illegal immigration
“We pray Trump doesn’t win”: 150,000 migrants in Mexico are rushing to the border before the election
From ToddBensman.com
By Todd Bensman as published by The Daily Mail
“I love Kamala Harris,’ a young Venezuelan man declared as he rested on the side of a highway in southern Mexico last week.
His belongings were heaped at his feet. Hundreds of fellow migrants stretched out along the roadway in both directions.
They’re headed for the U.S. and nearly all of them have an opinion about who should be America’s next president.
Donald Trump, no,’ the Venezuelan man said, shaking his head and dragging his thumb across his throat in a slicing motion.
He is one of thousands of migrants – from all over the world – joining a new rush traveling north from southern Mexico toward the U.S. border, less than two weeks before the presidential election.
I went to Tapachula in southwest Mexico near the border with Guatemala to investigate why they were on the move – again.
Throughout 2022 and 2023, massive caravans – some reportedly as large as 6,000-strong – became a common feature of the immigration crisis.
The mass migration became such a humanitarian and public relations disaster for the Biden-Harris Administration that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was dispatched to meet with Mexico’s president in December 2023 to demand that he impose stricter immigration controls.
And the pressure campaign worked.
‘I love Kamala Harris ,’ a young Venezuelan man declared as he rested on the side of a highway in southern Mexico last week. He is one of thousands of migrants – from all over the world – joining a new rush traveling north from southern Mexico toward the U.S. border, less than two weeks before the presidential election. (Above) Migrant caravan near Tapachula, Mexico on October 20, 2024
In January, I reported for DailyMail.com on Mexican police and military roundups near the U.S. border.
Migrants who made it to those northern provinces were detained and shipped hundreds of miles back south to cities like Tapachula in the southwest or Villahermosa near the gulf.
The Mexican media called it ‘Operation Carousel.’
And for nearly 10 months, the caravans stopped.
But now, they’re back on.
The migrants I spoke to on the road this week believe that this may be their last chance.
Many of them hope to reach the U.S. before November 5 because they fear that, if Trump is re-elected, he’ll close the southern border and enforce longstanding immigration laws.
‘If [Trump] wins… one has to do what the government says, [wait] for my turn,’ said Carlos, a Honduran man in a caravan 30 miles north of Tapachula.
In reality, it’s unlikely that these migrants will be able to make the 1,300-mile trek in the next two weeks. But they can try.
And there’s another more complicated reason that the caravans have started back up: The Mexican government is encouraging them.
The caravans that I traveled with were escorted by Mexican National Guard escorts, something that I have witnessed. Perhaps, it not only the migrants growing restless, so, too, are the authorities.
For months, an estimated 150,000 U.S.-bound migrants have been bottled up in increasingly dire conditions in Tapachula, as ever more arrive there from South and Central America.
In fact, the true number massing in southern Mexico may even be in the hundreds of thousands.
I’ve visited Tapachula at least five times over the last decade and I’ve never seen it so crowded. All the hotels and motels are packed. Immigrant shelters are at full capacity.
Those who cannot afford accommodations – including women and children – sleep on the streets and in city parks, packed in like sardines.
Remember this as you hear Vice President Kamala Harris tout new statistics showing a precipitous decline in the number of illegal U.S. border crossings in 2024.
She attributes the positive change to the recent enforcement of U.S. asylum laws. But that’s not the full story.
Even the Department of Homeland Security admitted earlier this month that the drop in illegal US border crossings is due, in part, to, ‘increased Mexican enforcement efforts.’
Indeed, at the White House’s behest, Mexico has been containing these people for months in southern cities like Tapachula and Villahermosa, which have come to resemble sprawling, open-air refugee camps.
Now the situation is becoming untenable.
According to those I’ve spoken to, the Mexican government’s promises to provide travel documents to the migrants have never materialized.
In an apparent recognition of the overcrowding, the U.S. government is now building a new migration processing facility in Tapachula.
Meanwhile, the Mexican government is starting to transfer migrants out of Tapachula into surrounding cities to relieve the growing pressure.
And, the coming election is only heightening tensions.
Incredible drone shows large caravan migrants heading to the US
A group of Ghanaian men in a congested park in Tapachula told me that they feared a Trump presidency.
‘We do not like Donald Trump, because he don’t like us,’ one man said.
To him, Kamala Harris is the preferred option.
Another Ghanian man said he plans to wait for the results of the election, before making his next move: ‘If after election day [Harris is elected], we know that everything is good, then we can enter.’
A group of Ghanaian men in a congested park in Tapachula told me that they feared a Trump presidency. ‘We do not like Donald Trump, because he don’t like us,’ one man said. To him, Kamala Harris is the preferred option.
A middle-aged Venezuelan man also in the park reiterated those fears: ‘We know that if Donald Trump wins, all the migrants will be kicked out the [United States]… we hope that he doesn’t win.’
It is still unclear how far north these migrant caravans will get before America votes – and I suspect that many migrants only wish to escape Tapachula.
But, certainly, it seems likely that after November 5 – Mexico’s newly-elected president will consider her country’s part in ‘Operation Carousel’ to be complete and lift any remaining immigration controls.
That would mean hundreds of thousands of migrants, who have been waiting out the U.S. election in Mexico, may be permitted to – once again – try their luck at crossing illegally into the U.S.
As far as they’re concerned, a Kamala Harris presidency would mean that America’s borders will be thrown open.
If Donald Trump is elected president, their plans may change.
Great Reset
Hundreds of thousands of migrants are being held in southern Mexico until US Election Day
From The Center for Immigration Studies
By Todd Bensman
TAPACHULA, Mexico — This town near the border of Guatemala holds a migrant time bomb ready to go off just after the US presidential election.
The fuse was lit in December 2023, when the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration sent senior lieutenants to Mexico to work out the details of what remains a highly mysterious grand diplomatic bargain.
Worried about what the optics of the southern border would do to their re-election chances — though not the migrant crisis itself — the White House wanted to stop the pictures of crowds of people gathered at the wall.
The deal was to have Mexico deploy 32,500 troops to the US border to round up untold thousands of intending border crossers from the northern precincts and force-ship them — “internal deportation” by planes and buses — thousands of miles to Mexico’s southern provinces and entrap them in cities like Tapachula in Chiapas state behind militarized roadblocks.
Mexico closed off most of its freight trains to migrant free riders, bulldozed northern camps, and patrolled relentlessly for more deportee targets.
Meanwhile, the administration increased “parole” programs that flew migrants directly from countries like Venezuela, thus avoiding the border entirely.
The effect was immediate. Illegal border crossings plummeted from an embarrassing, record-breaking 12,000 to 14,000 per day in November and December 2023 to about 3,000 or 4,000 per day before January was even over.
But the crisis isn’t over.
The just-released 2025 Homeland Threat Assessment from the Department of Homeland Security says the decrease in illegal border crossing is largely due to “increased Mexican enforcement efforts.”
What happens if that enforcement stops?
Tapachula is bursting at the seams.
No one really knows how many people are stacked up, but local shelter managers reported to me that they had filled up long ago.
The publisher of Noticia De Tapachula, the daily newspaper, told me 150,000 immigrants were in town at any given time, a 42% increase in the city’s normal population of 350,000. Untold thousands more are stacked up in Villahermosa, a city of 830,000.
Mexico’s response has been to try to spread the immigrants around the southern portion of the country.
I spent time at two different roadside areas where federal immigration officers would call out names from the crowd, who would board buses that delivered them to other regional cities in Chiapas — but NOT beyond them and certainly never beyond Mexico City.
Mexico is still trying to hold up its end of the bargain, at least until November 5, even though more migrants are starting to slip through and making it over the Texas or California borders.
The question is what happens after the American election.
No matter who wins, Mexico might well consider that it more than satisfied its obligation to the current White House occupant and open the floodgates.
If it’s Donald Trump, Americans should expect a massive tidal wave of caravans for the 10 weeks before Inauguration Day. All the migrants I’ve spoken to say they fear a Trump presidency, and will rush to the border in a last-ditch attempt.
If it’s Harris, perhaps the massive tidal wave will go on for the next four years, much like the last four.
Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, is the author of “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.”
From The Center Square
Charged with 775,000 criminal offenses, 316,000 convictions
Noncitizens, including those in the country illegally, are committing crimes, and they’re being charged, imprisoned and convicted for them in Texas.
A new report by the Texas Department of Public Safety highlights the extent of criminal charges, it says, not “to allege that foreign nationals in the country illegally commit more crimes than other groups” but to identify “thousands of crimes that should not have occurred and thousands of victims that should not have been victimized because the perpetrator should not be here.”
The data, covering roughly 13 years from June 1, 2011, through Sept. 30, 2024, represents “the minimum number of crimes associated with criminal illegal noncitizens” charged with committing state offenses.
The data is broken down into several categories based on Texas’s participation with the Department of Homeland Security’s Secure Communities program, which enables DHS to work with state and local law enforcement to take custody of those posing a danger to public safety.
The program begins at the local level where the offender is arrested and booked by a Texas law enforcement officer. Fingerprints are submitted to Texas DPS and the FBI for criminal history and warrant checks. Biometric data is sent to DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to obtain immigration and removal status.
The data is reported by category: 1) those known to DHS (their fingerprints are in DHS’s database); 2) those who illegally entered the country and evaded capture, known as gotaways, who were later arrested by local or state law enforcement officers for a state offense; 3) those DHS adjudicates in the immigration system held in Texas prisons.
Historical Arrest and Conviction Data for Select Offenses Associated with Incarcerated Illegal Criminal Noncitizens
In the first category, criminal noncitizens previously known to DHS, more than 443,000 were booked into local Texas jails during the timeframe evaluated. The majority, 314,000, were in the country illegally.
The 314,000 were charged with more than 546,000 criminal offenses, according to the report. They include arrests for homicide (1,011), assault (70,230), burglary (9,787), drugs (63,886), kidnapping (1,292), theft (27,520), obstructing police (42,581), robbery (3,123), sexual assault (6,943), sexual offense (7,953) and weapons (6,748).
These charges resulted in more than 200,000 convictions.
During this timeframe, more than 32,000 in the second category were incarcerated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Among them, 10,738 weren’t identified through DHS’s Secure Communities program at the time of their arrest.
The 10,738 criminal illegal foreign nationals incarcerated in TDCJ facilities were charged with more than 10,000 criminal offenses, according to the report. They include arrests for homicide (134), assault (1,294), burglary (573), drugs (1,809), kidnapping (57), theft (517), obstructing police (950), robbery (375), sexual assault (834), sexual offense (397), and weapons (244).
These criminal charges resulted in more than 5,000 convictions, according to DPS records.
DPS also notes that the date the criminal noncitizens “were identified as illegal while in prison,” between June 1, 2011, and Sept. 30, 2024, “does not necessarily align with the size of the population of illegal noncitizens identified while in prison. A more accurate assessment can be seen when examining this population’s entire Texas criminal history and not just for offenses committed during this time period.”
DPS also notes that “because individuals identified as being illegally present in the country may have had a Texas criminal history prior to their immigration status being known to law enforcement, DPS has traditionally published criminal history data for a noncitizen’s entire criminal history.”
To provide “a more accurate assessment,” DPS published historical data of the Texas criminal careers of 314,000 illegal foreign nationals, which shows they were charged with more than 755,000 criminal offenses.
These include arrests for homicide (1,608), assault (94,427), burglary (21,008), drugs (91,676), kidnapping (1,645), theft (43,113), obstructing police (63,783), robbery (5,367), sexual assault (9,422), sexual offense (13,052) and weapons (11,422).
These charges resulted in more than 316,000 convictions.
When factoring in the entire Texas criminal careers of the 10,738 illegal foreign nationals incarcerated in TDCJ facilities, the charges increased to more than 48,000 criminal offenses.
DPS also notes that “the criminal activity for individuals identified as illegal while in prison is underrepresented for this time period because they may have been incarcerated during the time frame used in this report.”
The data excludes all federal and other states’ criminal charges. It also excludes foreign nationals lawfully in the U.S. charged with committing state criminal offenses.
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