The Bexar County Sheriff launched a criminal investigation Monday into the transfer of migrants by plane from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard by Florida’s governor, amid rising migration.
Border Patrol arrest figures, released Monday, show numbers almost topped out at 2 million, on pace for a new annual record with only one month remaining in the fiscal year. Border Patrol arrests at the southern border had previously hit 1.6 million for 2000 and 1.7 million last year. At the end of August that number was 1,977, 769.
Monday afternoon, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said he has opened up a criminal investigation against the individual or individuals who “lured under false pretenses” 48 newly arrived migrants in San Antonio to fly to Martha’s Vineyard last week.
“Here we have 48 people who were already on hard times, and they were here legally in our country at that point ... and I believe they were preyed upon,” said Salazar in a news conference.
Salazar said they have the names of suspects, but he didn’t disclose them. The migrants have said they were promised jobs, housing and food. But Salazar said they were used “for nothing more than political posturing.”
In Florida, spokespersons for Gov. Ron DeSantis didn’t respond to requests for comment, but communications director Taryn Fenske on Monday tweeted a terse reply to a Bexar County sheriff’s announcement of an investigation by referencing a tragic smuggling accident in June in which several migrants died.
“Immigrants have been more than willing to leave Bexar County after being enticed to cross the border and ‘to fend for themselves.’ FL provided an opportunity in a sanctuary state w/resources, as expected —unlike the 53 who died in an abandoned truck in Bexar County in June,” the tweet said.
Separately, attorneys for the migrants, most of whom were believed to be Venezuelans, and others have called for a criminal investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ has not commented on the request.
The San Antonio investigation was the latest in the drama over rising migration and inconsistent treatment of migrants depending on their citizenship. Florida’s Republican governor seemed to follow the lead of Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who has bused more than 11,000 migrants from the Texas border to Washington, D.C., New York and Chicago.
Abbott, who is running for reelection, accused President Joe Biden of “open borders” policies. He launched Operation Lone Star with a series of measures that included busing migrants as a way to curb the arrival of new migrants.
Global migration, during the COVID-19 pandemic, has become far more challenging. A shift in who is arriving at the border, challenging diplomatic relations, and a pandemic-related public health order have created congestion at private shelters and Border Patrol processing centers.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus highlighted the shift in global migration – and the separate processing of those migrants.
“Failing communist regimes in Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba are driving a new wave of migration across the Western Hemisphere, including the recent increase in encounters at the southwest U.S. border,” said CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus in a prepared statement.
Demographic Shift
Cubans have led the increase from that trio of countries with about 194,000 arriving at the southwest border for the fiscal year through August– and pulling far ahead of the 125,000 who came during the Mariel exodus of 1980. About 153,000 Venezuelans and about 145,000 Nicaraguans arrived at the southwest border for the fiscal year through August.
Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans are largely allowed passage into the U.S. to apply for asylum. They generally avoid the quick exits, or expulsions within hours, that other migrants face under the public health order known as Title 42. The U.S. government has tense diplomatic relations with those three countries, and Mexicans generally only accept expulsions from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
The separate treatment for those migrants has led to chaotic scenes at sections of the Texas-Mexican border. Cubans, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans are often joyful, though exhausted. In Mexican border cities, where Guatemalans, Hondurans and Salvadorans have been quickly expelled, there are stories of despair.
Under Abbott’s Operation Lone Star initiative, thousands of state National Guard troops and Department of Public Safety Officers have been sent to the border. They’ve made arrests under state criminal law for trespassing on private lands–and then transported or held migrants until Border Patrol agents come to pick them up.
A complicating factor has been Title 42, the pandemic-related health measure. It has no legal consequences for multiple attempts at border entry, unlike regular immigration law.
In August, CBP officials said 22 percent of migrants had tried to cross the border multiple times. That figure has jumped from previous years because of Title 42. In 2019, the retry rate was 7 percent, according to CBP.
Migrants arriving at the border have a legal right to ask for asylum under U.S. law. But they are unable to do so under a rapid Title 42 expulsion, a fact that’s led many immigration attorneys to condemn its use.
Geographic Shift
Migrants are also shifting routes. For years, the Rio Grande Valley had been the top route, partly because it was the shortest distance from the Guatemalan-Mexican border. That changed in recent months to the Del Rio/Eagle Pass region in a more isolated stretch of the 2,000-mile border. In August, there were about 52,000 arrests in the Del Rio-Eagle Pass region, making it the busiest Border Patrol region along the border, according to CBP statistics.
The El Paso region saw a jump in Border Patrol arrests, too, with nearly 30,000 asylum seekers and migrants arrested there in August. It jumped ahead of the Rio Grande Valley, where there were about 27,000 arrests.
Increasing arrivals underscore a global challenge.
Across the globe, migration and displacement are rising. At the end of 2021, nearly 90 million people had been forced to flee their homes “due to conflicts, violence, fear of persecution and human rights violations,” said the U.N. refugee agency in its annual global trends report. That’s the highest number since the U.N. began keeping records during World War II.
In August, the U.S. Border Patrol arrested about 181,161 migrants at the southwest border, about 600 less than the previous month, its parent agency U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.
CBP counts arrests as “encounters” because of two sets of federal code now applied at the border since the pandemic began in March 2020. Combining Border Patrol numbers with CBP numbers at ports of entry shows that for the first 11 months at the southwest border, there were 2.1 million encounters.
In order to compare historical migration peaks, The Dallas Morning News uses Border Patrol data alone to account for the years before the existence of CBP as the parent agency.
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