YUMA, Ariz. — The young men wearing parkas and sweatshirts appeared out of the darkness around 2 a.m., running for a gap in the border wall and sending up great clouds of dust.
Across southern Arizona, a full range of border woes for Biden
“Don’t run!” the other migrants shouted in Spanish. “Walk!" the Border Patrol agents yelled.
The 15 men, all from India, clustered together anxiously in line along with hundreds of others waiting to turn themselves in. The crowd included families from Colombia and Venezuela. Smiling Cuban 20-somethings taking selfies. Several young Iranians, the only ones wearing protective masks for covid. A group of Georgians heading for New Jersey.
The polyglot queue in Yuma of what authorities call “give ups” presented a jarring contrast to the wild chases happening about 300 miles farther east along the border. Under a blazing afternoon sun in Nogales a day earlier, young men from Mexico wearing head-to-toe camouflage climbed over the border wall every few minutes in choreographed intervals, racing into dry creek beds, residential backyards and a sprawling junkyard. A dozen or so U.S. agents charged after them on ATVs, bicycles and horseback, badly outnumbered.
Arizona spans more than 370 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border, and perhaps no other state better encapsulates the array of challenges facing U.S officials trying to manage the illegal entries. Border crossers are arriving from more countries and in greater numbers than ever, at the same time that Mexican migration has surged to levels not matched since the mid-2000s.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is on pace to make more than 2 million arrests along the Mexico border during the 2022 fiscal year that ends in September, surpassing last year’s record of 1.73 million. About 400,000 have occurred in Arizona.
CBP encounters along
Southwest Border by year
1.5M
1M
500K
0
2019
2020
2021
2022
Data is in fiscal years. 2022 data is through May.
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
CBP encounters along Southwest Border
by year
1.5M
1M
500K
0
2019
2020
2021
2022
Data is in fiscal years. 2022 data is through May.
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
CBP encounters along Southwest Border by year
1.5M
1M
500K
0
2019
2020
2021
2022
Data is in fiscal years. 2022 data is through May.
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
“The people who are crossing the border don’t pick where they cross the border,” John Modlin, the Border Patrol chief of the Tucson sector, said in an interview. “They are at the mercy of the smuggling organizations.”
CBP divides Arizona into two sectors, Yuma and Tucson. The Mexican traffickers who control smuggling routes have developed a tailored strategy for each one to move clients paying thousands of dollars to enter the United States.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection sectors
in the Southwest Border
Yuma
Big
Bend
El
Centro
El
Paso
Laredo
Del
Rio
Tucson
San Diego
Rio
Grande
Valley
MEXICO
Total number of encounters at the
Southwest Border as of May 2022
Title 8: Standard immigration proceedings
Title 42: Public health policy linked to pandemic
allowing CBP to quickly return some nationalities
back to Mexico
0
10K
20K
30K
40K
San Diego
El Centro
Yuma
Tucson
El Paso
Big Bend
Del Rio
Laredo
Rio Grande Valley
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
U.S. Customs and Border Protection sectors
in the Southwest Border
Yuma
Big
Bend
El
Centro
Laredo
Tucson
El Paso
San Diego
Del
Rio
Yuma
Nogales
Rio
Grande
Valley
MEXICO
Total number of encounters at the Southwest Border
as of May 2022
Title 8: Standard
immigration
proceedings
Title 42: Public health policy linked
to pandemic allowing CBP to quickly
return some nationalities back to Mexico
40K
30K
20K
10K
0
San
Diego
El
Centro
Yuma
Tucson
El
Paso
Big
Bend
Del
Rio
Laredo
Rio
Grande
Valley
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
U.S. Customs and Border Protection sectors in the Southwest Border
Yuma
Big
Bend
El
Centro
El Paso
Laredo
Tucson
Del
Rio
San
Diego
Yuma
Nogales
Rio
Grande
Valley
MEXICO
Total number of encounters at the southwest border as of May 2022
Title 8: Standard
immigration proceedings
Title 42: Public health policy linked to pandemic
allowing CBP to quickly return some nationalities
back to Mexico
40K
30K
20K
10K
0
San Diego
El Centro
Yuma
Tucson
El Paso
Big Bend
Del Rio
Laredo
Rio Grande
Valley
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
The Tucson sector is used mostly for young men from Mexico. Smugglers guide them via cellphone through isolated desert and mountain areas, or send them to blitz the border wall in ones-and-twos, stretching U.S. agents whose numbers are spread too thin to stop them all. As daytime temperatures soar past 100 degrees, emergency rescue calls are constant and deaths from heat exposure are common. The smugglers play a numbers game, knowing agents are too tied up to arrest everyone and migrants rarely face legal consequences for getting caught.
In Nogales, Ariz., young men from Mexico wearing camouflage suits jump the border wall in broad daylight, running and hiding in residential backyards, storm drains and junkyards. Smuggling organizations on the Mexican side have lookouts on the hillsides above town who send the men in ones-and-twos, playing a numbers game against U.S. agents spread too thin to stop them all. Many of those arrested are quickly returned to Mexico under the pandemic-era Title 42 public health policy, which effectively allows border crossers to try again and again until they succeed. Once detained, agents direct migrants to remove any camouflage layers and shoelaces while checking their documents.
Adults from Mexico and Central America’s Northern Triangle countries arrested in the Tucson sector are typically sent back across the border under an emergency public health policy implemented at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The policy, known as Title 42, gives U.S. agents a quick way to return migrants, but CBP officials acknowledge a spike in recidivism rates because there is no punishment or threat of jail for repeat crossing attempts.
[How covid-era immigration restrictions work at the border]
In Nogales, one young man from Mexico’s Puebla state said it was the third time he’d been caught by agents in 15 days. His mother and father were waiting for him in New York City, he said. “I’ll keep trying,” he shrugged.
A cheap cellphone found in the bushes near the spot where he was arrested had text messages from an apparent smuggler. “POLLO,” one message read, using the smugglers’ term for customers. “ANSWER,” it said in Spanish.
The Yuma sector’s pattern is the near-opposite. Migrants from all over the world, including many families with children, arrive in groups of 60 to 100 between midnight and dawn. Vans, trucks and passenger vehicles drop them off along the banks of the Colorado River on the Mexican side, and they wade through knee-high water into the United States, entering through unfinished segments of the border wall.
The challenge for U.S. agents in this sector amounts to more an administrative than physical one: handling huge volumes of newcomers, including children, in the middle of the night, speaking dozens of languages.
At a gap in the border wall along the banks of the Colorado River outside Yuma, Ariz., migrants from all over the world arrive in large groups in the middle of the night to surrender to the Border Patrol. Those who claim a fear of persecution are generally processed and released into the United States while their applications for humanitarian protection are pending. The scene resembles an international arrivals hall, with people of all ages coming from India, South America and Eastern Europe after catching flights to Mexico. Agents use cellphones with new facial recognition software that scan identification documents. The Title 42 policy is rarely applied in Yuma because Mexico does not accept returns from these nations.
The process at the busiest crossing point in Yuma has become so routinized that it resembles an outdoor international arrival hall. There are portable restrooms, crates of bottled water and trash bins where migrants are instructed to toss any personal items that don’t fit into a small plastic bag.
Cubans have been arriving in numbers not recorded since the 1980 Mariel boatlift, and many of those lined up in Yuma announced and narrated their U.S. landing on social media. Others video-chatted with loved ones on WhatsApp. Arizona served as a roundabout way for them to get to Florida, but a much safer one than the sea.
Southwest Border encounters
SINGLE ADULTS
368,812
2019
353,168
2020
1,105,925
2021
1,083,896
2022
INDIVIDUALS IN FAMILY UNITS
2019
527,112
2020
70,994
2021
479,728
2022
350,631
UNACCOMPANIED MINORS
2019
80,634
2020
33,239
2021
146,925
2022
100,336
Data is in fiscal years. 2022 data is through May.
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
Southwest Border encounters
SINGLE ADULTS
368,812
2019
353,168
2020
1,105,925
2021
1,083,896
2022
INDIVIDUALS IN FAMILY UNITS
2019
527,112
2020
70,994
2021
479,728
2022
350,631
UNACCOMPANIED MINORS
2019
80,634
2020
33,239
2021
146,925
2022
100,336
Data is in fiscal years. 2022 data is through May.
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
Southwest Border encounters
SINGLE
ADULTS
INDIVIDUALS IN
FAMILY UNITS
UNACCOMPANIED
MINORS
368,812
527,112
80,634
2019
353,168
70,994
33,239
2020
1,105,925
479,728
146,925
2021
1,083,896
350,631
100,336
2022
Data is in fiscal years. 2022 data is through May.
Source: U.S. Customs and Border Patrol
HANNAH DORMIDO/THE WASHINGTON POST
Summer temperatures in Yuma reach 110 degrees during the day and remained close to 90 well past midnight. The group of men from India who ran to the wall remained in tight formation, sweating profusely in puffy coats and cold-weather gear. “Punjab” several said when asked where they were from, shaking their heads at questions about how they’d arrived and why they’d left India.
A Colombian man, Ronald Lopez, arrived panting and dizzy, aided by his wife, Diana, and son, Samuel, 9, who was wearing a New York Yankees cap. The family got lost in the brush along the river, Lopez said, and his diabetes triggered a low-blood sugar episode. He collapsed against the border wall.
A young Brazilian ahead of him in line who said he had medical training appeared with a jar of Nutella. Lopez scooped out the sticky hazelnut spread with his fingers and gulped it down with bottled water set out by the Border Patrol.
“Papi, it’s all right, you’ll be okay,” Samuel said, hugging his father as both cried. “We made it. We’re in the United States. This is your dream.”
Lopez said he worked at a car dealership in Bogota, but his wife had felt unsafe back home. A friend in New York with a cookware business needed a new salesman. So the family flew to Cancún.
A Mexican immigration agent threatened to deport them, Lopez said, but let them through for $600. They caught another flight to Tijuana, where he said police along the highway took the rest of the family’s cash, more than $1,000.
“We’re making this sacrifice for a better life,” Lopez said. “Things in Colombia are very hard.”
Of the 33,326 migrants taken into CBP custody in Yuma in May, about 3.5 percent were expelled under the Title 42 policy, the lowest figure anywhere along the border. Mexico generally does not accept the return of non-Mexicans from outside Central America, and migrants who claim a fear of harm if deported are generally bused out of the Yuma area and released into the United States pending a court hearing.
Agents in Yuma have encountered migrants from 109 countries so far this year, according to CBP figures.
Some, but not all, submit formal applications for asylum in the United States. U.S. immigration courts rarely grant asylum, but the adjudication process typically takes several years. During that time applicants are allowed to live and work in the United States, and the odds they will face arrest and deportation if denied are low, government statistics show.
After CBP processing in Yuma, some migrants are transported to the Casa Alitas Welcome Center in Tucson, operated by Catholic Community Services in a former juvenile detention center brightened by cheerful decor.
Nonprofit and charity organizations work with the Border Patrol to assist migrants when they are released from U.S. custody. Buses from the border arrive throughout the day at the Casa Alitas Welcome Center in Tucson, where Catholic Community Services provides covid screening, meals, WiFi access and travel coordination to help migrants reach their destinations in the United States or reunite them with relatives.
Sanjay Salim Chodry arrived at an intake area with his wife and two young children after a 10,000-mile journey from Gujarat, India. The family flew to Turkey, then Cuba and El Salvador before traversing Mexico and arriving in Yuma, Chodry said.
Shelter staff handed his family plates of pasta and vegetables. “No meat, right?” he asked, making sure the food was vegetarian.
“Everything in India is too expensive,” he said. “America is the number-one superpower.”
The shelter offered covid screenings, meals, WiFi access and travel coordination so migrants could purchase plane and bus tickets to their U.S. destinations. Director Teresa Cavendish said the number of migrants arriving from the border had dipped in June as summer temperatures rose.
“There’s a lull right now, but it won’t last,” she said. “I think there are still a lot of people waiting to see how the administration will respond if Title 42 is not lifted.”
The Biden administration attempted to lift Title 42 in May, but a federal court blocked the move, ordering the administration to keep the policy in place.
In the Tucson sector, about 74 percent of the 25,923 CBP arrests in May ended with an expulsion under Title 42, one of the highest rates along the border.
Tucson also has some of the largest numbers of “gotaway” incidents in which a border crosser is detected entering illegally but not taken into custody, according to CBP. The agency is recording about 1,000 such cases per day border-wide, according to a senior official who was not authorized to share the unpublished figures.
The push-and-pull factors that fuel migration have become powerfully aligned since President Biden took office. The pandemic, a sputtering global economy and myriad conflicts around the world are driving people to leave their homes in search of better lives; U.S. labor demand, an overburdened American asylum system and the Biden administration’s reputation for permissiveness serve as draws.
Republicans have been pounding the president’s border record ahead of the November midterm elections, and the deaths discovered in San Antonio in late June of 53 migrants being transported in a truck lacking adequate air or water — the deadliest human smuggling incident case in U.S. history — brought new waves of partisan blame.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, signed a $564 million spending bill this week to add more barriers and detection technology along the border, while also boosting assistance to local law enforcement agencies. In May, Ducey began sending busloads of migrants from Arizona to Washington — if they volunteer for a ride — following a similar initiative started by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R).
Polls show immigration and border management are among Biden’s worst-rated issues, and video footage of the crossings in Yuma are featured in Republican ads.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other Biden officials say they plan to ramp up criminal prosecutions for illegal reentry, the enforcement tool used by CBP in the past primarily to deter Mexican migrants.
The court ruling extending Title 42 does not preclude the Biden administration from referring repeat offenders to U.S. attorneys. Officials did not provide information about the number of such cases the agency has referred for prosecution in recent months.
Border Patrol agents Jesus Vasavilbaso and Robert Ortiz check the sewer tunnels in Nogales, Ariz., where the border wall extends underground. Ortiz chats with a man on the Mexican side of the border barrier in downtown Nogales, next to the official pedestrian crossing. In the deserts north of Sasabe, they track and apprehend Rigoberto Miranda, from Guatemala, who said he had been hiking for three days in triple-digit heat. He carried a cellphone and two battery chargers. Smugglers in Mexico use WhatsApp, Google Maps and other apps to remotely guide clients through isolated areas, resulting in high numbers of emergency rescue calls and deaths from exposure.
In interviews, CBP officials praised Mexican authorities for boosting enforcement along the south side of the border. But scouts working for smuggling organizations were visible on the hillsides above Nogales on a recent afternoon, brazenly directing the timing and location of crossing attempts.
Frustrated Border Patrol agents in Yuma said they were watched by smugglers on the Mexican side, too. Every time agents finished processing one large group and loaded them onto vans, a new group would arrive, as if the smugglers were staggering flights like air traffic controllers.
A young family from Russia arrived with a 4-year-old daughter they said was a U.S. citizen, born in Miami. There were four men from an extended family in Venezuela who shared photos of their grueling five-day jungle trek through Panama’s Darien Gap.
“I leave a hard life behind,” said Philipe Adeichvilli, who said he worked as a police officer in his hometown of Kutaisi, Georgia. “I think in USA my life will not be in danger.” He was headed for New Jersey.
Chris Clem, the Border Patrol chief in Yuma, said despite the record volume of migrants arriving to the sector, U.S. agents have kept the process moving quickly. CBP cellphones are loaded with new facial recognition software that scans identification documents and uploads the information to intake files on agency servers, not unlike the formal process at official ports of entry.
On the opposite side of the border wall in Yuma, a young man who said his name was Alfredo lingered just out of view from the agents, scavenging. He said he crosses the border every night to pick through discarded backpacks, shoes and clothing, searching for items of value.
“I find money all the time,” he said. “Mexican pesos. They don’t want them anymore.”
Alfredo said he lost his job as a dental assistant in the Mexican border town of Los Algodones when people stopped crossing over for crowns and fillings during the pandemic. U.S. agents don’t bother him as long as he stays on the other side of the wall, he said.
“There’s no work in my town anymore,” he said. “Only smugglers.”