Takeaways from an AP and Texas Tribune report on 24 hours along the US-Mexico border

The Texas Tribune and The Associated Press spent 24 hours in five cities on Texas’ border with Mexico to measure the impact of a dramatic drop in migrant crossings.

In Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, no one was camping where, just a few months earlier, hundreds of asylum-seeking families waited for an opening to crawl through razor wire.

In McAllen, Border Patrol agents scanned fields for five hours without encountering a single migrant.

But conditions on the border often shift more rapidly than political rhetoric, and no one would have known how quiet it was listening that night to Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump at campaign rallies.

Here are key points about what the AP and Tribune observed:

Illegal crossings are way down

Arrests for illegal crossings fell nearly 80% across the southern border from December to July as well as in the Border Patrol’s five Texas-based sectors. More enforcement by Mexican authorities within their own borders and new U.S. asylum restrictions the Biden administration launched in June are widely considered the main drivers, along with the typical lull that happens during the heat of summer.

As midnight neared on Aug. 8, no one was camped on the silent Mexican banks of the Rio Grande separating El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico. A few months earlier, hundreds of asylum-seeking families, including crying toddlers, waited for an opening to crawl through razor wire that Texas authorities planted on the U.S. side.

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The week before, the Border Patrol was releasing an average of less than 200 migrants a day in El Paso, down from a daily average of nearly 1,000 in December. Migrants were no longer sleeping overnight in large numbers on downtown streets.

In Eagle Pass, which has been one of the focal points of Texas’ unprecedented border security push, large groups of migrants that were commonplace were rarely seen on the riverbanks. In McAllen, two Border Patrol agents scanned fields near the Rio Grande for nearly five hours without encountering a single migrant.

Cross-border commerce is up from COVID lows

Nearly 3 million trucks entered the United States through Laredo, Texas, last year, roughly triple the number in 1996. Commercial traffic at the nation’s busiest cargo crossing fell in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time since the 2008 recession but trade has rebounded since.

Laredo is by far the largest entry point for cargo in the United States, funneling more than twice as much as second-place Detroit over the last year, as measured by product value, and more than four times the amount that goes through El Paso, the second-busiest port of entry on the Mexico border. The sound of rumbling motors from tractor-trailers and the smell of diesel and exhaust fill the warm air as vehicles line up on the World Trade Bridge — one of four international bridges in the city.

About 8,000 tractor-trailers carrying goods from flowers to lettuce to car parts pass each day through the World Trade Bridge’s 19 lanes. It is a straight shot on Interstate 35 to San Antonio and Dallas.

The largest seizures of fentanyl, heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine occur at border crossings in Arizona and California, but they also come through Laredo. The Drug Enforcement Administration says a faction of the Sinaloa cartel called “Los Chapitos” also favors an El Paso crossing for smuggling narcotics.

Texas’ billion-dollar border crackdown is splashy but its impact unclear

Shelby Park in Eagle Pass is ground zero for Operation Lone Star, Texas’ unprecedented, $11-billion challenge to the long-standing principle that immigration policy is the federal government’s sole domain. Texas argues that it has a constitutional right to defend against an “invasion” and that the migrant influx has been a drain on public coffers.

Under Lone Star, Texas has bused about 120,000 migrants to New York, Chicago, Denver, Washington and Philadelphia. State troopers and the Texas National Guard have become a massive presence in towns on the state’s 1,254-mile border with Mexico, about two-thirds the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.

The state has put razor wire in many areas, including a triple-layer barrier in Eagle Pass. The state installed a floating barrier made of buoys and submerged netting near Shelby Park to deter river crossings.

A big piece of Lone Star is nearly 45,000 arrests and nearly 40,000 felony charges, often for trespassing on private property.

On this day, Webb County Judge Leticia L. Martinez held a virtual court session via Zoom on 49 tiny screens in Laredo. Some defendants dialed in from Latin America with spotty connections that interrupted exchanges, showing up for court even though they had already left the country. Some who have been deported were no-shows with lawyers who said they couldn’t be found. Those who did show up were often confused about the proceedings.

Immigration advocates are jittery

Annunciation House, founded in 1978 by Ruben Garcia, operates a network of migrant shelters in El Paso. A state judge recently dismissed a lawsuit against it by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who accused the group of illegally sheltering migrants and refusing to turn over records.

Despite the outcome, the charges sent shockwaves through migrant advocates across the border as Paxton pursued others using similar allegations, including Catholic Charities of Rio Grande Valley.

Paxton’s office has appealed the case to the Texas Supreme Court. Garcia says some volunteers have decided not to help out of concern they could be prosecuted.

“I would hope that instead, it would galvanize people to say, ‘I’m not going to look the other way. I’m going to go and offer myself to work with refugees and to be part of the process of providing what is imminently a humanitarian response,’” he said.

Early that morning, García received his daily text message from a Border Patrol agent: The agency would release 25 people in El Paso that day. García said he could take them.

It was the lowest daily number García had seen in four years. The most the Border Patrol has sent to the shelters was 1,100 in a single day; earlier this year García said they took in 600 one day.