Illegal border crossings have cooled, but the rhetoric is heating up

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Rhetoric over illegal crossings continues to heat up, even though the number of people caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has declined in recent months.

The number of illegal crossings dropped for the fifth month in a row in July, with U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehending roughly 56,000 people last month. That’s the lowest number since September 2020. By comparison, agents caught some 250,000 people in December.

The lower numbers follow an executive order signed by President Joe Biden in June directing border agents to turn back migrants without giving them a chance to seek asylum whenever illegal border crossings exceed 2,500 people a day. Mexican officials in recent months have also stepped up efforts to block migrants coming to the U.S., and scorching heat could be deterring people from coming.

Massachusetts Cracks Down 

Even with the changing situation on the border, Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healy, a Democrat, announced new policies for the state’s migrant shelter system that took effect this week. Under the new rules, migrants are only allowed to stay at overflow shelter sites for five days.

“It is essential that families understand the lack of shelter space before they travel here,” said Karissa Hand, Healey’s press secretary. “Unfortunately, we do not have additional capacity at this time.”

In fact, Healey sent 10 members of her administration to the Texas border in an effort to better coordinate with other government agencies and nonprofits, as well as to tell migrants that no shelter space is available in Massachusetts. “It is essential that we get the word out that our shelters are full so that families can plan accordingly to make sure they have a safe place to go,” said Emergency Assistance Director General Scott Rice in a statement.

But nine of Boston’s 13 city councilors signed a letter this week calling on the governor to reverse the new policy. “Housing is a human right, and we cannot sit idly by when faced with a policy that may result in young children being forced to sleep on our city streets,” they wrote.

Already, many migrants are forced to wander the Boston area looking for shelter every night, as previous destinations like hospitals and the airport have imposed new policies prohibiting migrants from staying there. That leaves advocates and nonprofits struggling to meet the need, often without adequate resources, reported The Boston Globe.

Potential Reprieve at the DNC? 

Chicago officials have worried for months that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, would try to embarrass city officials while Democrats gather in the Windy City later this month. Local officials expect Texas to send as many as 25,000 people to Chicago during the Democratic National Convention, especially after Abbott promised at the Republican National Convention last month that the “buses will continue to roll until we finally secure our border.”

But Chicago has more capacity to absorb newcomers, as the number of migrants in city shelters has fallen from around 15,000 people in December to nearly 5,700 people in late July.

“We just need to be prepared,” Beatriz Ponce de León, Chicago’s deputy mayor of immigration, told reporters recently. “We will be ready. We have the plan in place.”

Presidential Candidates Spar

Not surprisingly, the changing dynamics have not dampened the political rhetoric on immigration.

Former President Donald Trump and his campaign have tried to pin the blame on the record-setting surge of migrants crossing the southern border in recent years to Vice President Kamala Harris, the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, visited Nevada and Arizona this week, including a stop in front of the border fence. Vance said Harris had “done nothing” to stem immigration, falsely calling her Biden’s “border czar” because she was tasked with addressing migration from Central American countries.

Harris, though, hit back at Republican critics. She noted that Trump scuttled legislation in the Senate that would have imposed stricter immigration rules at the border by telling Republicans to vote against it.

And her campaign touted the endorsements of several border city mayors in Arizona from Bisbee, Nogales, Somerton and San Luis. “I trust her to meet the needs of border cities and towns without taking advantage of us for her own political gain, like her opponent,” Somerton Mayor Gerardo Anaya explained.

Still a State Campaign Issue 

Republican candidates in gubernatorial elections have also pressed the issue. Mark Robinson, the GOP candidate in North Carolina, supported legislation that would require sheriffs to cooperate with federal immigration officials. Robinson said the measure would “crack down on sanctuary cities” and “keep dangerous criminal aliens who’ve illegally entered our country through Joe Biden’s open border off our streets.”

In Missouri, one of three Republican candidates in next week’s gubernatorial primary aired a TV ad threatening to deport migrants. The spot from state Sen. Bill Eigel shows the candidate standing in front of an American flag next to a Spanish-speaking interpreter. “We’re throwing them in jail and sending them back where they came from,” he said. The translator responds “¡Ay, caramba!” and an offscreen voice repeats a catch phrase from the cartoon Speedy Gonzales, “¡Ándale, Ándale! ¡Arriba, Arriba!”

Tax Benefits 

While conservatives framed immigration as a drain on U.S. resources, a left-leaning think tank highlighted the amount of taxes that undocumented immigrants paid. The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy estimated that those immigrants paid $59.4 billion in federal taxes in 2022, and another $37.3 billion to state and local governments.

“More than a third of the tax dollars paid by undocumented immigrants go toward payroll taxes dedicated to funding programs that these workers are barred from accessing,” ITEP’s researchers wrote. “Undocumented immigrants paid $25.7 billion in Social Security taxes, $6.4 billion in Medicare taxes and $1.8 billion in unemployment insurance taxes in 2022.”

Six states—California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois and New Jersey—took in more than $1 billion in tax revenue from those immigrants. And in 40 states, the immigrants pay higher state and local tax rates than the top 1% of households living within their borders, according to ITEP.

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News to Use

Trends, Common Challenges, Cool Ideas, FYIs and Notable Events

Voting Rights
Appeals court narrows Voting Rights Act’s scope for redistricting cases in the South. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Justice Department and voters of color who had challenged Galveston, Texas’s county commission map for how it had been redrawn to dismantle a district where minorities made up a majority of the population. The conservative appeals court on Thursday reversed its previous precedent that allowed multiple minority groups to join together in challenges to redistricting plans alleged to be discriminatory under the law. The 5th Circuit’s new ruling will apply to Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi—all states where map-drawers were required to get federal approval for redistricting plans until a 2013 Supreme Court ruling gutted what was known as the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act.

Social Media
DOJ sues TikTok, accusing the company of illegally collecting children’s data. The Justice Department sued TikTok on Friday, alleging that the social media platform violated a federal law that requires kid-oriented apps and websites to get parental consent before collecting the personal information of children under 13. The complaint, filed together with the Federal Trade Commission, comes as the U.S. and the social media company are embroiled in yet another legal battle that will determine if—or how—TikTok will continue to operate in the country. It also comes as a lawsuit by 41 states makes a similar allegation against Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

Minimum Wage
Michigan court clears way for higher wages, overruling legislature. Come February, the minimum wage will rise significantly and tipped wages will begin to phase out after a Michigan Supreme Court opinion published Wednesday found that the legislature subverted the rights of citizens in 2018 by using an “adopt-and-amend” strategy to kill two ballot initiatives. The minimum wage will increase to more than $12 an hour, up from $10.33 and tipped wages will rise over the next few years until subminimum wages are phased out. In a 4-3 opinion, the Michigan Supreme Court reviewed the then GOP-controlled legislature’s decision to adopt two citizen-led ballot initiatives increasing the minimum wage and mandating paid sick leave, keeping them off the ballot that year. Lawmakers then went back and gutted the measures with amendments.

Homelessness
San Francisco mayor orders bus tickets before shelter for homeless. With shelters near capacity and “aggressive” encampment sweeps underway, Mayor London Breed issued an executive order Thursday directing all city workers to offer homeless people trips out of town before providing any other services, such as housing or shelter. Breed said the number of homeless people moving to San Francisco increased from 28% in 2019 to 40% of the total homeless population this year. Meanwhile, in New Mexico, local law enforcement has moved to clear two homeless camps in the wake of a court ruling giving local governments more leeway to force unhoused people off of public property. Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said she’s considering a statewide order similar to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s last week to clear camps on state property.

Data Privacy
Meta agrees to $1.4B settlement with Texas in privacy lawsuit over facial recognition. The tech giant on Tuesday agreed to settle the Texas lawsuit, which alleged that Meta used biometric data of users without their permission. Filed in 2022, the Texas lawsuit argued that Meta was in violation of a state law that prohibits capturing or selling a resident’s biometric information, such as their face or fingerprint, without their consent. “This is by far the biggest state governmental privacy settlement in history,” Chicago-based class action attorney Jay Edelson told The Associated Press. The only other larger claim is the Federal Trade Commission’s $5 billion settlement with the company in 2019.

Broadband
Net neutrality is on ice. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday again blocked net neutrality rules put in place by the Federal Communications Commission from going into effect. The court granted a stay, extending an earlier temporary pause. This time, net neutrality will be blocked until the court says otherwise after reviewing the petitions from broadband providers who opposed the rule. Those internet service providers successfully showed they would likely succeed on the merits of their challenge, the panel of judges wrote. The FCC voted to restore net neutrality rules earlier this year. While restoring net neutrality was always going to be contentious, its fate looked even bleaker after the Supreme Court gutted Chevron deference.

Wildfires
How AI and satellite imaging are helping detect wildfires in Colorado before they grow. Amid raging wildfires throughout the West, especially in California and Colorado, researchers are rushing to get new technologies in place to help with the problem. A new artificial intelligence program, developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and recently tested in Boulder, could help identify wildfires as small as an acre by scanning images taken by weather satellites orbiting about 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. It could dramatically cut the amount of time between identifying a fire and responding—minutes and hours that are critical to containing a blaze. Called the Next Generation Fire System, NOAA officials say it can process the deluge of data from the satellites—which capture images as frequently as every 30 seconds—and detect heat from fires smaller than a football field.

Juvenile Justice
DOJ finds Texas juvenile detention centers violated youth offenders’ rights. The U.S. Department of Justice found unconstitutional conditions at all five of Texas’ juvenile detention facilities, where children were exposed to excessive force, sexual abuse and in the case of disabled children, discrimination that kept them in custody longer or sent them to adult prisons. In a report released Thursday, the federal agency detailed the results of its investigation, which began in October 2021. The report outlined a number of “recommended minimum remedial measures,” which the Justice Department said it was “hopeful” about entering into an agreement with the state of Texas to implement. But the federal government could sue the state if it felt that Texas officials were not sufficiently addressing its concerns.

Preemption
Judges strike down Tennessee law to cut Nashville council in half. A panel of judges has struck down a change Tennessee Republican lawmakers approved last year that would cut the size of Democratic-leaning Nashville’s Metro Council in half. The decision Monday marks another court defeat for a series of new state laws passed to cut into Nashville’s autonomy, extending to its international airport and pro sports facilities. The wave of restrictions followed a decision by local Nashville leaders to spike a proposal in 2022 to bring the 2024 Republican National Convention to Music City. The latest court decision halts the law permanently, declaring it unconstitutional under home rule protections in the Tennessee Constitution because it singles out Nashville and fails to require approval by local voters or two-thirds of the metro council.

Office-to-Housing Conversions
Washington prepares to roll out tax break for office-to-housing conversions. The Washington Legislature approved a law this year to allow developers to defer sales and use taxes if they convert existing structures, like office buildings, into affordable housing. In order to receive a deferral under the new law, the project must consist of multifamily housing units with at least 10% considered affordable to low-income households, and it must be located on what the city considers underutilized commercial property. If a project maintains those qualifications for at least 10 years, the sales and use taxes would not need to be repaid. The rules are expected to be in place this month, after which cities can start implementing the program.

Picture of the Week

@masontheguardrailkid #damagedguardrail #guardrail #fypシ #masontheguardrailkid #guardrailawareness #damaged ♬ original sound - Mason The Guardrail Kid

Meet Mason Jones, aka “Mason the Guardrail Kid” to his 26,000-plus followers on TikTok. The 12-year-old from Lancaster County is on a crusade to fix Pennsylvania’s broken guardrails. He posts a video every day raising awareness about damaged guardrails around the area and country. His impromptu infrastructure inspections have led to real action by state transportation officials, who said that with "nearly 40,000 miles of roadway and over 25,400 bridges" in its purview, it encourages the public to report issues. Mason’s niche interest stemmed from watching another creator who has been a longtime advocate for roadside safety. He found Steve “the Guardrail Guy” Eimers on YouTube last May and was instantly hooked, reported Spotlight PA. 

What They’re Saying

"I just think, in a world where we're so involved in social media and all these other sorts of things, we need to get back to the real world, and what's actually happening in it."

–Brooke Huckaby, mayor of Arabi, Georgia, on why she wanted to run for mayor. At 21, Huckaby is the youngest female mayor in the U.S. She took office in January, succeeding her father, who decided not to run for another term. Arabi is two-and-a-half hours south of Atlanta, and home to less than 500 people. Huckaby is a college student, pursuing an agricultural technology management degree. She said her goal is to bring more investments into Arabi, and is working to form a police department in the city.