Feds cheer slowing migration rates, but 'the cost is human lives,' advocates say

Migrant apprehensions in the Tucson sector have plummeted recently, with border agents now making an average of 400 migrant arrests daily, compared to 1,800 per day in early 2024, the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector Deputy Chief Justin De La Torre said Friday.

It’s also a significant drop from the 1,050 arrests per day at the end of May, just before the implementation of the Biden administration’s June 4 executive order dramatically limiting asylum access for migrants entering the U.S. outside of officials ports of entry.

De La Torre attributed the decline to the new asylum policy, as well as collaborations with other countries, including Mexico, which has aggressively stepped up efforts to slow migrants’ progress to the U.S.-Mexico border since December.

“It is working, in the sense that we have been able to discourage more people from hiring the cartel to come to the country illegally,” he said.

The decrease is likely also due to annual reductions in migration during hot summer months, and immigration experts say any major border-policy reform usually prompts migrants, and human smugglers, to take a “wait-and-see” approach.

Biden’s asylum restrictions take effect when seven-day average migrant arrests exceed 2,500 border-wide. Even with the recent slowdown, agents are still arresting about 2,700 migrants per week in the Tucson sector alone.

“It’s much more manageable than what we were seeing in December,” when CBP recorded 2,800 average daily arrests, De La Torre said. “That flow of people placed a considerable strain on our ability to patrol and detect threats that are trying to get into the country, whether it be drug smuggling or human smuggling.”

With fewer migrants turning themselves in to border agents at the border wall, agents are now catching more of those who were trying to evade detection, and have also been able to respond to more distress calls, he said.

Only about 70 people a day are successfully evading border agents these days, compared to 200 a day in busier times, De La Torre said.

“It does put us on a better footing for both the humanitarian side of being able to rescue people and being able to detect the smuggling events,” he said.

While federal officials cheer the impacts of the new asylum restrictions, human rights advocates say there are real, and tragic, costs to that “success.”

“The cost is human lives,” said Pedro De Velasco, director of education and advocacy for binational migrant-aid nonprofit Kino Border Initiative.

Advocates say Biden’s executive order is causing vulnerable people with potentially credible asylum claims to be returned to dangerous or life-threatening situations, without having a chance to make their case for asylum.

While not everyone who expresses fear should be guaranteed asylum, their claims should all be heard, De Velasco said.

Advocates also worry the restrictions will compel more migrants to try their luck entering the U.S. through more remote and dangerous parts of the desert, rather than turn themselves into border agents to request asylum.

“As we have witnessed this for years, these deterrence policies do not work, and it’s only going to cost human lives,” De Velasco said.

Deportations to Sonora through the Nogales port of entry have slowed since the executive order took effect, dropping from 400 returns daily in early June, to between 120 and 150 in recent days, De Velasco said.

In the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, migrants deported under the executive order have been returned to one of four Sonoran cities: Nogales, Naco, Agua Prieta and Sonoyta, across the border from Lukeville.

But deportations to Sonoyta stopped this month, in response to Mexico’s concerns about the lack of immigration facilities there, a CBP official said Friday, speaking on background.

Guatemalans and Mexicans are the primary nationalities being deported from the Tucson sector, but Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans are also eligible for returns, the official said. Migrants of other nationalities, including Colombians, have been transferred to Texas, where deportation flights are underway to various countries, the official said.

Human rights groups, including the ACLU, are suing the Biden administration over what they say is the illegal denial of the right to request asylum once on U.S. soil, which is legal under U.S. law, regardless of how one entered the country.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection hopes the restrictions on asylum will encourage more to use regular pathways to request asylum, such as the CBP One smart phone application, which processes 1,450 people per day, border-wide, De La Torre said.

Advocates say the app is impossible for many to use, and can take eight months or more of daily checking, requiring consistent access to WiFi, to secure an appointment at a port of entry.

De La Torre said most migrants entering the U.S. outside official ports of entry have hired human smugglers, at an average cost of $10,000 per person.

“It’s imperative, just from a law enforcement perspective, that we discourage that behavior,” he said. “We do not want people placing their lives into the hands of the criminal organizations.”

Fear claims ignored, migrants say

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Biden’s executive order provides some exceptions to restrictions, including for migrants who proactively express a fear of return to their country. They are supposed to still get a credible-fear screening, albeit at a higher standard, with an asylum officer. Previously border agents were supposed to ask migrants if they feared return.

Advocates say putting the onus on traumatized migrants to speak up, despite language barriers and reports of intimidation from agents, makes it too easy for border agents to disregard possible fear claims and proceed with deportations.

But even migrants who have managed to express their fear, or request asylum, report being ignored by border agents, or told incorrectly that asylum no longer exists.

That’s based on direct accounts from recently deported migrants in Nogales, Sonora — reported by the Arizona Daily Star and other news outlets — as well as reports from immigrant-and human-rights groups on the ground in Mexico.

Department of Homeland Security officials, including DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, have dismissed those concerns, saying migrants simply aren’t requesting fear interviews as much under the new rule.

“Fewer people are manifesting fear at this time, and that has to do with the rule that has been implemented,” which imposes a much higher threshold to be eligible for asylum, De La Torre said.

Most are being found ineligible when they do request asylum and are screened, he said.

“The word gets out pretty quickly,” De La Torre said. “I think people are finding that this is not the route you should be choosing to come to the country, which is a really good situation for both the migrants, and for the security of our country.”

After being pressed by reporters on Friday, De La Torre acknowledged hearing reports of border agents’ failure to comply with exceptions for migrants who affirmatively express fear or request asylum. But he said he hasn’t received details on any specific cases.

“What you’re suggesting is basically an allegation that we are not doing what we’re charged to do,” he said. “If that’s happening, that needs to be reported through a certain procedure so that it can be investigated. And we will investigate it and ensure that we are adhering to those policies.”

De La Torre said migrants have the option to file a complaint through CBP’s website regarding allegations of wrongdoing.

But De Velasco of Kino Border Initiative — which routinely files complaints on behalf of migrants in Nogales, Sonora — said that process takes months, or even years, and the response rarely prompts change or disciplinary action.

When a response finally arrives from DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, or CRCL, it usually issues a boilerplate statement, saying the concerns have been logged in a database so the agency can look for patterns of wrongdoing, De Velasco said. The message ends the same way, he said.

“It says, ‘CRCL will take no further action on the information you provided at this time,’ and that’s it,” he said.

Nevertheless, Kino Border Initiative has submitted complaints recently about agents’ failure to refer migrants for credible-fear interviews, but the widespread reports of those failures should be enough for CBP to take quick action on the problem, De Velasco said.

In the past two weeks alone, more than 100 deported migrants told Kino Border Initiative staff their fear claims were ignored by agents.

“If DHS claims they are indeed channeling people seeking asylum to credible-fear interviews, why don’t they issue clear guidelines for their agents in the field, reiterating that if someone manifests or expresses a fear of return to their country or country of removal, expresses a fear of persecution or torture, or an intention to apply for asylum, they shouldn’t be deported without (a credible-fear interview)?” he said.

De La Torre said border agents have received updated training on how to recognize fear claims under the new rule, including physical manifestations of fear, such as bruising or injuries, and that migrants who express fear are being referred to credible-fear interviews “daily.”

Migrants pushed to remote areas

Advocates also worry the asylum restrictions will prompt migrants — who are increasingly families with young children — to evade border agents, and instead travel through more remote and dangerous areas of the Southern Arizona desert.

Humane Borders’ migrant-death mapping project, in partnership with the Pima County Medical Examiners’ Office, reported 14 sets of migrant remains recovered in June in the Southern Arizona borderlands.

Among the latest examples: On June 26, border agents found the bodies of three Mexican migrants who died of environmental heat exposure near Ajo, after other members of their group activated a rescue beacon to ask for help, according to a CBP news release.

De La Torre said so far, Border Patrol has not seen an increase in people seeking to evade detection, “but we do anticipate that the criminal organizations will adjust and will adapt.”

De Velasco agreed that organized crime groups will likely change their tactics in light of the new restrictions and start channeling migrants away from border agents, regardless of the danger.

“They’ve found out that exploiting people’s desperation is a very profitable business, and they’ll continue doing it,” he said. “So I’m afraid they probably will assess the new reality and consider crossing people through the desert, or in other regions through the river, further risking their lives.”