2LT International News

TUCSON, Arizona: A surge of enforcement actions by Mexico could have contributed to a sharp decline in illegal border crossings into the U.S.

As well as forcing off migrants traveling on trains, Mexico also resumed flying and busing them to the southern part of the country and began flying some back to Venezuela.

President Joe Biden’s administration and the U.S. Senate are locked in discussions on restricting asylum and $110 billion in aid for Ukraine and Israel, so .

Witness at the Border, an advocacy group that tracks flight data, said during the last ten days of December, Mexico’s immigration agency sent at least 22 flights from its border region with the U.S. to southern cities.

Mexico also sent two flights to Venezuela to return 329 migrants.

A financial issue that forced Mexican immigration agencies to suspend deportations and other operations had been resolved, said Mexican President Andrs Manuel Lpez Obrador.

On Monday, arrests for illegal crossings into the U.S. from Mexico fell to some 2,500, down from more than 10,000 on several days in December, U.S. authorities said.

Tucson, Arizona, sector chief John Modlin said that at the Border Patrol’s busiest area, arrests totaled 13,800 over the seven days ending January 5, down 29 percent from 19,400 from two weeks earlier.

The drop in crossings also made U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reopen the port of entry in Lukeville, Arizona, on January 4 after a month-long closure.

In December, CBP resumed train crossings in Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas, after a five-day shutdown.

However, Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, D.C., said Mexico’s role in the recent decrease in migrant traffic should not be overstated.

“The U.S. is able to lean on Mexico for a short-term enforcement effect on migration at the border, but the long-term effects are not always clear,” Selee said.