Mexico’s Border Crisis: The Country Can’t Take More Migrants

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The side of the southwest border is surprisingly quiet two weeks after President Biden’s strict limits on asylum took effect, but a backlog of tens of thousands of migrants threatens a humanitarian crisis on the Mexico side.

Mexico’s shelters are holding as much as six times their capacity, makeshift camps continue to pop up all over, intense summer heat is coming — and migrants hoping to enter the U.S. keep arriving from points south.

More than 25,000 migrants were still in shelters along the border and elsewhere in Mexico as of May 19, according to data collected by the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration (IOM). Hundreds more have formed makeshift camps in Mexican cities along the border. Many others have rented apartments or found other temporary housing. Crowding has strained local water and sanitation systems, and officials worry about health dangers posed by the coming heat.

Biden officials have touted a rapid decline in the number of migrants trying to illegally cross into the U.S. — falling from a record 10,000+ crossings a day before the end of pandemic-era migration restrictions known as Title 42, to less than 4,000 shortly after.

But the masses U.S. Officials have been tracking in northern Mexico as poised to cross into the United States haven’t turned back—they’re just marking time south of the border. “It’s a bit of a holding pattern right now, as migrants try to figure out what their options are,” Ladek said.

As of last week, shelters were beyond capacity in every Mexican border city except Ciudad Juarez, according to data collected by IOM.

Biden’s tough new asylum rules and the threat of deportation with a five-year ban on re-entry seem to have deterred many migrants from crossing illegally.

But new legal pathways — which administration officials have cited in differentiating their policies from those of former President Trump — are falling far short of demand.

In four months, there already have been more than 1.5 million requests from people in the U.S. to sponsor migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti, according to CBS News.

With a maximum of 30,000 arrivals allowed each month under Biden’s new rules, the backlog is growing rapidly.