BORDER ISSUES

Trump is right: Illegal immigration is down, but will it last?

Rafael Carranza Daniel Gonzalez
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Trump administration is taking credit for a decline in border crossings.

MEXICALI, Mexico — Altagracia Tamayo Madueno runs two migrant shelters in this border city near Calexico, California.

That has given her a ground-level view of immigration for more than 20 years. In recent months, Tamayo has seen a significant shift: The number of migrants arriving in Mexicali each day from other parts of Mexico and Central America has dropped sharply.

Before January, Tamayo estimated 300 or so migrants arrived daily. Now maybe 40 arrive each day, she said, “no more than 70.”

“Since the hour that President Trump took office, a lot of people no longer want to take the risk” of being caught, Tomayo added.

That echoes a narrative the Trump administration has pushed since early March, when Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly reported a decline in the apprehensions of migrants entering the U.S. without authorization.

Border Patrol apprehensions are considered a reliable metric of migration. 

"Since President Trump took office on January 20, we have seen a dramatic drop in numbers," Kelly said in a statement at the time.

And the latest statistics show apprehensions at or near their lowest point since 2000, which the White House touts as a reflection of President Donald Trump's "commitment to securing our border."

It has created a rare moment of agreement between the Trump administration and some of his fiercest critics about the state of immigration.

But groups and individuals who work with migrants on the 1,900-mile-long border also say that while Trump's presidency has undeniably driven down the number of migrants trying to cross the border illegally, there are other reasons behind the decline — and there are signs the slump is only temporary.

A Trump effect?

Altagracia Tamayo Madueno, is the founder of Amigo Migrante Cobina, a non-profit that runs two migrant shelters in Mexicali, the capital city of the Mexican state of Baja California.

There is a perception among would-be border crossers that under Trump the United States has gotten much tougher on migrants caught crossing the border, said Tamayo, who founded the non-profit Amigo Migrante Cobina.

“The fear is that they will be thrown in jail, and people don’t want to lose their freedom,” she said.

Smugglers are already capitalizing on this belief. Some in the Mexicali area are now charging as much as $12,000 to $15,000 per migrant to help them cross the border illegally and then clandestinely transport them to Los Angeles.

Advocates report a similar situation from the twin border cities of Nogales in Arizona  Sonora to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas.

On a recent evening, 14 men sat on bunk beds or lay under wool blankets preparing to sleep at the San Juan Bosco Shelter in Nogales, Sonora. The shelter has enough beds to accommodate more than 100 men and women. But other than those occupied by the 14 men, the beds were empty.

And those menhad all recently been deported to Mexico after living illegally in the United States for years. None were migrants planning to cross into the U.S. for the first time.

The scene was a sharp contrast with December, when the same shelter was packed with 50 to 60 migrants who hoped to enter the U.S. before Trump took office.

Francisco Loureiro, who with his family has run the shelter since 1982, said he has seen a 75 to 80 percent drop in migrants at the shelter since January. He attributed the decrease to Trump's hard-line rhetoric on immigration, which has spread fear among would-be migrants.

Finding fewer bodies

Nowhere has the drop in migrant crossings been more evident than in Texas' Rio Grande Valley. 

In 2014, adults, children and entire families fleeing violence in Central America streamed into the area. The valley easily surpassed the Arizona desert as the busiest point for illegal migration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

That's still the case, but the numbers are far smaller. In November 2016, a new surge in migrants resulted in more than 24,000 apprehensions in the Rio Grande Valley. In April, agents recorded only 3,900 apprehensions.

Advocates point to a telling decline in traffic at the Sacred Heart Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, one of the first places many migrants stop in the U.S. to rest, shower, and eat before continuing their journey. The shelter at the start of the year had some 100 visitors daily; now that number is in the single digits.

Eddie Canales, who leads the South Texas Human Rights Center, a humanitarian group focused on immigration issues, said migration has slowed "to a crawl." 

The group patrols the rugged brush country north of the border, where migrants who have made it into the U.S. try to evade Border Patrol checkpoints on major highways. Frequently they get lost, and sometimes die.

"One indication that migration is down is the fact that the recovery of bodies is nonexistent," he said. "What has been recorded is skeletal remains. That means that they've been out here a little longer, not fresh bodies."

Enforcement in Mexico

Canales and members of other Rio Grande Valley rights groups agree Trump's presidency has been a deterrent for would-be migrants. 

But they said enforcement in Mexico, especially on its southern border with Guatemala, also appears to have slowed the flow of people reaching the U.S.

"They must be stopped on the southern side of Mexico," said Mike Seifert of the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voices Network, a coalition of community and advocacy groups.

Seifert said he has been in touch with activists in Mexico who monitor shelters where migrants stop on their way north.

"The typical crowding that they have had before January and February went away," he said. "The big suspicion is something is happening south of the Guatemalan border (with Mexico)."

Benjamin Campista works at Angeles Sin Fronteras, a former hotel in the center of Mexicali that has been converted into a migrant shelter with 55 rooms.

Benjamin Campista works at Angeles Sin Fronteras, a former hotel in Mexicali that has been converted into a migrant shelter. He thinks fewer migrants are coming because criminal organizations have taken control of the freight trains that Central American migrants frequently use to travel through Mexico to the U.S. border.

“They charge people like $1,000 to get from Chiapas to Mexicali” and along the way migrants “get attacked and (the criminal organizations) steal their money,” he said.

Once they reach the border, those who can’t afford the rising cost of a smuggler to help them cross into the U.S. are forced by the criminal organizations to carry drugs, he said.

“You have to work for them. You have to take marijuana in a backpack if you want to get across. If you don’t do that, they kill you,” he said.

A short-lived decline?

Sergio Guzman Vazquez, 51, repairs on old bicycle wheel in the courtyard of La Posada del Migrante, a shelter for deported migrants in Mexicali. He was deported in May 2016 from Los Angeles after he was charged with a felony DUI. He said he does not intend to try to cross back into the United States with President Donald Trump in the White House. "I am nervous about crossing," he said. "I am afraid I could get shot."

Migrant-rights groups and advocates wonder how long the decline will last.

Traditionally, the summer months are among the busiest for migrant crossings. And some expect the novelty of Trump's presidency and the fear it has instilled in migrants will soon wear off.

Canales said he's already seen signs of a shift in the Rio Grande Valley.

"I’m getting more calls from families from Mexico of people that are missing," he said. "It’s an indication of an increased flow compared to a month ago, not getting any calls, maybe one call a week or maybe less. Now this past week, I’ve gotten almost 10 calls."

Farther up the Rio Grande, Giovanni Bizzotto, director of a migrant shelter in Nuevo Laredo — across from its twin city of Laredo, Texas — said he had also noticed an uptick in arrivals in recent weeks.

"We received about 50 Central American people last month. The first few months (of the year) were slow," he said. "Last week we had 30 to 40."

Bizzotto said migrants at his shelter continue to talk about the violence they're fleeing in their home countries. As a result, he expects the numbers to again climb in the coming weeks, as they have in previous years.

View from the migrant trail

For migrants like Juan Solis, even Trump's promised crackdown isn't enough to keep him away.

On a recent evening, the 25-year-old from El Salvador stood outside a soup kitchen in the center of Mexicali that offers free meals to migrants and the homeless, having arrived the night before.

Just getting to this point required a huge struggle. Like thousands before him, Solis left El Salvador on Sept. 26, fleeing gangs who threatened to kill him unless he paid an extortion fee from the $260 a month he earned driving a van for a local business.

Solis described how he was chased off a freight train by Mexican immigration officials in Chiapas, held hostage by street criminals in Reynosa, and scammed by a woman in Sonoyta, a border city across from Lukeville, Arizona.

He thought the woman was being kind when she offered a place to live and a chance to earn money cooking for other migrants she had taken in. 

Instead, she turned out to work for the cartels. The cartels “wanted me to work as a mule carrying marijuana in backpacks,” he said. “The backpacks weighed 25 kilos” — about 55 pounds.

When Solis refused, “they beat me,” he said.

He pulled a blue cellphone from his pocket and turned it on, revealing a photo of his 4-year-old son in El Salvador. His plan was to cross the border illegally, and, once in the United States, find a job and send money back to his wife and son.

Solis said he has a friend in Las Vegas. But with no money and no papers, he said he had no idea how he was going to pay smugglers to get into the U.S.

The last time he spoke with his wife and son was in December.

“They have no idea whether I am dead or alive,” he said.

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