The lethal US border regime serves only to ensure a steady supply of exploitable labour for US agriculture, but Trump’s calls to escalate threaten even that, reports John Clarke

In June, Joe Biden signed an executive order to temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border ‘when a daily threshold of crossings has been exceeded.’ Under this order, as reported in the Guardian, those ‘seeking asylum will be held to a much more rigorous standard for establishing credible fear of returning to their home country.’

Specifically, the Biden administration decided to ‘shut down asylum requests to the US-Mexico border once the number of daily encounters has reached 2,500 between legal ports of entry, which regularly occurs now. The border would reopen two weeks after that figure falls below a daily average of 1,500 for seven consecutive days.’ It is striking that the ‘measure relies on the same legal framework adopted by Donald Trump to restrict unlawful crossings in 2018, but was blocked by a federal court.’

As of July, this harsh measure had had a dramatic effect, with border crossings falling to a three-year low. Only 84,000 people crossed the border in June, which was the lowest level since Biden took office. Doubtless, in large measure, Biden acted as he did to blunt the loud criticisms coming from Donald Trump. This step has obviously been calculated to give ‘Biden and now the Democratic 2024 presidential ticket of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz the capacity to hit back at Republicans’ constant and effective attack line that Democrats won’t “secure the border”.’

Brutal impact

There is no doubt that Biden’s restrictive measures are having a brutal impact on people seeking to survive by crossing into the US. Indeed, nineteen US House Representatives have signed a letter condemning the border crackdown, noting that it ‘forces individuals to wait in danger while facing threats to their safety, in violation of US law and international treaty obligations.’ They suggest that the administration is violating its legal obligation to ensure that ‘people fleeing violence and persecution may apply for asylum no matter how they enter the United States.’

The Kino Border Initiative, based in Nogales, Mexico, which has dealt with hundreds of people turned away by the new restrictions, has found that US border officials are working to enforce the Biden order as strictly as possible. ‘Those who verbally expressed fear or an intention to seek asylum reported being ignored outright lied to and told that asylum was no longer an option, or threatened with prolonged detention.’

The shelter facility that this organisation operates ‘has seen a sharp increase in people coming there after being deported, with up to 80% being women and children.’ Shockingly, those who have been deported without the right to make their case for asylum ‘will be subject to at least a five-year bar to re-entry, and potential criminal prosecution.’

Biden’s latest restrictive measure has been taken in concert with an ongoing drive to ensure that Mexico will function as the US’s ‘immigration enforcer’. This role has been pursued by the Mexican authorities with such vigour that compared ‘to before the pandemic, detentions of migrants in an irregular situation have risen fourfold, reaching almost 800,000 in 2023.’

This vast increase in detentions is not being matched by deportations because ‘it would be far beyond the capacity of Mexico’s institutions to process’ and repatriate this enormous number of people. ‘What is happening instead, according to human rights organisations, is that migrants are being put on buses and sent back south, sometimes all the way to the border with Guatemala.’ At the same time, every effort is being made to prevent migrants coming from countries to the south of Mexico to move north through the country towards the US border. ‘The implication is that there are ever more migrants mired in transit through Mexico.’ Moreover, as ‘there is not a parallel strategy of social inclusion, these migrants are highly vulnerable.’

The enforcement role that the US has allocated to Mexico is very similar to the way in which the ‘EU funds North African countries to push back Europe bound migrants into the desert’ as Le Monde has described it. However, the US-Mexican border still remains a dreadful and sometimes lethal barrier to the movement of desperate people, with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) concluding last year that it is the ‘world’s deadliest migration land route.’

The IOM ‘documented 686 deaths and disappearances of migrants on the US-Mexico border in 2022’ but it acknowledges that the real death toll is likely to be considerably higher than official figures suggest. Many of those who perish do so as they try to cross the vast areas of the desert that are a major part of the border regions. Though US officials claim that the preservation of life is their priority, there is strong evidence to the contrary.

In 2019, Scott Warren wrote an article in the Washington Post detailing his arrest by Border Patrol agents for providing two migrants with ‘food, water, clean clothes and beds.’ On this basis, he faced charges of ‘human smuggling’ and a potential prison sentence of twenty years. Others, who had left food and water for those crossing into the US, had been charged with ‘abandonment of property’. Warren noted that the authorities were ‘aggressively prosecuting volunteers’ who tried to ensure migrants would survive, with some border agents ‘kicking over and slashing water jugs.’

Later that year, a second attempt to prosecute Warren failed, when a ‘jury unanimously agreed that he should be found not guilty of harboring undocumented immigrants.’ It was a welcome setback for an ongoing effort to intimidate those who assist migrants and, as Warren put it, the ‘government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness.’

Labour supply

It is important to appreciate that the brutal system of border enforcement that the US has put in place isn’t a means of preventing the flow of ‘undocumented’ workers into the country but only a way to limit it. Such harsh measures are a means of increasing the desperation and vulnerability of migrant workers to facilitate their use as a supply of highly exploited labour.

The erratic and dangerous Donald Trump may actually pose a threat to this finely balanced system. He is basing his re-election bid, to a very large degree, on even more extreme forms of anti-migrant sentiment than during his first period of office. However, his extreme racism, while it fires up his core base, makes those who profit from migrant labour very nervous.

An article by the Associated Press this month noted that signs being held up at the recent Republican National Convention calling for ‘Mass Deportations Now!’ and the wave of support for Trump’s ‘pledge to expel millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in American history’ were developments that raised concern even within his own rightward-moving party.

The same tensions emerged during the last Trump presidency and could be seen even as he prepared to launch his bid for office. A 2015 article in Politico pointed out that, despite enthusiastic support for Trump’s ideas in the Republican ranks, ‘the view from many conservative-leaning agricultural communities is disgust, bordering on dread.’

The article quoted people directly involved in contracting migrant labour whose comments were revealing. ‘There are growers out there screaming for labor,’ said one. ‘Trump is terrible for agriculture,’ declared ‘a California peach and plum farmer.’ Yet another, ‘who grows tomatoes, peppers, almonds and walnuts on his California farm,’ saw Trump as ‘a serious threat to U.S. farmers struggling to get their crops to market.’

Chuck Conner, president of the National Council of Farm Cooperatives and someone with impeccable Republican credentials, pointed out that roughly ‘1.4 million undocumented immigrants work on U.S. farms each year, or about 60 percent of the agricultural labor force.’ Clearly, the crude extremes that Trump proposes to go to nine years later would be considered highly problematic by those who want to preserve a hugely profitable system of exploitation.

Whether border enforcement and immigration control are conducted in a climate of racist frenzy under Trump or placed in the steadier hands of Biden’s replacement, Kamala Harris, the supposed ‘flood’ of migrants trying to cross the US-Mexican border must be seen, as an article in Canadian Dimension put it recently, as the inevitable product of ‘America’s economic, political, and military wars in Latin America and the Caribbean.’

As migrants struggle to survive in the face of repression and poverty that results from US domination of their countries, it is vital that US unions and social movements fully support their right to enter the US and to enjoy full legal status once they do so.