EL PASO, Texas (Border Report) – A border nonprofit says the Biden administration and the governments of Texas and Mexico are deterring migration through cruelty and making it easier for criminals to victimize them.
Thus, the El Paso-based Hope Border Institute is calling on the Biden administration to rescind recent asylum restrictions between ports of entry, sue Texas to end Operation Lone Star, and hire additional staff to speed up the processing of asylum claims, parole, and visa applications.
“The latest iteration of efforts to waken access to asylum at the Mexican border is part of a broader effort by the United States – aided by its collaboration with Mexico and facilitated by the cruelty of Texas’ parallel system of immigration enforcement – to evade its responsibilities to vulnerable migrants, militarize the border and use pain as a form of migrant deterrence,” the Hope Border Institute said in a report released Thursday called “Pain as Strategy.”
The report is based on monitoring migrants at the border wall, humanitarian spaces, and transportation hubs in Juarez by the organization and the nonprofit Derechos Humanos Integrales en Accion (DHIA). It also extensively cites government documents and open sources..
The group says federal policies such as the 2023 Circumvention of Lawful Pathways Rule and the June executive order closing the border to asylum seekers if average daily encounters reach 2,500. It called out the Mexican government for allowing the deportation of third-country migrants and two of its agencies – the National Guard and the National Migration Institute (INM) – for allegedly colluding with smugglers.
And it chides Texas soldiers taking part in Operation Lone Star for allegedly exerting “psychological violence” by placing barbed wire along the Rio Grande, yelling at approaching asylum-seekers to go back to Mexico (even if they’re not Mexicans), and shooting pepper spray projectiles at them.
“This report evidences the consequences of such an approach: Increased injuries and deaths for those fleeing from danger and who encounter danger on their journey, the separation of families, mental distress, physical injury and traumatization, and the creation of a market of suffering that unscrupulous actors prey on,” the researchers said.
More than 100 migrants have died in the Rio Grande, canals, deserts, mountains, and near the border wall in the El Paso Sector of the U.S. Border Patrol since Oct. 1, according to the federal agency. One corridor in northwest Juarez known as Anapra has been particularly deadly.
Hope Border Institute says three out of five migrants who arrive in Juarez, Mexico, across the border from El Paso, have suffered violence traveling through Mexico. That violence includes extortion, kidnapping, beatings, torture, threats, or human trafficking.
The nonprofit says one out of two migrants in Juarez suffer additional violence or extortion at the hands of drug cartels who’ve taken over migrant smuggling or Mexican authorities themselves who prey on them rather than protect them.
The report identifies three cartels – transnational criminal organizations that exert influence over other, lesser groups – as claiming control over the Mexican side of the border opposite El Paso. They are La Empresa in northwest Juarez (across from Sunland Park, New Mexico), La Linea from Downtown to the neighborhoods across from Socorro, Texas, and the Sinaloa cartel east and southeast of that.
The nonprofit says it analyzed police reports of 400 kidnappings in Juarez in the first five months of 2024 in which cartel members contact family members to demand ransoms of up to $20,000. Most families pay up within a week. But those whose families cannot come through with the cash often endure violence, including torture or sexual violence, the researchers said.
The report cites allegations being investigated by the Office for Strategic Operations of the Mexican Attorney General’s Office that immigration agents in Juarez alert the cartels to the arrival of foreign nationals at the international airport or the bus station.
“For those seeking safety, INM, the National Guard and local police effectively represent a threat,” the researchers said.