EAGLE PASS, Texas — Daniel Bermudez's family had fled Venezuela and were heading to the US to seek asylum when the freight train they were traveling through Mexico was stopped by immigration officials.
His wife tried to explain that her family had permission to go to the US. Instead, they flew her 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 expelling migrants from trains, Mexico also resumed flying and transporting them to the southern part of the country and began flying some of them to Venezuela.
Even if temporary, the decline in illegal crossings is welcome news for the White House. President Joe Biden's administration is locked in talks with Senate negotiators about restricting asylum, and $110 billion in aid for Ukraine and Israel is at stake.
Bermudez said his wife became separated from her family when she spoke to authorities while he collected his stepchild and their belongings. He wanted to flee, but his wife told them not to because they had followed the procedure by making an appointment with the US immigration authorities.
“I told her, 'Don't trust them. Let's go into the forest,” Bermudez said, adding that other migrants had fled. He remembered her saying to him, “Why are they sending us back when we have an appointment?”
Last week, Bermudez, his stepchild and two other family members waited for her at a shelter in the Mexican border city of Piedras Negras while she took the bus back in hopes of making it to the date.
According to Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data, Mexican immigration officials sent at least 22 flights from the US border area to southern cities in the last 10 days of December. Most came from Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, Texas.
Mexico also conducted two relocation flights to Venezuela with 329 migrants. The stretch was interrupted by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to Mexico City on December 28 to deal with unprecedented crossings into the United States.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said a financial shortfall that had led immigration authorities to suspend deportations and other operations had been resolved. He did not provide details.
Arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico into the U.S. fell to about 2,500 on Monday, down from more than 10,000 on several days in December, according to U.S. authorities. The Border Patrol's busiest area saw a total of 13,800 apprehensions in the seven-day period ending Friday, a 29% drop from 19,400 two weeks earlier, according to Sector Chief John Modlin of Tucson, Arizona.
The drop prompted U.S. Customs and Border Protection to reopen the port of entry in Lukeville, Arizona, on Thursday after a month-long closure on the most direct route from Phoenix to the nearest beaches. The US also restored operations at Eagle Pass and three other locations.
Merchants in Eagle Pass, a town of about 30,000, saw sales take a “major hit” while a bridge was closed to vehicular traffic so border agents could be redeployed to help process migrants, Maverick County Judge Ramsey English Cantu said.
“We pretty much survive on 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 shutdown that U.S. officials said was in response to as many as 1,000 migrants riding through Mexico on a single train before attempting to cross the border.
In Piedras Negras, Casa del Migrante housed about 200 migrants on Thursday, up from 1,500 recently.
Among them was Manuel Rodriguez, 40, who said his family will miss the appointment to seek asylum, which was made through the U.S. government's CBP One app. He said the arrangement was registered with his in-laws, who were deported to Venezuela after authorities boarded the bus they were riding.
“It was all under her name and she lost everything,” Rodriguez said.
Proposals being discussed by White House and Senate negotiators include a new deportation authority that would deny the right to seek asylum if illegal border crossings reach a certain threshold. Such authority would almost certainly depend on Mexico's willingness to take back non-Mexicans who enter the U.S. illegally, something the country is now doing on a limited basis.
Mexico's support was critical to reversing Trump-era policies that forced 70,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for U.S. immigration court hearings and the right to seek asylum during the COVID-19 pandemic to deny.
Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, DC, cautioned against exaggerating Mexico's role in the recent decline in traffic. Panama reported that fewer than 25,000 migrants walked through Darién's jungles in December, about half the October level. This is a sign that fewer people are leaving South America for the US. Migration typically decreases in December due to holidays and cold weather.
“The U.S. can lean on Mexico for an enforcement effect on border migration in the short term, but the long-term effects are not always clear,” Selee said.
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Spagat reported from San Diego. Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed.