The border wall in Otay Mesa at night. (File photo courtesy OnScene.TV)
A man and two women suffered non-life-threatening injuries in an apparent fall from the U.S.-Mexico border wall in Otay Mesa Friday.
The three were conscious and breathing when they were taken to hospitals, authorities said.
The conditions of the three patients were not released.
San Diego Fire-Rescue Department personnel were dispatched to the 30- foot-tall wall at 12:12 p.m. Friday to the area between Drucker Lane and La Media Road, department spokeswoman Candace Hadley said.
“Border Patrol agents from San Diego Sector encountered three individuals who appeared to have fallen from the border barrier west of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry after illegally entering the country,” Border Patrol Agent Eugene Wesley said in a statement.
The government officially went into a partial government shutdown at 12:01 a.m. Saturday amid impasse over funding for President Trump’s border wall. Zach Cohen, National Journal Senate correspondent, joins CBSN to discuss what that means.
It’s been nearly two weeks since President Donald Trump declared a crime emergency in the nation’s capital. But while the crime crackdown has yielded somewhat underwhelming results—”nearly 2,000 officers made fewer than 400 arrests,” reportsReason‘s Joe Lancaster—the campaign has been massively successful in galvanizing Trump’s base and providing the president and his Cabinet with ample P.R. opportunities.
The takeover has allowed Trump to flex his muscles, but it’s coming at a steep cost to American taxpayers. The Interceptreports that the use of military forces in Washington, D.C., could cost $1 million per day. With more National Guard members flooding into the capital, the campaign could end up costing hundreds of millions of dollars, according to The Intercept.
But this isn’t the first time that Trump has used—or suggested using—taxpayer money on expensive vanity projects. Here are five other especially wasteful examples.
Joseph Mario Giordano / SOPA Images/Sipa USA/Newscom
In June, Trump hosted a “big, beautiful” military parade to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Army. The event, which happened to coincide with the president’s 79th birthday, included a barrage of tanks, jet flyovers, and soldiers walking through the nation’s capital, and ended up costing American taxpayers $25 million to $45 million. That’s “$277,778–$500,000 per minute,” Reason‘s Billy Binion reported.
Trump has also displayed America’s military power at his Independence Day celebrations, including the 2019 “Salute to America,” which ran up a tab of more than $13 million, and the 2020 events in D.C. and Mount Rushmore that cost close to $15 million. Next year’s Independence Day, which will be America’s 250th birthday, is expected to be even bigger. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) appropriated $150 million to the Interior Department for “events, celebrations, and activities surrounding the observance and commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.”
2. Iced Out ICE Vehicles
Department of Homeland Security
The OBBBA also allocated nearly$30 billion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for detention facility maintenance, transportation costs, and recruitment efforts at the agency. ICE appears to be sparing no expense.
In addition to offering starting salaries of nearly $90,000 and signing bonuses up to $50,000, ICE has also wasted taxpayer money on marketing gimmicks and vehicle upgrades. Recently, the agency spent “$2.4 million for Chevrolet Tahoes, Ford Expeditions, and other vehicles, as well as custom graphic wraps,” writesReason‘s Autumn Billings. These gold-detailed wraps include the words DEFEND THE HOMELAND, INTEGRITY, COURAGE, and ENDURANCE.
This vehicle spending is on top of the $700,000 that ICE spent on two gold-wrapped trucks, which the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used in a (cringe)recruitment campaign on X.
Polaris/Newscom
On Tuesday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the entire U.S.-Mexico border wall will be painted black. “That is specifically at the request of the president, who understands that in the hot temperatures down here when something is painted black it gets even warmer and it will make it even harder for people to climb,” said Noem.
During his first stint in the White House, Trump proposed an identical plan. The Washington Postreviewed a copy of federal painting estimates at the time, which showed “costs ranging from $500 million for two coats of acrylic paint to more than $3 billion for a premium ‘powder coating’ on the structure’s 30-foot steel bollards.”
More than five years later, the cost to paint the border wall is sure to be higher.
Avalon/Newscom
In 2018, Trump signed a $3.9 billion agreement with Boeing that would see the airplane manufacturer deliver two new jets to the Air Force One fleet by 2022. The planes are now expected to be delivered by 2027, years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget.
Under the terms of the contract, the cost overruns will be paid for by Boeing. Despite these delays, Trump may soon be flying in a luxury jetliner that was gifted to him by the Qatari government. While the president has called this new Air Force One “free,” renovating the plane will cost Americans millions of dollars. As The New York Timesreports, the Pentagon recently transferred $934 million from a nuclear missile project account to a classified project, which “congressional budget sleuths have come to think…almost certainly” includes the renovation of this new jet.
Andrea Hank/ZUMA Press/Newscom
In January, Trump revivedan executive order that he signed in his first administration to establish a National Garden of American Heroes. The garden, which is expected to open next year on America’s 250th birthday, will include 250 life-sized statues of American heroes.
But the $34 million project has run into a basic, but serious, issue: America doesn’t have enough quality sculptors to complete the garden by next July or a designated location to put it. Daniel Kunitz, editor of Sculpture magazine, toldPolitico that the idea “seems completely unworkable.”
Cards Against Humanity—a self-described “party game for horrible people”—is suingElon Musk’s SpaceX to the tune of $15 million dollars, claiming that the company trespassed on and “completely fucked” up their parcel of land on the US-Mexico border.
Back in 2017, after then-president Donald Trump had run and won, in part, on promising to “build a great great wall on our southern border” and “have Mexico pay for that wall,” Cards Against Humanity decided to throw a wrench into his proposed plan. They pooled funds, $15 dollars per person, according to the company’s lawsuit, from 150,000 subscribers to buy land on the border to prevent Trump from building on it. Fast forward, and the company is now alleging that SpaceX has been using their property to house building materials for a nearby project.
“Elon Musk’s SpaceX was building some space thing nearby, and he figured he could just dump his shit all over our gorgeous plot of land without asking,” the Cards Against Humanity team wrote. “After we caught him, SpaceX gave us a 12-hour ultimatum to accept a lowball offer for less than half our land’s value. We said, ‘Go fuck yourself, Elon Musk. We’ll see you in court.’”
At the time, the company sent out certificates to those who donated to the cause which confirmed the individual helped Cards Against Humanity purchase 0.000667% of this area of land. “This document further certifies that any attempt by the U.S. Government to build a wall on this land will be resisted to the full extent of the law,” it reads.
The land in question sits on a plot in Cameron County, Texas—a coastal area on the southern tip of the state. SpaceX, Musk’s private spaceflight company that has sent satellites and people to space, has been operating in Texas for over two decades. The company’s dealings in the state have increased since then—as has Musk’s political influence. In the past decade, Elon Musk and businesses connected to SpaceX have contributed more than $500,000 to the campaigns of two dozen elected officials from the region since 2014, according to a Reuters’ special report published on Friday.
Since 2017, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX has contributed seven times as much to Republican campaigns and political committees than to Democratic ones, according to a HuffPost review of Federal Election Commission data.
Musk has also contributed increasingly large sums to The National Republican Congressional Committee and the pro-Donald Trump America PAC. He’s been bankrolling the latter. (At one point, Musk reportedly claimed he would be donating $45 million dollars a month to elect Trump. Later, he called the reporting on his promised contributions “not true.”)
In July, Musk officially endorsed Trump and has been a vocal supporter of the former president, interviewing him for hours on X and calling him “the path to prosperity.”
The “Lone Star State has become a preferred base of operations for Musk,” the Reuters’ report reads. SpaceX has reportedly created 2,100 direct jobs and economically transformed the southern towns.
“After a Delaware court rejected billions in compensation awarded to him by the board of Tesla, Musk this year moved the electric carmaker’s corporate registry to Texas. In July, he said the headquarters of X, his social media platform, and SpaceX would soon follow,” Reuters’ Marisa Taylor reported.
“Whatever the impact, the relationship between SpaceX and the area’s political class is mutually beneficial,” she continued. “The company’s bonds with local officials have allowed Starbase to grow fast and permitted local authorities to tout a type of economic progress that has long evaded the area, known broadly as the Rio Grande Valley.”
The number of migrant apprehensions have dropped dramatically since the beginning of the year. Adam Yamaguchi visited the U.S.-Mexico border near Tucson, Arizona, to find out what’s working.
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The number of migrants arriving at the southern border is unprecedented. Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recorded two-and-a-half million instances of detaining or turning away people attempting to cross into the United States from Mexico.
So what’s the fastest growing group among them? Chinese migrants. Yes, you heard that right…Chinese. We saw large groups, including many from the middle class, come through a 4-foot gap at the end of a border fence 60 miles east of San Diego.
The illegal entryway is a new route for those hoping to live in America.
Just after sunrise, we saw the first group of migrants make their way from Mexico…through a gap between the 30 foot steel border fence and rocks.
Ducking under a bit of razor wire and into the United States.
We were surprised to see the number of people coming through from China…nearly 7,000 miles away.
Our cameras, and at one point this armed Border Patrol agent standing 25 feet away…. did not deter them.
60 Minutes
This man, a college graduate, told us he hoped to find work in Los angeles. He said his trip from China took 40 days.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What countries did you go through?
College grad: Thailand, Morocco, Ecuador … Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica …Nicaragua.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Jeez.
Thirty minutes later, a smuggler’s SUV raced along the border fence and dropped another group at the same spot. And 30 minutes after that…. another group.
Over four days, we witnessed nearly 600 migrants – adults and children- pass through this hole and onto U.S. soil…unchecked. We saw people from India, Vietnam and Afghanistan. Many of the Chinese migrants who came through will end up asking for political asylum.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Did you travel by yourself or with family or friends?
Migrant no. 2: Eh No. Just me.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Just you.
Migrant no. 2: Yeah.
The gap is a global destination…littered with travel documents from around the world.
Travel documents from around the world have been left on the ground at the border gap.
60 Minutes
With the help of a translator, we learned a little about the Chinese migrants coming through.
We also met a banker and small business owners.
Some of the migrants made a grueling journey through Central America with dusty backpacks…but we noticed middle class migrants from China arriving with rolling bags. They told us they took flights all the way to Mexico.
Some flew from China to Ecuador, because it doesn’t require a visa for Chinese nationals. Then, took flights to Tijuana, Mexico.
The migrants told us they connected with smugglers, or what they call snake heads, in Tijuana.
And they each paid them about $400 for the hour-long drive that ended here…at the gap…
Sharyn Alfonsi: Why did you decide to come to the United States?
Female migrant/Translator speaking English: Oh, it’s hard to live there … hard to find jobs.
Sharyn Alfonsi: What did you do? Did you work in China?
Female migrant/Translator speaking English: She worked in the factory but now it’s hard to work in the factory.
She said it was…and that she sold her house to cover the $14,000 cost of her trip to the U.S.
60 Minutes
Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 37,000 Chinese citizens were apprehended crossing illegally from Mexico into the U.S.…that’s 50 times more than two years earlier.
Many of the migrants told us they made the journey to escape China’s increasingly repressive political climate and sluggish economy.
This 37-year-old woman said China’s COVID lockdown destroyed her child care business. She left her two young children with family at home.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And why did you decide to come to the United States?
37-year-old female migrant/translator speaking English: Many reasons.
Sharyn Alfonsi: For work or?
37-year-old female migrant/translator speaking English: Not … not entirely.
We wondered how all of these migrants…knew about this particular entryway into California.
The answer was in their hands.
Translator: TikTok, TikTok.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Oh you learned on TikTok.
TikTok is a social media platform created in China. The posts we found had step-by-step instructions for hiring smugglers and detailed directions to that hole we visited.
We were struck by just how orderly and routine it all seemed. The migrants walked about a half mile down a dirt road and waited in line for U.S. Border Patrol to arrive so they could surrender.
The land they are waiting on is owned by 75-year-old Jerry Shuster, a retiree.
Sharyn Alfonsi: The whole world seems to know there’s a way in. And it’s on your property.
Jerry Shuster and Sharyn Alfonsi
60 Minutes
Jerry Shuster: They’re all doing this. They’re all doing this. when they come over here, they come with the suitcases. They come prepared with the computers just like they got off on a Norwegian cruise ship yesterday.
Shuster owns 17 acres…just north of the border fence and a quarter mile outside of Jacumba Hot Springs, California. Population 540.
Sharyn Alfonsi: You’re an immigrant yourself.
Jerry Shuster: Yes.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Where did you come from?
Jerry Shuster: I come from Yugoslavia. And I left Yugoslavia, I went to Austria. I stayed there eight month. And I knock on this door. I didn’t bust the door down to come over here.
Sharyn Alfonsi: You came through the front door.
Jerry Shuster: I came through the front door.
Sharyn Alfonsi: And what do you think about this?
Jerry Shuster: They– they don’t care. They– they– they– they come through the hole like they’re comin’ to their own country over here. And nobody do nothin’ about it.
Shuster says it all started in May. He went to investigate some smoke coming from his property and found migrants burning trees to stay warm.
Today, his property looks like a messy moonscape…littered with the trash and tents migrants have left behind.
Tents have been left behind on Jerry Shuster’s property
60 Minutes
Sharyn Alfonsi: Have you ever just yelled, “Get outta here?”
Jerry Shuster: Well, they say—I uh – it was, like, four month ago, there was eight guys start– knocking my trees and start burning my– my– my trees on the other side. So I told ’em, “Please, don’t do that. Please don’t do–” and they start surrounding me. I went home, and I got my gun, and I shoot in the air. They arrest me.
Sharyn Alfonsi: They arrested you?
Jerry Shuster: Yeah, they arrest me.
Sharyn Alfonsi: On your property?
Jerry Shuster: Yeah, on my property. Yeah, just because. I ask ’em not to burn the trees, not to knock the fences. And they– they arrested me. They put me in a police car. I’m just protecting my own land.
Shuster wasn’t charged – but his gun was confiscated.
Sharyn Alfonsi: If you had to guess, how many migrants do you think you’ve seen come through here?
Jerry Shuster: Maybe 3,000—a week.
Sharyn Alfonsi: 3,000 a week?
Jerry Shuster: I would say that, yes. Because this is ongoing deal.
About two hours after these migrants arrived, we saw the Border Patrol pull up, broadcasting recorded instructions in Mandarin.
The migrants were driven to a detention facility near San Diego…where they are given background checks. Some are interviewed. Typically – within 72 hours – they are released into the United States and can begin the process of filing an asylum claim.
Jacqueline Arellano has volunteered on the border for eight years offering humanitarian aid to migrants.
Jacqueline Arellano: So I’m a– native Spanish speaker. I have been able to rely on being bilingual in doing this work for the duration that I have been doing it. And in this past year, I mean, there’s been times that I’ve come to the sites and not spoken to a single Spanish speaker.
She relies on translation apps to communicate with Chinese migrants.
Sharyn Alfonsi: These people want to be picked up by border patrol. Why isn’t this happening at a port of entry?
Jacqueline Arellano: That would definitely be the ideal situation. And people would much prefer to do so. It would definitely be much safer and more efficient. Unfortunately, there are barriers to people being able to seek asylum at a port of entry.
One barrier is the phone app called “CBP One”.
Asylum seekers are supposed to use the app to make an appointment to enter the U.S. through a legal border crossing…
Volunteers who work with migrants told us there is still a three to four month wait to secure an appointment at a border crossing.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So is this a shortcut?
Jacqueline Arellano: It’s really, like, the only one that they have. I don’t even know that they would consider it a shortcut.
For years, millions of Chinese entered the U.S. with a visa that allowed them to visit, work or study. But in the last few years, those visas have been increasingly difficult to secure as tensions between the two countries have grown.
In 2016, the U.S. granted 2.2 million temporary visas to Chinese nationals. In 2022, it was just 160,000.
Tammy Lin is an immigration attorney and has worked with clients from China for nearly two decades.
Sharyn Alfonsi: if someone’s not granted asylum here, will China then say, “Okay, yes, we’ll take them back”?
Tammy Lin: I haven’t seen that happen, really. I– I think– even back to 2008– a lot of the Chinese nationals that had failed asylum cases weren’t able to get passports– to be put on the plane to be sent back. So we can’t send you back.
Based on our review of data from Immigration and Customs Enforcement – there are at least 36,000 Chinese who have been ordered by U.S. courts to leave the country. But China is notorious for not taking back its citizens and the U.S. can’t force China to accept them.
Sharyn Alfonsi: So, then, what happens if they have a failed claim but they can’t go back to China?
Tammy Lin: That’s a very good question. They’re stuck in this limbo.
According to the Department of Justice, last year 55% of Chinese migrants were granted asylum. compared to 14% for every other nationality.
With the odds in their favor, and a phone to guide them, there’s little to discourage more Chinese migrants from coming through the gap near Jerry Shuster’s place.
Sharyn Alfonsi: Have you said to anybody, “Hey, there’s this giant hole. They’re comin’ through. How ’bout patching that up?”
Jerry Shuster: They know that thing is there. And– we– we all been tellin’ ’em, “Hey, when this thing gonna quit over here? you gotta call Washington D.C.” That’s what they say.
So, we did. U.S. Customs and Border Protection told us their agents don’t have authority to stop people from coming through gaps like this one and can only arrest them after they’ve entered illegally.
As for closing that gap, they said it is on their priority list. But would require money from Congress.
Produced by Guy Campanile. Associate Producer, Lucy Hatcher. Broadcast associate, Erin DuCharme. Edited by Craig Crawford.
Democrat claims that the border is “not a war zone” took a significant hit after Mexican authorities seized 10 improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in an area just south of Tucson, Arizona.
FOX Business Network is reporting that a drug cartel gunfight witnessed by the Tucson border patrol resulted in the Mexican military seizing the devices.
Now, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is warning their agents to be vigilant.
An internal memo obtained by the network is warning agents to “exercise extreme caution” and “report any possible armed subjects approaching the border with possible explosive devices.”
U.S. officials are now warning Border Patrol agents to watch out for IEDs — improvised explosive devices — according to an internal memo.
In addition to the 10 IEDs located at the border, reports indicate an armed individual on the American side was arrested with a loaded AK-47 rifle, two loaded magazines, loose rounds, and a handgun.
Fox Business reporter Hillary Vaughn stated the individual arrested alerted authorities to 11 other armed suspects nearby.
The Mexican military, Vaughn revealed, found the 10 IEDs “filled with black powder and shrapnel.”
The border crisis isn’t driven by huddled masses seeking asylum bc they’re persecuted by their governments. It’s a for-profit operation being conducted by cartels in cooperation w corrupt elements of the Mexican state. You want to end the crisis, go after the cartels. https://t.co/iE8N0Jf3xd
A law enforcement source told Vaughn that the ranch where the cartel firefight took place “has a gap in the border fence that is typically used in the past to funnel drugs through, but now it’s a magnet for the cartel to push people through.”
The Fox Business reporter said the source explained that the gap “was just a spot in the border wall that was never completed.”
President Biden halted construction of the border wall immediately upon taking office, saying that the border crisis was far less “important” than other matters.
“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, number 1,” Biden said in an interview with NPR before the 2020 presidential election.
He would follow through, issuing an executive order on his first day in office terminating any construction of that wall.
The life-threatening situation Biden and Mayorkas have caused for our Border Patrol agents is getting much, much worse. May God bless and protect them. https://t.co/vCAHvS5QOd
Authorities discovering 10 IEDs at the site of a “gang war,” as Vaughn describes it, along with multiple firearms, seems to indicate the presence of a combat zone of sorts.
And yet there have been a plethora of examples of Democrats declaring over the years that Republicans are overstating the situation and that the border is not a “war zone.”
Cesar Blanco, a Democrat member of the Texas Senate said as a state representative that the debate over border security is “purely politics.”
“It’s bad for business,” he complained of the debate. “We on the border are trying to get away from the idea that the border is a war zone.”
Juanita Martinez, a retired schoolteacher and the current Democratic Party chair for Maverick County, just this past July said, “No, sir. I do not see a war zone.”
One wonders if she sees it now.
Isidrio Leal, a member of “Veterans For Peace,” called former President Donald Trump’s rhetoric about security at the border “hate speech.”
“Unfortunately, it’s hate speech — what [Trump] says about immigrants, what he says about needing the wall, that the U.S.-Mexico border is a war zone,” Leal said as he protested a visit by Trump in 2019. “It’s not actually — Iraq was.”
Well, now they both have IEDs in common. And at least Trump visited the war zone.
In 2021, former Democratic Rep. Filemon Vela whose wife currently serves as Director of the President’s Commission on White House Fellowships, echoed the sentiments.
“Let’s make one thing clear: the narrative of a violent and insecure border region is blatantly false,” said Vela in a statement regarding another Trump visit. “The border is not a war zone, and the wall Abbott and Trump are trying to get Texans to pay for is not only a waste of their hard-earned money but also an un-American symbol of hatred.”
The fact is, the border is a war zone. An active one at that.
Washington — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday rebuffed growing criticism over his decision to approve the construction of more than a dozen miles of border walls along the U.S.-Mexico border, saying the Biden administration was bound by law to follow through with the project.
Mayorkas rejected the notion that the administration had changed its policy as it relates to a border wall, which President Biden strongly denounced during the 2020 presidential campaign.
“From day one, this Administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer,” Mayorkas said in a statement Thursday. “That remains our position and our position has never wavered.”
The controversy began Wednesday, when the Department of Homeland Security posted a notice in which Mayorkas had waived over two dozen federal laws, including ones to protect wildlife and the environment, to expedite the construction of border barriers and other infrastructure in a section of Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. In the notice, Mayorkas said there was an “acute and immediate need” to construct the barriers to prevent unlawful border entries, which soared to a yearly high in September.
The announcement quickly sparked a heated debate, as well as condemnation from environmental activists, migrant advocates, Democratic lawmakers and even Mexico’s president, who said the move echoed former President Trump’s controversial efforts to build hundreds of miles of wall to deter migrant crossings.
Conservatives, meanwhile, said the move gave credence to Mr. Trump’s signature border policy, and highlighted the announcement as an abrupt and hypocritical 180-degrees change of course by Mr. Biden.
During the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden vowed not to build “another foot” of the border wall. On his first day in office in 2021, he issued an executive order halting border barrier construction. “Like every nation, the United States has a right and a duty to secure its borders and protect its people against threats. But building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution,” Mr. Biden wrote in that order.
On Thursday, Mayorkas said the notice on Wednesday had been “taken out of context.” It did not, he said, “signify any change in policy whatsoever.”
Mayorkas said the administration was legally obligated to use money Congress allocated in 2019 for border barrier construction in south Texas for its intended purpose. “We have repeatedly asked Congress to rescind this money but it has not done so, and we are compelled to follow the law,” he said.
Asked about the controversy earlier on Thursday in the Oval Office, Mr. Biden delivered a similar remark.
“The money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that,” he said.
Mr. Biden said he did not think border walls were effective.
Before this week’s announcement, the Biden administration had mainly used border barrier money to fill gaps in the wall.
The president’s remarks on Thursday did not diminish the criticism over the decision to build the barriers in South Texas, including from his Democratic allies.
California Democratic Rep. Nanette Barragán, chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, called Mayorkas’ notice “disappointing”
“While this border wall funding was signed into law by President Trump under Republican leadership, this decision is not in line with the current administration’s commitments to end border wall construction,” she said.
EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Pandemic-related asylum restrictions that expelled migrants millions of times were lifted early Friday in a shift that threatened to put a historic strain on the nation’s beleaguered immigration system, as migrants raced to enter the United States before new restrictions set in.
Meanwhile, the administration was dealt a potentially serious legal setback when a federal judge temporarily blocked its attempt to release migrants more quickly when Border Patrol holding stations are full.
Migrants, including children, in northern Mexico paced along a U.S. border strung with razor wire and bolstered by troops, unsure of where to go or what to do next. Others settled into shelters determined to secure an asylum appointment that can take months to schedule online.
The expiring rules, known as Title 42, have been in place since March 2020. They allow border officials to quickly return asylum seekers back over the border on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.
U.S. authorities have unveiling strict new measures, which crack down on illegal crossings while also setting up legal pathways for migrants who apply online, seek a sponsor and undergo background checks. If successful, the reforms could fundamentally alter how migrants arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Many migrants were acutely aware of looming policy changes designed to stop illegal crossings and encourage asylum seekers to apply online and consider alternative destinations, including Canada or Spain.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Jhoan Daniel Barrios, a former military police officer from Venezuela as he paced with two friends along the the border in Ciudad Juárez, across from El Paso, Texas, looking for a chance to seek refuge in the U.S.
“We don’t have any money left, we don’t have food, we don’t have a place to stay, the cartel is pursuing us,” said Barrios, whose wife was in U.S. custody. “What are we going to do, wait until they kill us?”
Last week, Barrios and his friends entered the U.S. and were expelled. They had little hope of a different result Thursday.
On the U.S. side of the river, many surrendered immediately to authorities and hoped to be released while pursuing their cases in backlogged immigration courts, which takes years.
It was not clear how many migrants were on the move or how long the surge might last. By Thursday evening, the flow seemed to be slowing in some locations, but it was not clear why, or whether crossings would increase again after the coronavirus-related restrictions expire.
A U.S. official reported the Border Patrol stopped some 10,000 migrants on Tuesday — nearly twice the level from March and only slightly below the 11,000 figure that authorities have said is the upper limit of what they expect after Title 42 ends.
A volunteer walks along a border wall as she passes out baby wipes to migrants waiting to apply for asylum between two border walls Thursday, May 11, 2023, in San Diego. Many of the hundreds of migrants between the walls that separate Tijuana, Mexico, with San Diego have been waiting for days to apply for asylum. Pandemic-related U.S. asylum restrictions, known as Title 42, are to expire May 11. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
More than 27,000 people were in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody, the official said.
“Our buses are full. Our planes are full,” said Pedro Cardenas, a city commissioner in Brownsville, Texas, just north of Matamoros, as recent arrivals headed to locations across the U.S.
The new policies crack down on illegal crossings while also setting up legal pathways for migrants who apply online, seek a sponsor and undergo background checks. If successful, the reforms could fundamentally alter how migrants arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border.
But it will take time to see results. Biden has conceded the border will be chaotic for a while. Immigrant advocacy groups have threatened legal action. And migrants fleeing poverty, gangs and persecution in their homelands are still desperate to reach U.S. soil at any cost.
Many migrants were acutely aware of looming policy changes as they searched Thursday for an opportunity to turn themselves over to U.S. immigration authorities before the 11:59 EDT deadline.
While Title 42 prevented many from seeking asylum, it carried no legal consequences, encouraging repeat attempts. After Thursday, migrants face being barred from entering the U.S. for five years and possible criminal prosecution.
Holding facilities along the border already were far beyond capacity. But late Thursday, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell, an appointee of President Donald Trump, halted the administration’s plan to begin releasing migrants with notices to report to an immigration office in 60 days when holding centers reach 125% capacity, or where people are held an average of 60 hours. The quick releases were to also be triggered when authorities stop 7,000 migrants along the border in a day.
The state of Florida argued the administration’s plan was nearly identical to another Biden policy previously voided in federal court. Earlier Thursday, the Justice Department said its new move was a response to an emergency and being prevented from carrying it out “could overwhelm the border and raise serious health and safety risks to noncitizens and immigration officials.”
Weatherell blocked the releases for two weeks and scheduled a May 19 hearing on whether to extend his order.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had already warned of more crowded Border Patrol facilities to come.
“I cannot overstate the strain on our personnel and our facilities,” he told reporters Thursday.
Even as migrants were racing to reach U.S. soil before the rules expire, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said smugglers were sending a different message. He noted an uptick in smugglers at his country’s southern border offering to take migrants to the United States and telling them the border was open starting Thursday.
On Wednesday, Homeland Security announced a rule to make it extremely difficult for anyone who travels through another country, like Mexico, or who did not apply online, to qualify for asylum. It also introduced curfews with GPS tracking for families released in the U.S. before initial asylum screenings.
The administration says it is beefing up the removal of migrants found unqualified to stay in the U.S. on flights like those that brought nearly 400 migrants home to Guatemala from the U.S. on Thursday.
Among them was Sheidi Mazariegos, 26, who arrived with her 4-year-old son just eight days after being detained near Brownsville.
“I heard on the news that there was an opportunity to enter, I heard it on the radio, but it was all a lie,” she said. Smugglers got her to Matamoros and put the two on a raft. They were quickly apprehended by Border Patrol agents.
Mazariegos said she made the trek because she is poor and hoped to reunite with her sisters living in the U.S.
At the same time, the administration has introduced expansive new legal pathways into the U.S.
Up to 30,000 people a month from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela can enter if they apply online with a financial sponsor and enter through an airport. Processing centers are opening in Guatemala, Colombia and elsewhere. Up to 1,000 can enter daily though land crossings with Mexico if they snag an appointment on an online app.
At shelters in northern Mexico, many migrants chose not to rush to the border and waited for existing asylum appointments or hopes of reserving one online.
At the Ágape Misión Mundial shelter in Tijuana, hundreds of migrants bided their time. Daisy Bucia, 37, and her 15-year-old daughter arrived at the shelter over three months ago from Mexico’s Michoacán state – fleeing death threats — and have an asylum appointment Saturday in California.
Bucia read on social media that pandemic-era restrictions were ending at the U.S.-Mexico border, but preferred to cross with certainty later.
“What people want more than anything is to confuse you,” Bucia said.
Associated Press writers Colleen Long and Rebecca Santana in Washington; Christopher Sherman in Mexico City; Gerardo Carrillo in Matamoros, Mexico; Maria Verza in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, New Mexico; Giovanna Dell’Orto in El Paso; and Elliot Spagat in Tijuana, Mexico, contributed to this report.
Ciudad Juarez, Mexico — Hundreds of people tried to storm the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday, after a rumor that migrants would be allowed to cross into the United States. Around noon, a large crowd of mainly Venezuelans began to gather near the entrance of a bridge connecting Mexico’s Ciudad Juarez to El Paso, Texas in the southern United States.
Frustrated by delays and difficulties in applying for asylum in the United States after journeys thousands of miles long through Central America and Mexico, some told AFP they thought they would be allowed entry because of a supposed “day of the migrant” celebration.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, Border Patrol Agents, and El Paso Police are seen, lower left, on the Texas side of the Paso Del Norte International Bridge which links El Paso to Juarez, Mexico, via a border crossing, as migrants gather on the other side, March 12, 2023.
City of El Paso/Handout
Images on social media showed a group that included many women and children running towards the border, shouting “to the USA.”
They quickly encountered barbed wire, orange barricades and police with shields.
US border guards “of course” moved to close the bridge, said Enrique Valenzuela, a civil society worker who helps migrants in Juarez.
Jackson Solis, a 23-year-old Venezuelan, was among those who came to the bridge on Sunday to see if the rumor was true.
“We all ran and they put a fence with barbed wire around us. They threw tear gas at us,” he said.
Solis told AFP he had been waiting six months to try to schedule an appointment to apply for asylum in the United States, where he wants to work. Appointments must now be booked through a Customs and Border Protection mobile app that was introduced this year as asylum seekers were required to apply in advance rather than upon arrival.
The Biden administration has been hoping to stem the record tide of migrants and asylum seekers undertaking often dangerous journeys organized by human smugglers to get to the United States.
“Do not just show up at the border,” President Joe Biden said in a speech at the time.
Mr. Biden took office vowing to give refuge to asylum seekers and end harsh detention policies for illegal border crossers, but since he commissioned new asylum eligibility rules in a February 2021 executive order, three people with direct knowledge of the debates told CBS News’ Camilo Montoya-Galvez there have been disagreements within the administration over how generous the regulations should be.
Some top administration officials have voiced concern about issuing rules that could make additional migrants eligible for asylum and make it more difficult to deport them while the administration is focused on reducing unlawful border crossings, the sources told CBS News.
About 200,000 people try to cross the border from Mexico to the United States each month, but the number of migrants apprehended by U.S. border patrol agents after illegally crossing into the U.S. dropped by roughly 40% in January — when the Biden administration announced its revamped strategy to discourage unlawful crossings, according to preliminary government data obtained by CBS News last month.
Border Patrol agents recorded approximately 130,000 apprehensions of migrants who entered the U.S. between official ports of entry along the border with Mexico in January, compared to the near-record 221,000 apprehensions in December, the internal preliminary figures show. The number of Border Patrol apprehensions in November and October totaled 207,396 and 204,874, respectively.
Most are from Central and South America, and they typically cite poverty and violence in their home nations in requesting asylum.
Work crews have steadily erected hundreds of double-stacked shipping containers topped by razor wire along Arizona’s remote eastern boundary with Mexico in a bold show of border enforcement by Republican Gov. Doug Ducey even as he prepares to leave office.
Until protesters slowed, then largely halted the work in recent days, Ducey pressed forward over the objections of the U.S. government, environmentalists and an incoming governor who has called it a poor use of resources.
Democratic Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs said last week she was “looking at all the options” and hasn’t decided what to do about the containers after her Jan. 5. inauguration. She previously suggested the containers be repurposed as affordable housing, an increasingly popular option for homeless and low-income people.
“I don’t know how much it will cost to remove the containers and what the cost will be,” Hobbs told Phoenix PBS TV station KAET in an interview Wednesday.
Federal agencies have told Arizona the construction on U.S. land is unlawful and ordered it to halt. Ducey responded Oct. 21 by suing federal officials over their objections, sending the dispute to court.
A long row of shipping containers wait for installation along the border where hundreds shipping containers create a wall between the United States and Mexico in San Rafael Valley, Ariz., Thursday, Dec. 8, 2022.
Ross D. Franklin / AP
Environmental groups say the containers could imperil natural water systems and endanger species.
“A lot of damage could be done here between now and early January,” said Russ McSpadden, a Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity who has regularly traveled to the site since late October.
Ducey insists Arizona holds sole or shared jurisdiction over the 60-foot (18.2 meter) strip the containers rest on and has a constitutional right to protect residents from “imminent danger of criminal and humanitarian crises.”
“Arizona is going to do the job that Joe Biden refuses to do — secure the border in any way we can.” Ducey said when Arizona sued the U.S. government. “We’re not backing down.”
The federal agencies want Ducey’s complaint dismissed.
Border security was a focus of Donald Trump’s presidency and remains a potent issue for Republican politicians. Hobbs’ GOP rival, Kari Lake, campaigned on a promise to dispatch the National Guard to the border on her first day in office. Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, recently reelected to a third term, has pushed to keep building Trump’s signature wall on the mostly private land along his state’s border with Mexico and has crowdsourced funds to help pay for it. He also has gotten attention for busing migrants to Democratic-led cities far from the southern border, including New York City, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
Ducey’s move comes amid a record flow of migrants arriving at the border. U.S. border officials have stopped migrants 2.38 million times in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, up 37% from the year before. The annual total surpassed 2 million for the first time in August and is more than twice the highest level during Trump’s presidency, in 2019.
Ducey’s container wall effort began in late summer in Yuma in western Arizona, a popular crossing point, with scores of asylum-seekers arriving daily and often finding ways to circumvent the new barriers. The containers filled areas left open when Trump’s 450-mile (724 km) border wall was built. But remote San Rafael Valley — the latest construction site — is not typically used by migrants and was not contemplated in Trump’s wall construction plan. McSpadden said he has not seen migrants or Border Patrol agents there, just hikers and backpacking cyclists.
The construction there stretches from oak forests in the Huachuca foothills southeast of Tucson and across the valley’s grasslands. As of the middle of last week, cranes had transported more than 900 blue or rust-colored metal containers down a dirt road freshly scraped into the landscape, then double stacked them up to 17 feet (5.2 meters) high alongside waist-high vehicle barriers of crisscrossed steel. Workers bolted the containers together and welded sheet metal over gaps.
Still, yawning gaps remain in the new container wall, including an open space of several hundred yards (meters) on terrain far too steep to place the containers. In some low lying wash areas there are gaps nearly three feet (1 meter) wide.
Environmental activists demonstrating at the Cochise County site in the past week largely stopped the work in recent days by standing in front of construction vehicles. One recent day, a dozen demonstrators sat atop stacked containers or in camp chairs near tents and vehicles where they sleep.
The work in Yuma cost about $6 million and wrapped up in 11 days with 130 of the containers covering about 3,800 feet (about 1,160 meters). The Bureau of Reclamation told Arizona it violated U.S. law by building on federal land. The Cocopah Indian Tribe also complained the state did not seek permission to build on its nearby reservation.
The newer project is far larger, costing some $95 million and using up to 3,000 containers to cover 10 miles (16 km), in Arizona’s southeastern Cochise County. The U.S. Forest Service also told Arizona to halt its work in the Coronado National Forest, and recently alerted visitors to potential hazards posed by construction equipment involved in the state’s “unauthorized activities.”
The Center for Biological Diversity has sided with the federal government’s position that the construction violates U.S. law.
While Ducey’s lawsuit does not address environmental concerns, groups like the center say the work in the Coronado National Forest imperils endangered or threatened species like the western yellow-billed cuckoo and the Mexican spotted owl, as well as big cats including the occasional ocelot.
The biologically diverse region of southeastern Arizona is known for its “sky islands,” or isolated mountain ranges rising over 6,000 feet (1,828 meters) above “seas” of desert and grasslands. Wildlife cameras in the region regularly photograph black bears, bobcats, ringtails, spotted skunks, white-nosed coatis and pig-like javelina.
McSpadden said the work has toppled oak and juniper trees and he’s found spools of razor wire and other construction debris on national forest land.
Environmentalists warn of the dangers of placing the containers atop a watershed of the San Pedro River that floods during the monsoon season each summer. Just south of the border lies a protected area called Rancho Los Fresnos, home to the beaver, a threatened species in Mexico.
Biologist Myles Traphagen of Wildlands Network told a briefing on border issues last month that much damage caused during the Trump administration’s border wall construction was never fixed. Last year, he mapped the Arizona and New Mexico sections of that border wall to highlight damaged areas. A report this year highlights areas the group considers priorities for reconstruction.
Dynamite blasts forever reshaped the remote Guadalupe Canyon in Arizona’s southeast corner. Towering steel bollards closed off wildlife corridors, preventing animals like tiny elf owls, pronghorns and big cats from Mexico to cross into the U.S. to hunt and mate.
