What's really behind the drop in border crossings?

(TND) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection released new figures this week showing the fewest April migrant encounters at the southern border in three years.

CBP reported 179,725 encounters along the southern border last month, down from 211,992 last April and 235,785 in April 2022.

There were 128,900 encounters between ports of entry along the southwest border, down 30% from last April, according to CBP.

The agency’s top official, Troy A. Miller, credited their enforcement efforts with curtailing the flow of migrants at the southern border.

This is coming off a record of nearly 302,000 southwest border encounters this past December.

Crossings have slowed from the December peak, to under 190,000 in each of the first four months of 2024.

But concerns remain high for many Americans coming off back-to-back years of nearly 2.5 million southwest border crossings – about five times more border crossings than a decade ago.

Miller touted CBP’s efforts in surging personnel to high-need parts of the border and in disrupting human smuggling networks.

“As a result of this increased enforcement, southwest border encounters have not increased, bucking previous trends,” Miller said in a news release. “We will remain vigilant to continually shifting migration patterns. We are still experiencing challenges along the borders and the nation’s immigration system is not appropriately resourced to handle them, so we continue to call on Congress to take action that would provide our personnel with additional resources and tools.”

Is Miller right? Have CBP’s enforcement efforts made a big impact so far this year?

“I don't buy into the idea that it's mainly CBP's actions that explain the difference between this year and last year,” said David Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.

Mexican enforcement is the real difference, he said.

Mexico is arresting an “enormous number of people” crossing through its land, Bier said Thursday.

Mexican authorities detained 360,000 migrants from other countries in just the first three months of the year, he said.

They’re detaining migrants and sending them back to the Guatemala border, Bier said.

And that’s slowed the pace of migrants making it to our border.

“You're putting 1,000 miles between them and the United States by doing that,” he said.

The stronger Mexican enforcement fulfills a long-held wish of U.S. officials. And it’s politically popular with the Mexican people, Bier said.

But Mexico is also playing ball with the U.S. on immigration enforcement as leverage in negotiations on issues like trade and energy, Bier said.

The Mexican crackdown started in December. Around the same time, the U.S. was seeing record levels of border crossings amid rumors that the U.S. was going to shut down its legal entry program.

“People panicked,” Bier said.

A lot of people crossed in December who wouldn't have otherwise.

A spike lends itself to a downturn naturally. That coincided with stronger Mexican enforcement to slow the flow of migrants early on so far this year.

“You sort of had a clearing out of the backlog,” Bier said. “And now we're kind of recreating the backlog again, with (the) Mexican enforcement actions, with people trying to see if they can still get in under (the) CBP One (mobile app). And so there are a lot of people now waiting in Mexico, you know, being arrested by Mexican authorities and being sent back.”

But he expects a breaking point will come eventually.

The next time there’s a rumor about shutting the border, Bier said he expects a lot of the people caught in various locations in Mexico are going to make a go of it all at once. And that’s likely to overwhelm Mexican and U.S. authorities.

“I certainly expect that will happen before the end of the year,” he said.

President Joe Biden, it seems, wants to look tougher on border security in an election cycle.

The Biden administration is now pushing for changes to speed up the rejection of some asylum claims.

“He's trying to show that the Biden administration is securing the border, is responding to popular concerns with the border, is responding to Democratic mayors in places in the north who are complaining about the impacts of migrants on their cities, and really trying to calm Democratic concerns as well as Republican concerns with immigration,” Kevin R. Johnson, an expert in immigration law and policy at UC Davis, told The National Desk last week.

The proposed rule would allow some asylum claim denials in a matter of days versus potentially years. It would apply to those denied a legal basis to remain in the United States based on risk to our national security or public safety.

Bier said Biden only has “marginal” ability to control the flow of migrants at the southern border. But that’s true of any administration, he said.

The strongest influence comes from the availability of jobs in the U.S. and the strength of the American economy.

“At the end of the day, regardless of their motivations for leaving their home country, which are diverse depending on where you're talking, if the jobs aren't here, then they can't move,” Bier said.

Even “a 50% chance of the American dream” is worth the risk for many migrants, he said.

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