A migratory avalanche on the border with Mexico complicates Joe Biden’s government

Migrations from the American South to the United States have reached unprecedented flood levels. Just last November 242 thousand people were arrested who were seeking asylum. Nearly 200,000 of them attempted to cross the border illegally.

The border police reported this in recent weeks approximately 10,000 crossings per day. If you look at the year between October 2022 and last September, the number is surprising: 2.4 million migrants were intercepted by land.

These arrivals, triggered by the economic crisis in the Global South exacerbated by the pandemic, put pressure on states and the US federal border police, a crisis that exposes Democrat Joe Biden’s administration to strong attacks from his Republican opponentsentering an election year.

Since last Tuesday, the railroad tracks at the Eagle Pass and El Paso bridges in Texas have been closed due to a “resurgence” of illegal migrant entries on freight trains.

At Eagle Pass, vehicular crossings have been suspended multiple times since the beginning of the month, as has a crossing point in Arizona and another in California. The Border Patrol says it will have to redeploy its staff to focus on intercepting and registering migrants.

Criticism at the White House

After accusing President Biden of “deliberate inaction” in the face of the situation, the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, signed a controversial law Monday that penalizes illegal income earners in his state. This declared supporter of Donald Trump, the tycoon favored to win the Republican nomination, symbolically signed this law in Brownsville, in front of a section of the border wall, an emblematic project of the former populist president.

The law creates a “criminal offense of illegally entering Texas from a foreign country,” punishable by a sentence of between six months and 20 years in prison for repeat offenses.

Even the governor of Arizona Katie Hobbs, despite being a Democrat, accused the White House of “refusing to do its job”, blaming it in particular for the closure of a border crossing in her state.

Hobbs announced on December 15 that he would send National Guard forces to the border. The size of the problem explains why Biden has decided to send his Foreign Minister, Antony Blinken, and the Minister of National Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, to Mexico in the next few days to analyze, together with the president of that country, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, ways to stop this massive flow, according to the White House.

On December 6, Biden said he was willing to make “major compromises” with Republicans call for a strong tightening of immigration policy in exchange for lifting the congressional block on aid to Ukraine vis-à-vis Russia.

The pressure on Joe Biden

The Democratic president’s situation is also delicate in front of his progressive electorate, who hopes that Biden will break with Trump’s openly xenophobic policy towards immigrants, especially those from Latin America who arrive fleeing poverty and violence.

In any case, the flow does not appear close to a reversal. Panama recently noted that since the beginning of the year, half a million people had crossed the dangerous Darien junglethat separates this country from Colombia, to reach the United States, doubling it in 2022.

Acting Customs and Border Control Commissioner Troy Miler called on the US Congress to approve more resources to “enhance border security and national security with historically high levels of migration.”

In November, this organization recorded more than 64,811 arrests of Mexican nationals, followed by Venezuelans, with 34,063 arrests, and Guatemalans, with 26,299. It found an increase in migration from Guatemala and a 16% decline in Venezuelan migrants.

Source: agencies