Donald Trump launched one of his first television ads on Tuesday aimed at the November elections. The Republican focuses his attacks on the border management of Kamala Harris and the Biden Administration. Images of the vice president dancing casually are interspersed with photographs of the massive crossings of immigrants at the border. “More than 10 million illegal crossings,” says the narrator. However, the most recent figures confirm that the heavy-handed approach that the White House has bet on to curb immigration is bearing fruit three months before the elections. Illegal crossings have fallen to their lowest level in almost four years.
The border is one of the most important points for Trump’s campaign. His vice presidential candidate, Senator JD Vance, will visit the border county of Cochise (Arizona) on Thursday to increase criticism against Harris, whom they consider a “failed immigration czar” for Biden due to the early responsibilities she had in 2021. “A Trump-Vance Administration will secure our border and initiate the largest deportation in American history,” the right-wing formula said in a statement.
The Tucson area in Arizona has been one of the busiest border sectors during July. The other has been San Diego, California. These routes have replaced, at least during this summer, the crossings that took place in the Rio Grande Valley area in Texas, which has been the preferred corridor for immigrants from Central America in recent years.
The presence of citizens from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras at the border has fallen by 34% since 2021, when an average of 58,000 people of these nationalities arrived in the United States each month. The Mexican government has been key in stopping these groups on their way north.
Preliminary numbers for July indicate that the current situation at the border looks much like it did during Donald Trump’s time in the White House. Apprehensions on the border have fallen by 30%, marking one of the lowest figures of Joe Biden’s presidency, as he has dealt with record numbers of illegal crossings during his term in office.
Border Patrol is expected to close July with about 57,000 arrests. This is a drop from the 83,500 apprehensions in June. This had been the lowest number recorded during the Democratic administration. The position will now be occupied by July, which becomes the lowest number documented since September 2020, when the health crisis slowed migration to the north. That month closed with 40,500 immigrants processed during what was still the Trump presidency.
This relief has begun to be felt in cities that received hundreds of immigrants sent by Republican governments, such as that of Texas. The office of Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, reported that demand has fallen in shelters that house new arrivals. The number of immigrants requesting a space fell in July to between 800 and 900 people per week. This is the lowest number since October 2022, New York authorities said on Tuesday.
The numbers are positive for the government in an election cycle in which the border has become a flank of attack from the right. Biden has received harsh criticism for how he has managed to stop the flow of migrants. The administration announced an executive order in early June that limits asylum requests processed on days when more than 2,500 daily crossings are exceeded.
The measure was rejected by progressive sectors, who claimed that Biden was imitating Trump’s draconian policies to contain migration. The order was taken to court by human rights organizations. The union that represents the government’s immigration agents joined the lawsuit on Monday that seeks to overturn the order.
The trend in crossings was already declining even before the measure was adopted by Washington. The order has accelerated the decline in the processing of immigrants, which reached an all-time high in December 2023 with 250,000 arrests. The Border Patrol processed 124,000 people during January 2024. The federal government estimates that arrests at the border have fallen by 55% since the decree went into effect.
The drop in numbers poses a paradox for the administration in an election year. According to the executive order, the administration must lift the limits on asylum when border apprehensions fall to 1,500 over a seven-day average. That figure could be reached soon if the downward trend continues. Currently, daily apprehensions are running at between 1,600 and 1,700. According to the AP, Customs and Border Protection officials are preparing for that scenario.
The Biden administration has not only focused on reducing crossings, but also on turning off the tap on fentanyl trafficking. The president signed a memorandum on Wednesday for different federal security agencies to share information and thus stop the entry of the powerful synthetic opioid that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of people in the United States. Authorities have seized 442 million doses of fentanyl in the first five months of 2024.
#Bidens #tough #approach #reduces #illegal #border #crossings #lowest #number #years