By Michael McManus
FAIR
Since the beginning of 2024, Mexico has undertaken herculean efforts to help the Biden-Harris Administration reduce illegal immigration at the southern border. In fact, Mexico has been quietly operating what Mexican officials call a ‘’Carrusel’’ (merry-go-round) that moves migrants in Mexico away from the U.S. border and towards its southern provinces near Guatemala and Belize. And, with encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border dropping for six months in a row (although still at crisis levels), the Biden-Harris administration is taking credit and claiming the migrant crisis has turned a corner.
The Carrusel was ramped up after President Biden and Mexico President Lopez Obrador spoke by telephone just before Christmas in 2023. Presidents Biden and Lopez Obrador agreed that additional enforcement actions were urgently needed as encounters of illegal aliens had reached all-time highs, often hitting 10,000 per day. After this call, President Biden sent a delegation, including Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to meet Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to discuss ways to reduce illegal border crossings. According to several news outlets, the parties made several (unspecified) agreements, and encounters at the southwest border have since dropped from over 300,000 per month to below 200,000 per month (and as low as 104,000 in August).
The Biden-Harris Administration has not been forthcoming on what agreements it has made with Mexico and data is not routinely shared with the public. However, it is becoming increasingly clear that Mexico’s actions, not those of the Biden-Harris Administration, are mainly responsible for the drop in encounters at the southern border this year. Since the December meeting, Mexico has made two major policy changes. First, it is actively moving migrants it catches in its territory to the extreme south of Mexico, far from their intended destination at the U.S. border. Second, Mexico has changed visa policies to make it harder for migrants to fly into Mexico and use it as a springboard to reach the United States.
El Carrusel
The first tactic Mexico is using to help the administration is busing migrants to the extreme south of the county. Some news outlets — with more than a hint of disapproval — cite this as part of a strategy to demoralize migrants into giving up trying to reach the U.S. border. This busing is colloquially known as “El Carrusel” (the merry-go-round), because migrants are placed in the extreme south of Mexico, only to attempt to make their way back north through Mexico again.
As Mexican authorities intercept migrants throughout Mexico, they process them, move them, and then record this final location as an “event” in the Boletin Mensual de Estadisticas Migratiorias. Based on this data, it is clear that how Mexico has relocated migrants has significantly shifted over the course of 2023 and 2024. For example, in 2024, the number of migrants relocated within the northern six states along the U.S. border dropped by 37 percent compared to 2023. Meanwhile, the number of migrants placed in the states in the extreme south of Mexico increased 30 percent in just the first seven months of 2024. Moreover, by July 2024, 87 percent of the migrants relocated are being sent to just two states, Tabasco and Chiapas, in Mexico’s extreme southeast.
Thus, the data confirm widespread media reports that Mexico has launched a massive operation through which migrants are intercepted and apprehended in northern states, brought to the corner of the country furthest from the U.S. border, then processed and released. As the Washington Post recently summarized it, “Aided by the military, agents added checkpoints on highways and ramped up searches of trains and buses. In the first half of 2024, Mexico logged 712,226 apprehensions — nearly triple the number in the same period last year.”
Mexico’s program to intercept and relocate migrants actually pre-dates the December 2023 meeting between U.S. officials and Mexican President Lopez Obrador. It was used increasingly after a Mexican Supreme Court ruling in March 2023 that limited detention of migrants to just 36 hours, which made it harder to deport migrants (even if Mexico had the money to do it). This led to an increase in migrants coalescing in the northern states of Mexico. Thus, rather than deport migrants out of Mexico, Mexican authorities simply dropped them off in southern Mexico, hoping to discourage migrants from heading towards the U.S. border.
Mexico’s Visa Changes
In addition to relocating migrants, Mexico has helped the Biden-Harris Administration reduce encounters at the southern border by changing visa policies. Many people coming visa-free to Mexico for a “visit” had no intention of returning to their home countries but were using Mexico as the springboard to reach the U.S. border. Since October 2023, Mexico has introduced visa requirements for transit passengers in airports to crack down on “visits“ by people using Mexico as a springboard to the U.S. border. Over the past several months, Mexico has reinstated visa requirements for Ecuadorians and Peruvians. This has led to a dramatic decline in CBP encounters with Ecuadorians (76 percent) and Peruvians (88 percent) since the spring of this year.
Paying Migrants to Leave
Finally, Mexico has begun simply paying some migrants to leave. In March 2024, Mexico President Lopez Obrador and Venezuela President Maduro signed the ‘Vuelta a la Patria’ (Return to the Homeland) agreement. This bilateral agreement between Mexico and Venezuela will pay Venezuelans who agree to return to Venezuela from Mexico a grant of $110 per month for 6 months. Upon return to Venezuela, the migrants are supported by sponsoring employers who provide job training. Mexico is reportedly considering similar agreements with Columbia and Ecuador.
Conclusion
Rather than taking responsibility for the border crisis it created, the Biden-Harris Administration has doubled down on its own open-borders polices while placing our border security in the hands of Mexico. The Biden-Harris Administration has repeatedly touted its meaningless executive action in June, which amounts to little more than a revision of its 2023 asylum rule, as the reason for declining encounters at the southern border. The White House also cites the ongoing creation of “lawful” pathways for illegal aliens, which simply allow illegal aliens to fly over the border or funnel them through ports of entry, as reducing illegal immigration. However, as more and more evidence surfaces, it is clear that Mexico and its willingness to rescue Biden-Harris Administration from its own disastrous policies are the real reason for the dropping number of illegal aliens at our southern border. Yet, it is unclear to the American people what Mexico stands to gain from this cooperation.
The danger of the administration’s reliance on Mexico, is that our southern neighbor can pull its support at any time. Or equally bad, Mexico can extort concessions from the U.S. government in return for its continued assistance. After all, it is remarkable that after 3.5 years in the White House, the Biden-Harris Administration only launched the parole-in-place program to legalize spouses of U.S. citizens, the majority of whom are Mexicans, after the Mexican government ramped up its Carrusel program to bus migrants to the south.
If Mexico pulls its support it could unleash a massive wave of illegal immigration towards the U.S. border. As Mexico has been busing migrants to the south, and thousands more migrants arrive in Mexico daily, there is a growing accumulation of migrants in Mexico who all see the United States as their final destination. As the numbers of migrants in Mexico grows, it will place increasing pressure on the Mexican government and the Mexican people. This situation is unsustainable and it appears the Biden-Harris Administration has no plan for when Mexico pulls the plug, as it has often done in the past.
