‘People will die’: Biden's border order threatens migrants

The sun never stopped beating down on the land that formed the border between New Mexico and Texas to the east and Mexico to the south. The harsh desert was covered with moving memories of the human trip.

Along the tall US fence in Mexico, people crossing this rugged land to get a better life leave behind empty water bottles, worn-out shoes, and torn clothes standing silently in the grass.

Some make it out alive, but four people just days ago did not. It is boiling. Different people have different ideas about whether or not Joe Biden's new presidential order is also controversial. A harsh new policy was announced last week. It will stop most refugee claims once a certain number of people cross the line without permission. This is because it is an election year.

Oscar Leeser, the Democrat mayor of El Paso, Texas, was at the White House with elected officials from both parties to hear the president speak. TGE in El Paso reported that he said the order "will save lives, keep people from dying in the desert, jumping over the walls and falling, and keep them from being exploited."

However, Dora Rodriguez, executive head of Salvavision, a group that helps refugees on both sides of the border, said the opposite. This is especially true in the southwest because of the terrible weather.

"People are going to die. Her reason was that they would not stop crossing, she told MSNBC from Tucson, Arizona.

El Paso experts and human rights activists are worried that Biden's executive action may have made things more dangerous for asylum seekers while not stopping them from taking those risks to escape violence, war, dictatorship, the climate crisis, and the poverty and dangers that come with these things.

Moreover, they worried that making it harder to get refuge would make crooks take advantage of people even more.

Josiah Heyman, head of the Centre for Inter-American and Border Studies at the University of Texas at El Paso, said, "It is just a terrible policy regarding practical human value. We are just waiting for people to climb [the border fence], fall, and break their back."

Heyman brought up a policy called "Hold the Line." This was an enforcement plan used by the US Border Patrol in the El Paso sector, which includes New Mexico, in 1993. It increased patrols and made immigration rules tighter.

Illegal crossings of the border dropped a lot at first, but Heyman said that over time, that approach and others like it have pushed people to more rural and dangerous crossing spots, where more people have died.

According to a story from the El Paso Times, the border patrol reported a record 149 migrant deaths in the El Paso sector during the fiscal year from October 2022 to September 2023. Most of the deaths were caused by heat. This is one more death than the previous year. So far this fiscal year, more than 70 people have died.

The Sunland Park and Santa Teresa deserts are empty and just west of El Paso. It is boiling there—in the triple digits Fahrenheit. The border fence and the buzzing sound of a government police chopper are the only things that stand out in the sand and bushes.

According to the Sunland Park fire department, three of the four migrants who died from thirst and heatstroke just three days before Biden announced his executive action were still alive when they were found but later died at the hospital. The fire department helped the border patrol try to save them.

Since then, the bodies of four more migrants have been found nearby, and two others were rescued on Mount Cristo Rey in Sunland Park with heat-related injuries. According to the fire department, there is no border wall on the rough hill with a 29-foot limestone statue of Christ on top.

However, last week, refuge seekers stuck in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico's sister city to El Paso, said they would try the desert anyway. They were shocked when they heard that Biden had stopped giving refuge to people like them because the number of people crossing the border illegally is consistently higher than the new daily limit of 2,500.

Someone from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) who asked not to be named said this about these travelers: "Most of the time, they are not ready for the trip or the extreme heat" in that area, which is "where we have the most heat-related deaths." The officer said that most people who bring people into the US illegally work for the powerful and dangerous Mexican drug gangs and do not give the migrants who pay to be led to the US enough food or water.

When police find bodies, the people who died usually had not even walked two miles into the US before they passed out.

Associated Press reported that two days after Biden's speech on immigration, 11 people were hospitalized, and seven people suspected of smuggling were arrested near San Antonio, Texas. This was after police found more than 20 migrants who had been driven from the border and were being held in a secret compartment of a caravan with little water in the sweltering heat.

Josiah Heyman said that people will be more exposed to human smugglers, who can charge over $10,000 to bring refugees from outside of Mexico to the United States, even though they often abuse them and keep them in dangerous conditions.

Biden and Leeser have both called for Congress to pass broad immigration reform, but this has not happened yet. He also thinks that the new policy will make the border safer, especially in his city, which has been on the front lines and has declared three states of emergency since December 2022, when shelters were full.

Even though Democrats have different opinions on the matter, Leeser told MSNBC that the new policy "allows them to use the CBPOne app," which is the US government's mobile phone app that people just south of the border can use to make appointments for shelter in the US.

They are already allowed to use the CBPOne app, but getting one of the few appointments can take months while they are stuck in shelters or sleeping on the streets in Mexican border towns. Now, there will be even more people trying to get those appointments.

The deputy head of the Opportunity Centre for the Homeless, a non-profit in El Paso that helps and shelters refugees, John Martin, said, "Time will tell" about how well depending only on the app would work. He also said he was not sure.

The head of the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Centre, Marisa Limón Garza, said, "This does not do anything to stop the violence and family separations; it ignores due process and moves us away from a humane, safe, and orderly system, forcing migrants into the hands of cartels and traffickers."

Back in the Santa Teresa desert, where it was scorched, a hat and water did not help much with the heat during the day. Moreover, summer had just started.