The U.S. and Mexico are cooperating on border policy at an “unprecedented level” ahead of the 2024 election as border encounters fall to their lowest levels since 2020, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Customs and Border Protection’s latest numbers show that agents reported nearly 84,000 southwestern land border encounters in June, a significant drop from the record 250,000 encounters reported in December 2023. June’s numbers are the lowest under President Joe Biden but are still above the monthly average under the Trump administration. The WSJ reported that unpublished CBP data shows that border encounters in July fell to 57,000, which would be the lowest level since 2020 if confirmed by the agency.
The recent decrease in border encounters along the U.S.-Mexico border is aided by heightened security in Mexico where authorities are preventing mass concentrations of migrants and sending migrants back to Mexico’s southern border if they’re caught traveling toward the U.S., according to the WSJ. Along with Mexico’s increased security, Biden — after claiming for months that he could not address illegal immigration without authorization from Congress — issued an executive order in early June seeking to cut down on unlawful migrants crossing the southern border.
“The moves mark an unprecedented level of cooperation between the U.S. and Mexico, both motivated by presidential elections this year, to bring down illegal border crossings in hopes of diverting attention away from the issue,” the WSJ reported.
As Americans still rank immigration as a top issue heading into 2024, the new statistics on illegal immigration could be convenient campaign fodder for Vice President Kamala Harris.
“This is just what the administration wanted. Not that Democrats are going to win on this issue, but that chaos at the border won’t be on the front pages anymore,” Andrew Selee, president of the nonpartisan Washington think tank Migration Policy Institute, told the WSJ.
National Border Patrol Council Executive Vice President John Anfinsen, however, said in late July that despite lower numbers being reported, the situation at the border was not improving.
“Instead of crossing illegally between the ports, asylum seekers, many of whom are only seeking to abuse the system, are now primarily showing up at ports of entry and airports,” he said.
Harris, who became the presumptive Democratic nominee after Biden dropped out last month, has been blasted by former President Donald Trump and Republicans for failing to address the massive numbers of migrants who have illegally entered the U.S. over the past three and a half years.
At the beginning of the Biden administration, the president tapped Harris to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration. More than five months after being sworn in as vice president, Harris visited the southern border in El Paso, Texas, but encounters continued to rise in the following months.
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A WSJ poll conducted at the end of last month showed that voters preferred Trump to Harris on immigration policy by 13 percentage points, 53% to 40%.
Mexican officials reportedly fear a second Trump term after the Republican nominee vowed to conduct mass deportations if he’s re-elected, an act that could dump hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants on Mexican soil. The Biden administration has also reportedly cooperated with requests from Mexico’s liberal government on the issue of illegal immigration.
Earlier this year, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador asked Biden to hold off on issuing an executive order addressing illegal immigration until after the country’s presidential election, a U.S. official told the WSJ. Mexico’s election, which was won by Obrador’s fellow liberal Claudia Sheinbaum, was held on June 2, and Biden issued his executive order on June 4.
