Ejido Jacumé, Baja California, MexicoCNN — The rust-colored barrier soars into the cloudless blue sky, a solid and almost impassable marker of the border between Mexico and the United States. But then it stops, when the rough, hilly terrain becomes a mountain, or a large boulder blocks the way.
These are the spots well known by human smugglers, who bring migrants in vans, show them the gaps, tell them to head north and to call 911 if they can’t find US Border Patrol officers to hand themselves in.
A few months ago, sometimes hundreds of people would come through every day, ending up in the backyards of Americans living near San Diego, who could do little but point the way onwards.
But now there are patrols from the Mexican Army and National Guard along with immigration officers, looking to stop the migrants from reaching the US.
It’s having an impact, according to David Pérez Tejada, of Mexico’s Migration National Institute, the government unit that regulates entry and exit to the country. “What we have seen is a drop down from what we were seeing in December or January, where we had figures of 1,600 per day of irregular crossings. Right now, we are probably half of those figures, like 800, 900,” he said.
With both the US and Mexico having presidential elections this year, and with immigration and security high on the list of concerns for both populations, this apparent turnaround could become touted as progress by either administration. And any uptick could be seized upon by opponents.
Striking differences
Increased patrols are visible on the Mexican side of the border wall both in urban, congested areas of Tijuana, and inland, amid the scrub and boulders of Ejido Jacumé.
When officers on the Baja California side come across migrants, they take them into custody, referring to the apprehensions as “rescues.”
But whereas on the US California side, the travelers are willing, even happy, to run toward border agents – often so they can start asylum proceedings – here it is a different story.
The migrants do not want to encounter the Mexican authorities as they will be taken to Tijuana, and then hundreds of miles further to Mexico’s southern border to be processed for deportation, if they have no right to be in the country.
CNN witnessed the detention of mostly men, with some women and children, from Brazil and Guatemala this week, near one of the border wall gaps close to Ejido Jacumé. One migrant told us he’d had to surrender to the Mexican authorities before he even got a chance to try to cross into the US.
An officer holds the phones and passports of the travelers, keeping them secure as their owners climb into a van to take them to the city.
Camps of large white tents, portable toilets and wash stations have been set up nearby so patrols can rest on their 72-hour rotations through the desert.
“We need to block where they have free space to come into the US,” Pérez Tejada said.
Locations are picked taking note of the constant cross-border communication. Local and federal officials in the Mexican state of Baja California and US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are in chat groups with each other, texting back and forth about damage to the wall or sightings of migrants.
A sign of this is how fresh holes cut through fences in Tijuana are now covered by even fresher patches, and watched over by a guardsman.
Spikes and lookouts
The gangs who funnel the migrants to the easier crossing points have changed their tactics too.
Spikes have been thrown onto the dusty dirt roads that are the only way to access the border territory here, threatening to puncture tires and cause problems for the authorities.
Pérez Tejada says there are also lookouts all around, waiting to signal when the patrols have moved on and the coast is clear. It’s a fluid situation on both sides, he said.
“We redefine the strategy week by week as we see the numbers, the figures, as we exchange information with the US authorities. And with that we determine, what is the strategy,” he said.
“But it becomes a game, like cat and mouse.”
Mexico wants to secure its borders, he said. “Also, this is a strategy against the criminal groups because we want to prevent migrants getting in touch with the criminal groups … We don’t want them to cross into these areas that are very dangerous, because there’s people that die in the intention to cross.”
Pressure from Washington and Mexico City
The desert camps and constant patrols came after US President Joe Biden urged Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to take action last December. The two agreed that “additional enforcement actions are urgently needed,” according to National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, giving a readout of a call between the two leaders.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, White House Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Majorkas then met with senior officials in Mexico City to address the migrant challenge.
