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[On July 12, 2023, at 6:00 a.m. EDT, Alexander Gonzalez and his daughter Yefreannys, 7, sit under the Paso del Norte bridge between the United States and Mexico in late June in Ciudad Juárez, while waiting for their appointment via the CBP One app. (Danielle Villasana)Comment on this storyCommentEL PASO — On the border bridge from Mexico, about 200 asylum seekers lined up on a recent morning with their phones open to a Customs and Border Protection mobile app, ready for appointments at a reception hall on the U.S. side.
Thirty miles north, the Biden administration provided a different reception for those attempting to enter the United States illegally, bringing them to a massive tent complex in the desert for migrants facing deportation. The new 360,000-square-foot facility’s shelves were stocked with diapers, snacks and baby formula, signs of the administration’s efforts to meet the changing demands of U.S. immigration enforcement.
The two locations illustrate the extent to which Biden administration officials have begun transforming the way asylum seekers and migrants are processed along the southern border since May 11, when the White House lifted the pandemic policy known as Title 42. The policy had allowed quick expulsions of migrants who entered the United States illegally but no penalty for those who tried to get in again and again.
Now the administration is allowing tens of thousands of migrants to enter the United States legally each month through the mobile app CBP One, while those who don’t follow the rules face ramped-up deportations and tougher penalties.
The preliminary result is a nearly 70 percent drop in illegal entries since early May, according to the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. After two years of record crossings and crisis-level strains, the Biden administration appears to have better control over the southern border than at any point since early 2021.
The president’s critics continue to depict his border policies as too permissive — geared more toward accommodating mass migration than deterrence. But the decline in illegal crossings undermines a key line of attack for President Biden’s Republican critics and bolsters Democrats’ argument that the pandemic expulsion policy was partly to blame for record numbers of border arrests.
Administration officials acknowledge it is too soon to tell whether their new approach can achieve lasting effects. Republican state officials are suing in federal court to block Biden’s policies expanding legal entries through CBP One. At the same time, immigrant advocacy groups have filed challenges in federal court to Biden’s new border restrictions on asylum seekers who cross illegally.
The recent drop in illegal crossings does not mean fewer than half as many migrants are coming to the United States. President Biden is allowing roughly 43,000 migrants and asylum seekers per month to enter through CBP One appointments and accepting an additional 30,000 through a process called parole. The new legal channels appear to be absorbing many of the border-crossers who for years have entered unlawfully to surrender in large groups, overwhelming U.S. border agents.
U.S. agents made about 100,000 arrests along the Mexico border in June, the first full month that Biden’s new measures were in effect, down from 204,561 in May, according to the latest CBP data. It was the largest one-month decline since Biden took office.
Imelda Maynard, the legal director of Diocesan Migrant & Refugee Services in El Paso, which aids migrants, described the past several weeks in the city as “eerily quiet.” The number of migrants released by CBP onto the streets of El Paso dropped to zero in recent days, according to the city.
“We’ve been so used to putting out fire after fire, we’re like: Where are all the people?” Maynard said.
On the outskirts of El Paso, where for much of the past two years migrants have attempted to enter illegally each day through the steep canyons of Mount Cristo Rey, a CBP helicopter and a team of agents gave chase one recent morning to a single border-crosser. He turned back south.
With CBP using more contractors at its facilities to help perform tasks such as data entry, medical screening and child care, Biden officials say more U.S. agents can return to patrol duties. That appears to be making it harder for border-crossers to sneak through.
The factors that have fueled migration to the United States remain largely unchanged, but for the first time since Biden took office, the president’s team is testing a new border-management strategy, one it considers a more humane and effective alternative to the Trump administration’s approach. At the heart of the strategy is a belief that reducing the chaos and illegality of migration is more feasible than trying to stop it.
Legislative proposals to overhaul the U.S. asylum process continue to face steep odds in a polarized U.S. Congress, which hasn’t passed significant immigration legislation in nearly two decades.
Blas Nuñez-Neto, the top border policy official at the Department of Homeland Security, said the administration’s measures remain vulnerable to adverse court rulings because they rely on executive actions rather than congressional fixes, which remain stalled.
The fact that the new Biden system is working as intended is encouraging, Nuñez-Neto said in an interview. “But it’s still too early to draw any definitive conclusions about what we’re going to see in the coming weeks and months.”
For migrants in Mexican border cities trying to secure a CBP One appointment, the wait can be harrowing.
Jose Ricardo Pimentel, a 33-year-old Venezuelan, stood on the bridge on a recent morning. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he acknowledged that he’d slipped into the line without an appointment that day because he was so desperate to leave Mexico.
“I was kidnapped along the highway to Ciudad Juárez and held for 22 days,” he said. “I’m scared.”
Pimentel reached the front of the line to plead his case, but U.S. officers saw his name wasn’t on their list. They turned him back.
Pimentel fell in behind other families who lacked appointments but were clinging to faint hopes the CBP officers would allow them to enter anyway.
Leidimar Muñoz; her husband, Alexander Gonzalez; and their 7-year-old daughter, Yefreannys, waited there, too, but they gave up after five hours in the 100-degree heat.
“My daughter couldn’t stand it any longer,” said Muñoz, also from Venezuela. “She was hungry and asking to use the bathroom.”
The family walked back down the bridge into Ciudad Juárez, then laid out a blanket under the bridge’s shade, sharing a plate of chicken and fried rice from a foam container. Yefreannys took out Play-Doh and Barbie dolls from a dusty backpack with a cat face.
Muñoz had registered the family for a CBP One appointment eight days earlier. The average wait for an appointment was four to six weeks, but she didn’t want to move into a shelter farther away from the border bridge. They were spending nights under the bridge, sleeping outdoors on the patio of a Mexican migrant services center.
Downtown El Paso seemed within grasp, its skyline visible past the border wall and the spools of concertina wire.
“We’re so close,” Muñoz said.
Before May 11, the family could have joined the tens of thousands of other Venezuelans crossing illegally and surrendering to border agents with an expectation they’d be quickly released into the United States. Now doing so would risk deportation back to Mexico and ineligibility for asylum. Muñoz had to wait, glued to the mobile app.
The drop in illegal crossings has given Biden a reprieve on one of his most vulnerable issues ahead of next year’s presidential election. White House officials expressed a sense of validation at seeing the border numbers fall after the expiration of the pandemic restrictions — noting how Republican politicians had been warning of impending chaos after May 11.
But even as Biden’s aides expressed relief, the president himself has largely refrained from calling out his detractors over the issue. The challenges with border enforcement have vexed his administration since its earliest days, with fast-changing migration patterns, court orders that kept Title 42 in place and criticism from both liberals and conservatives.
The issue is bound to remain a sticking point during the 2024 campaign. Former president Donald Trump — who initiated the Title 42 policy and predicted that its end would lead to record migration — has accused Biden of deliberately undermining border security by lifting the restrictions.
Recent polling indicates that immigration is one of Biden’s biggest political liabilities, with 6 in 10 adults saying they disapprove of his handling of the border, according to a…
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