About 2,000 migrants in Southern Mexico stepped off on their long journey to the United States on Sunday with many thousands more soon to join them.
The migrants had been unable to find work in Southern Mexico because other migrants got there first. That and a slowdown in asylum appointments via the ICE app CPB One have spurred many to take action.
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WATCH: A group of about 2,000 migrants leaves Mexico’s southern border on Sunday hoping to reach the country’s north and ultimately the United States weeks before the U.S. presidential election, in which immigration has been a key issue: Read more: https://t.co/MgWd4qcdEc pic.twitter.com/Ti7hv6pJIh
— Border Report (@BorderReportcom) October 21, 2024
“The situation in my country is very bad, the president doesn’t do anything for us. We spent a week by the border, but getting documents takes time,” said Honduran Roberto Domínguez, 48. “The documents we get are only for us to be in Tapachula and we cannot leave the city.”
“That is what makes us fearful. They say this could change because they could both close the CBP One appointment and all the services that are helping migrants,” said Venezuelan Joel Zambrano.
Biden has been dragged kicking and screaming into a stronger border protection posture. Not surprisingly, it’s working. But it won’t stop the asylum seekers who think that if they suffer a hangnail under their home government, they’re eligible for asylum.
Ted Cruz is right.
Absolutely everyone—everyone in the world—knows that the Biden-Harris administration means an open border and a Trump administration means an end to illegal immigration.https://t.co/F5JiGjnea9
— Senator Ted Cruz (@SenTedCruz) October 22, 2024
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Last month, the Biden administration announced new regulations to cement the partial asylum ban it enacted in June at the southern U.S. border, in a move that will likely extend the strict immigration policy indefinitely, CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez reported. Administration officials have cited the asylum restrictions as the primary reason for the drop in illegal crossings by migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border this year.
Many migrants who came to the U.S. through a sponsorship program designed to reduce illegal border crossings in recent years are set to lose their legal statuses by the end of October, since the Biden administration decided not to extend their coverage.
Under the program, about 214,000 Haitians, 117,000 Venezuelans, 111,000 Cubans and 96,000 Nicaraguans have so far come to the U.S. to live and work legally for two years, per an immigration law known as parole. The first group set to begin losing their parole status this month are Venezuelans, who started arriving in the U.S. through the program in October 2022.
American voters have a notoriously short memory. Are Republicans doing enough to keep the border disaster from earlier this year front and center in front of the voters? I don’t think so.
Border Patrol’s tally of migrant apprehensions in September is the lowest number recorded by the agency since August 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic and the travel restrictions countries enacted in response to it led to a sharp decrease in migration to the U.S. southern border. It’s also a 78% drop from a record high in December, when illegal border crossings soared to 250,000.
U.S. immigration officials processed another 48,000 migrants in September at legal border entry points, known as ports of entry, according to the internal federal data. Most of them secured appointments to enter the U.S. via a phone app the Biden administration has transformed into the main gateway into the American asylum system.
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Biden and Harris will find some way to hide these migrants until after election day. Either they won’t be allowed into the United States or will be waved through in the dead of night.
Either way, they’re not going to be allowed to become a factor in the election.