EAGLE PASS, Texas (AP) — Daniel Bermudez's family had fled Venezuela and was on their way to the U.S. to seek asylum when the freight train they were traveling on through Mexico was stopped by immigration officials.
His wife tried to explain that her family had permission to travel to the United States. Instead, they flew them to Mexico's southern border as part of a wave of enforcement actions that U.S. officials say have contributed to a sharp decline in illegal border crossings.
In addition to forcing migrants off trains, Mexico resumed flights and buses to the southern part of the country and began flying some home to Venezuela.
Even if the decline in illegal border crossings is temporary, it is good news for the White House. President Joe Biden's administration is locked in negotiations with Senate negotiators over asylum restrictions, and $110 billion in aid to Ukraine and Israel is at stake.
Bermudez said his wife was separated from her family when she spoke to authorities while picking up his stepchild and his stepchild's belongings. He wanted to run, but his wife said they shouldn't run because they had followed proper procedure and made an appointment with U.S. immigration authorities.
“I told her, ‘Don’t trust them. Let’s go into the undergrowth,” Bermudez said, adding that other migrants had fled. He remembered her telling him, “Why are they sending us back when we have an appointment?”
Last week, Bermudez, his stepchild and two other relatives waited for her at a shelter in the Mexican border town of Piedras Negras as she rode the bus back, hoping to make the date.
Mexican immigration authorities sent at least 22 flights from the U.S. border region to southern cities in the last 10 days of December, according to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data. Most came from Piedras Negras, which is across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.
Mexico also conducted two deportation flights to Venezuela with 329 migrants. The route was interrupted by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Mexico City on December 28 to address unprecedented crossings to the United States.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said a financial shortfall that led immigration authorities to halt deportations and other operations had been resolved. He didn't give any details.
According to U.S. authorities, the number of arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico into the U.S. fell to about 2,500 on Monday, compared with more than 10,000 on several days in December. John Modlin, sector chief in Tucson, Arizona, said the Border Patrol's busiest area saw a total of 13,800 apprehensions in the seven days ending Friday, down 29% from 19,400 two weeks earlier.
The decline prompted U.S. Customs and Border Protection to reopen the port of entry in Lukeville, Arizona, on Thursday after closing the most direct route from Phoenix to the nearest beaches for a month. The U.S. also restored operations at Eagle Pass and three other locations.
Merchants in Eagle Pass, a town of about 30,000 people, experienced a “major drop” in sales while a bridge was closed to car traffic so border officials could be withdrawn to help process migrants, Judge Ramsey English said Cantu from Maverick County.
“We survive pretty much anything that comes from the Mexican side,” he said.
Last month, CBP resumed cargo crossings in Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas, after a five-day closure that U.S. officials said was in response to up to 1,000 migrants traveling through Mexico on a single train before attempting to leave. to cross the border on foot.
In Piedras Negras, the Casa del Migrante housed around 200 migrants on Thursday, up from 1,500 recently.
Among them was 40-year-old Manuel Rodriguez, who said his family would miss their asylum application appointment scheduled through the U.S. government's CBP One app. He said the appointment was registered with his in-laws, who were deported to Venezuela after authorities boarded the bus they were traveling on.
“It was all in her name and she lost everything,” Rodriguez said.
Among the proposals being discussed by White House and Senate negotiators is a new expulsion authority that would deny the right to asylum if illegal border crossings reach a certain threshold. Such an authority would almost certainly depend on Mexico's willingness to take back non-Mexicans who enter the U.S. illegally, which it currently does on a limited basis.
Mexico's support was critical to ending Trump-era policies that forced 70,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. immigration court hearings and denied them the right to seek asylum during the COVID-19 pandemic .
Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., warned against overstating Mexico's role in the recent decline in traffic. Panama reported that fewer than 25,000 migrants marched through the Darién jungle in December, about half as many as in October and a sign that fewer people are leaving South America for the United States. Migration typically drops in December due to holidays and cold weather.
“The U.S. can lean on Mexico to provide short-term enforcement impact on migration at the border, but the long-term impact is not always clear,” Selee said.
___
Spagat reported from San Diego. Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed.