SAN DIEGO — Illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border are down more than 40 percent since December and have remained relatively stable through the first four months of 2024, bringing a modest reprieve for President Biden on an issue regarded as a liability to his reelection campaign.
In April, U.S. border agents have encountered about 130,000 migrants who entered illegally from Mexico, a level that is high by historical standards but lower than February and March, according to the latest U.S. enforcement data obtained by The Washington Post.
U.S. officials say a crackdown on migrants by the Mexican government is the biggest factor. Using military patrols and highway checkpoints, Mexican authorities have been intercepting roughly 8,000 U.S.-bound migrants per day, according to officials in both countries.
Mexico launched its campaign at the behest of U.S. officials after illegal crossings soared in December to nearly 250,000, an all-time high, further eroding Biden’s poll ratings on border security.
Former president Donald Trump, the likely Republican nominee for the November election, continues to criticize Biden’s immigration record at campaign rallies, but the relative calm along the border has eased some of the pressure on the president to announce harsher enforcement measures, which could anger some Democrats.
Crossings typically increase during spring when seasonal hiring picks up in the United States. The only other time this century that crossings declined during the springtime months was 2017, after Trump took office promising to deport millions, said Adam Isacson, a border security analyst who tracks monthly enforcement data at the Washington Office on Latin America, a D.C.-based advocacy group.
“This spring has been an anomaly,” Isacson said. “It’s gotten much, much harder for migrants to make it to the U.S. border.”
U.S. border officials say the next several weeks will be a key test, because May has often been a peak month for illegal entries. The number of migrants stopped by Mexican authorities in recent months far exceeds the number Mexico has deported, indicating there may be hundreds of thousands biding time until the crackdown fades.
“The real question is when does the dam burst in Mexico?” Isacson said.
Signs of a potential upswing are already evident in the San Diego area, where smugglers have been sending more and more groups of migrants from South America and Asia to cross through the mountains. In recent weeks, the San Diego sector of U.S. Customs and Border Protection has surpassed others in Arizona and Texas to become the busiest along the southern border for the first time since 1997.
The decline in crossings this spring has been pronounced in Texas, where illegal entries are down about 50 percent. Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has claimed that his state-run crackdown, Operation Lone Star, is redirecting smugglers to easier routes farther west. Biden officials point to other explanations, noting that the Mexican states opposite the Texas border are notorious for migrant killings and kidnappings.
Erin Waters, a spokeswoman for CBP, said in a statement that the agency “remains vigilant to continually shifting migration patterns and will continue to adjust operations as necessary.”
Some migrants from Colombia avoid the Mexican highway checkpoints by flying into the Tijuana airport from the Mexican resort city of Cancún, where they can travel as tourists. Ecuadorians fly to El Salvador and travel north from there, according to U.S. officials. Peruvian migrants have been flying to Tijuana, but the Mexican government has imposed new visa restrictions that take effect May 6 — one reason U.S. officials think more Peruvians may be attempting to cross the U.S. border now.
Mexican enforcement along the south side of the border remains spotty. At a steep mountain pass east of San Diego known as the Valley of the Moon, for its rugged, lunar terrain, smugglers driving vans and trucks drop migrants at a popular crossing point where the U.S. border wall ends. Border Patrol cameras monitor the groups as they hike down the mountain amid boulders and thorny cactuses to turn themselves in to U.S. agents, the first step in applying for U.S. humanitarian protection.
It’s less than a mile to a roadside meeting point along U.S. Interstate 8 where U.S. border agents have set up a makeshift waiting area with latrines and drinking water. Nonprofit and church groups arrive from San Diego to deliver food and firewood for the bonfires migrants build to stay warm. The Border Patrol transports families with children first, so single adult migrants may spend hours — sometimes days — waiting for a ride.
On a recent weekday morning, South American migrants shivered in the cold alongside smaller groups from China, India and Turkey. A few families with small children took refuge inside crude shelters and tents. Acrid smoke from bonfires burning plastic and garbage wafted through the camp.
Many of the nationalities arriving in the San Diego area are the same that crossed through the Yuma, Ariz., area in 2022 and early 2023. Smugglers have shifted to routes west, CBP officials say, due to shifting Mexican enforcement as well as cartel infighting.
Theresa Cardinal Brown, a migration expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, said month-to-month changes in border crossings are less important than what she described as a “paradigm shift” toward “the globalization of border crossings.”
More than 80 percent of the migrants encountered by U.S. authorities along the southern border in 2021 were from Mexico and Central America, CBP data shows. This year it’s dropped to 50 percent.
“There has been a fundamental change in who is coming, and how they’re coming,” Cardinal Brown said. That makes it harder for the U.S. immigration system to provide due process to asylum seekers and impose consequences — deportations — for those who don’t qualify for protection, she said.
The Biden administration has increasingly turned to Mexico for help. Mexico has agreed to take back up to 30,000 migrants per month — the first time it has agreed to accept significant numbers of non-Mexicans.
Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador discussed migration during an April 28 call, according to a joint statement released Monday. The two leaders discussed “how to effectively manage hemispheric migration” and “strengthen operational efficiency on our shared border,” the statement said.
U.S. officials say they have sent roughly 700,000 migrants back to their home countries or Mexico since the Biden administration lifted pandemic-era border controls nearly a year ago, the biggest deportation operation since 2011.
“CBP continues to work with our partners throughout the hemisphere, including the Government of Mexico, and around the world to disrupt the criminal organizations and transportation networks who take advantage of and profit from vulnerable migrants,” Waters’s statement said.
In December, when the budget of Mexico’s immigration agency’s ran low, tens of thousands of migrants rode freight trains to the U.S. border facing little resistance.
The chaotic mass crossings supercharged Republican attacks on Biden. CBP suspended entries at several U.S. ports of entry for rail and freight cargo, putting pressure on Mexico, and after a call with López Obrador, Biden sent a team led by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to Mexico City on Dec. 27.
Mexico remains sensitive to the perception that it’s carrying out the dirty work for the United States by stopping migrants, but its government has been more outspoken about the results of its crackdown.
In a statement to The Post, Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said the drop in illegal crossings along the U.S. southern border was the result of “coordinated actions by several governmental agencies taken by Mexico.”
The statement said Mexico will “provide alternatives to seekers of asylum and those looking for labor opportunities,” a reference to the record numbers of migrants applying to live and work in Mexico because they can’t reach the United States.
They may not stay long. The Biden administration is allowing nearly 1,500 migrants per day to make appointments to go to a U.S. border crossing using a government mobile app, CBP One, and start the process of applying for U.S. humanitarian protection. It can take several months to secure an appointment, and some of those taken into custody after crossing illegally said they lost patience with CBP One or feared for their safety in Mexico.
Central American nations, especially Guatemala and Honduras, are the focus of the Biden administration’s “Root Causes Strategy,” led by Vice President Harris. The number of Central Americans stopped at the U.S. border fell 30 percent from 2021 to 2023, according to Marcela Escobari, a Biden adviser working on the Root Causes plan.
Biden officials are watching three major upcoming elections in Latin America that could upend what they recognize as fragile gains in their border management efforts. Mexico will elect a new president on June 2. Polls show López Obrador protégé and former Mexico City mayor Claudia Sheinbaum with a comfortable lead. U.S. officials worry privately that Mexican enforcement could wane during the country’s presidential transition.
Then there are the elections Venezuela scheduled for July 28. Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left their homeland since authoritarian ruler Nicolás Maduro replaced the late Hugo Chávez in 2013, and about 750,000 Venezuelans have reached the United States over the past three years, a record. U.S. officials believe many more Venezuelans could opt to leave if Maduro stays in power.
The U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5 is another concern. CBP officials saw a sharp increase in illegal crossings in late 2016 when smugglers pushed migrants to make haste for the U.S. border, urging them to cross ahead of a Trump crackdown.
Maria Sacchetti in Washington contributed to this report.
