Low migrant arrest figures contradict Trump's border rhetoric

Migrant apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border reached a new low of the Biden administration in November, preliminary data show, largely due to an ongoing aggressive effort in Mexico to slow migrants’ northward progress.

U.S. Border Patrol agents recorded 46,700 migrant arrests between ports of entry in November, down 17% from October, according to preliminary numbers reported by the Associated Press.

The November encounters data reflects a steady, steep decline from last year’s highs, and an 80% reduction in encounters compared with the 250,000 in the month of December 2023.

Experts say that’s due to a combination of Mexico’s heightened enforcement, at the behest of Biden administration leaders, as well as Biden’s controversial June order restricting asylum access. Immigrant rights advocates call the order an illegal violation of the right to seek asylum under U.S. and international law.

In the Tucson sector, there were an estimated 7,450 migrant apprehensions in November, a 35% drop from October, according to a tally of Tucson sector chief Sean McGoffin’s weekly reports on X, formerly Twitter.

The reality at, and south of, the U.S.-Mexico border conflicts with President-elect Donald Trump’s claim that migrants are “pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before” in a Nov. 25 post on his social media site, Truth Social. In the post, he promised 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada for not sufficiently reducing the flow of migrants and drugs into the U.S.

“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” Trump wrote in the post.

The misleading characterization from Trump has prompted pushback from immigration experts, as well as Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum.

“The starting point of these posts online is fictional,” said Stephanie Brewer, director for Mexico at the Washington Office on Latin America, or WOLA, a human-rights research and advocacy group. “This is an example that reminds us that the starting point to any kind of effective action, to any policy solution, needs to be facts, needs to be reality and needs to be centered on the people affected.”

Mexico’s enforcement efforts have led to rampant human rights abuses against vulnerable migrants traveling through the country, including widespread kidnapping, assaults and extortion by organized crime groups and Mexican authorities alike, researchers and advocates say.

Mexico has set up highway roadblocks and accelerated a program of detaining and busing migrants to the south of the country, where many simply begin their journey again, Brewer said.

“Right now, the reasons that border arrival numbers are down so much are reasons that should not be celebrated,” Brewer said. “They are reflections of policies that are not sustainable. They’re not policies that actually manage or address regional migration in any constructive way.”

Mexican immigration authorities are now logging more migrant encounters each month than the U.S., said Ariel Ruiz Soto, senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, a migration-policy think-tank. With limited shelter and detention capacity, Mexico’s current enforcement program is not sustainable, he said.

In August, Mexican immigration authorities encountered 97,000 migrants, while in the U.S., border agents encountered 58,000 people who entered the U.S. between ports of entry, he said.

“Since May, Mexico has encountered more migrants in its territory than the U.S. has on its border with Mexico,” Ruiz Soto said. “Just because we see less people coming to the U.S.-Mexico border doesn’t mean there are less people coming towards the U.S. ... The Mexicans are doing today significantly more than they were under the Trump administration, and with a fraction of the funding and capacity of U.S. authorities.”

That includes using the military to deter people from reaching the U.S.-Mexico border, the migrant-busing operation redirecting migrants to the south of Mexico, increasing checkpoints along traditional migration routes, agreeing to accept non-Mexican deportees from the U.S., and allowing the Biden administration’s CBP One application to function across the country, Ruiz Soto said.

A Trump transition team spokeswoman did not directly answer emailed questions from the Arizona Daily Star about the low migrant-arrest figures and what more Mexico should do to slow migration.

“President Trump was given a mandate by the American people to stop the invasion of illegal immigrants, secure the border, and deport dangerous criminals and terrorists that make our communities less safe. He will deliver,” spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement.

Mexican president’s response

In a strongly worded response to Trump’s tariff threats, Mexican president Sheinbaum emphasized that due to Mexico’s enforcement, migrant caravans are no longer reaching the border and migrant arrivals at the U.S. border have plummeted. She said collaboration, not a trade war, was the best way to tackle the issues of migration and drug trafficking.

She also blamed U.S. drug consumers for the high demand for fentanyl and the flow of high-powered weapons from the U.S. for escalating violence in Mexico.

“Seventy percent of the illegal weapons seized from criminals in Mexico come from your country,” Sheinbaum said, reading from her letter to Trump in a Nov. 26 press conference. “We do not produce the weapons. We do not consume synthetic drugs. The deaths from crimes responding to the demand for drugs in your country, unfortunately, falls on us.”

She said the countries must work together to find a new model to address U.S. labor needs and the root causes compelling many to leave their homes out of necessity.

“If a percentage of what the United States spends on war were dedicated to peace-building and development, that would address the underlying causes of migration,” she said.

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A day later, Sheinbaum also pushed back against Trump’s characterization of the two leaders’ Nov. 27 phone call, in which Trump claimed Sheinbaum promised to “close the border.” Sheinbaum disputed the claim, saying she’d explained to Trump what Mexico has been doing to stem migration to the U.S. border.

“We reiterate that Mexico’s position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples,” she said in a Nov. 27 post on X.

Sheinbaum may also face pressure from her constituents in Mexico, where frustration is rising with large numbers of migrants, and the prospect of receiving more deportations from the U.S. under Trump, experts say.

Currently, Mexico has an agreement with the Biden administration to accept deported people originally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, countries to which the U.S. struggles to deport people directly.

But Mexico’s cooperation in this respect might be changing. In a Thursday press conference, Sheinbaum indicated Mexico will try to avoid receiving non-Mexicans deported under Trump’s promised mass deportation campaign.

“We hope to reach an agreement with the Trump administration so that, in case these deportations happen, they send people from other countries directly to their countries of origin,” she said.

Ruiz Soto said Mexico will likely continue to cooperate with the U.S. under most scenarios, due to the countries’ linked geography, economies and history.

“No matter what, Mexico is an indispensable partner in managing regional migration to the U.S.,” he said. Points of negotiation will likely center over Mexico’s willingness to receive deportations of non-Mexican nationals, and whether the U.S. should provide assistance or supplies to Mexico as it grapples with its heightened enforcement campaign, he said.

Enforcement called short-sighted

Immigrant rights advocates say long-term solutions to address the reality of a global surge in migration must include a scaled-up asylum system and increased resources at U.S. ports of entry to process asylum seekers’ requests in an orderly, humane way.

Otherwise, desperate people will continue trying to reach the U.S. border any way they can, said human rights advocate and immigration expert Ari Sawyer, a Mexico City-based consultant for Refugees International.

Sheinbaum could break from her predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, by resisting U.S. pressure to carry out inhumane, short-sighted enforcement strategies that harm vulnerable people, Sawyer said.

With its migrant-busing program, Mexican authorities “are engaging in this policy of exhaustion on behalf of the United States,” Sawyer said.

While researching in southern Mexico in September, Sawyer and fellow researchers encountered exhausted families who had been repeatedly detained and taken by bus to Tabasco, Mexico, where there are few resources for them.

“What you started to see was a huge build-up of asylum seekers in Mexico, and rising animosity among local Mexican populations who are already struggling with violent crime and who are watching violent crime increase as cartels are getting rich off of kidnapping,” Sawyer said.

Immigration crackdowns also push people to travel via riskier routes to avoid detention, or to hire human smugglers to shepherd them through the country, Brewer said.

Those rounded up often include people waiting for an appointment through Biden’s CBP One application, which the administration has said is the appropriate way for migrants to enter the U.S. to request asylum.

Migrants report waiting eight months or more, in dangerous conditions, to secure an appointment through the app, which requires daily access to the internet. Those with CBP One appointments are increasingly targeted by criminals who exploit “the urgency people feel when they finally get a CBP One appointment to extort them for even more money,” Sawyer said.

The incoming Trump administration has promised to end the CBP One program, and other legal mechanisms the Biden administration has set up to encourage people to cross the border through regular processes at ports of entry, rather than between ports of entry where many surrender to border agents.

Brewer said cutting those legal pathways to enter the U.S. and counting on Mexico to “indefinitely host” migrants south of the U.S. border is “not a realistic solution.”

“What is the plan here? If you’re not providing a solution to the people in movement, you will not solve the problem,” Brewer said. “They will not stop coming, no matter how cruel U.S. policy has been or becomes. People who are driven from their homes will not stop trying to seek safety for their families.”

Before leaving office, Biden should increase the relatively small number of CBP One app appointments available, and ensure that those currently waiting for an appointment get one quickly, as Trump is unlikely to honor any appointments assigned by the app, Sawyer said.

In Mexico, Sheinbaum could also expand the capacity of Mexico’s so-called “safe mobility corridor,” aimed at helping migrants with CBP One appointments safely reach the border. Sawyer’s research found the effort had served only 1,300 people in its first six weeks of operation.

“Biden has left a lot of people very vulnerable in Mexico,” Sawyer said. “Biden created this monster of a system. He should undo it before Trump gets into office.”