incident occurred on the Pacific coastal highway in Huixtla, Chiapas, about 50 miles from Mexico’s border with Guatemala.
Mexico’s Defense Secretariat (SEDENA) issued a statement claiming that the migrants’ truck “evaded military personnel,” who suspected it of ties to organized crime, which has become much more active in the state of Chiapas over the past year. That alone does not justify the use of lethal force; the SEDENA statement contended that soldiers fired at the truck after hearing “detonations.”
The deceased victims were reportedly from Nepal, Egypt, and Pakistan. Other migrants aboard the vehicle, including some of the wounded, came from Cuba, India, and what SEDENA called “Arab nationalities.” The Foreign Ministry of Peru claimed that one of the six fatalities was a Peruvian citizen.
SEDENA stated that the two soldiers who fired their weapons are removed from their posts, and that both the civilian and military justice systems’ prosecutors are investigating. The incident heightens concerns about the Mexican government’s expanding placement of combat-trained soldiers in internal law-enforcement roles.
“People in mobility are exposed to great risks during their journey, and that is why it is essential to have legal means of access, transit, and integration to avoid tragedies like this,” read a tweet from UNHCR.
