The single adult migrant population continues a steady increase, but may be outpaced by family members.
Single adults are those who most often try to avoid capture. Many will perish in the desert as summer heat increases. Press coverage of this will continue to be spotty.
As Mexico’s capacity to absorb expelled families is exceeded, parents/guardians will realize they stand a decent chance of avoiding expulsion, and will stop sending children across alone. The unaccompanied child population will stabilize, maybe decrease.
Family members’ numbers will rival or exceed what we saw in 2019. US pressure on Mexico to take more expelled Central American families will make only a modest difference.
As smuggling networks continue to benefit from corruption, Mexico’s "crackdowns" won't do much to prevent Border Patrol agents from tweeting daily photos of 100+ -person apprehensions, mostly members of families.
Reports of large numbers of family members released to seek asylum within the United States will spur right-wing calls to revive “Remain in Mexico.” But we should resist short-term fixes—especially cruel ones—since 8 years of data show they don’t reduce child/family migration.
Instead, the conversation must shift to how we adjust our asylum, processing, and alternatives-to-detention. It’s been 8 years since the profile of migrants at the border changed. Our laws say what to do, but we have the same exact backlogs and bottlenecks that we did in 2014.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
The Biden administration continues to expel single adults at almost exactly the same rate as the Trump administration did. And we can assume that many/most of those who aren't expelled ended up in ICE detention.
“The Biden administration is scrambling to control the biggest surge in 20 years, with the nation on pace for as many as 2m migrants,” it reads.
But most are expelled under the Title 42 pandemic policy. Here’s how the “Biden Surge™️” looks when you remove expelled migrants:
Is “use the coronavirus crisis to buy time” a euphemism for “keep expelling unaccompanied children?”
Not doing that has been the only actual policy change at the border so far. The administration only had a couple of weeks to prepare for the consequences of that humane choice.
1/3 The Washington Post reports tonight on the tragic outcome of taking in migrants without the infrastructure necessary to process and place them humanely.
2/3 At the same time, the New York Times reports tonight on the tragic outcome of _expelling_ migrants due to the lack of infrastructure necessary to process them and consider their protection claims.
3/3 Common thread here is the US's severe lack of infrastructure for protection-seeking migration. 58 days in, can’t fault the Biden administration for that. But it’s their problem now and—sorry for war analogy—we need a blitz of processing, shelters, alternatives to detention.
Let's post a bunch of migration data using CBP and Mexico government numbers.
With 800,000+ apprehended in 11 months, this is the largest apprehensions total since 2007. But unlike 2007, 2 out of 3 are children and parents. In fact, single adults are still trending down. (1/9)
Trump's June tariff threat caused Mexico to increase its own apprehensions, leading to a drop in US apprehensions at the border. But we've seen this before: there were drops after crackdowns and disruptions in 2014 and 2017, and migration recovered after a few months. (2/9)
The crackdown has further increased demand on Mexico's overwhelmed, underfunded asylum system. (3/9)
1/7 Thanks to the White House for publishing the border security "talking-points-memo" that it sent to Congress today, complete with a PowerPoint presentation.
2/7 The statistics on drugs at the border are alarming. But the White House neglects to mention that most are seized at ports of entry, not the spaces between them where a wall might be built.
3/7 These numbers on criminal, gang, or terrorist apprehensions at the border raise more questions than they answer.