Just a few months ago, chaos was commonplace at the Iris Avenue Transit Center in San Ysidro.
Each day, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents would release hundreds of newly arrived asylum seekers and other migrants at the transit center. They were among up to 2,000 migrants being released throughout San Diego each week.
While the bewildered migrants figured out their next steps, opportunistic locals were trying to take advantage of them.
“They were getting robbed,” said Pedro Rios, an activist with the San Diego-based American Friends Service Committee. “Cab drivers wanted to charge $100 per passenger to get to the airport when the going rate was $75 to $85 per cab.”
Today, Iris Avenue is quiet. It’s been weeks since the last round of street releases.
“Everyone that border patrol has apprehended is being sent to a local shelter,” Rios said. “Border Patrol is no longer releasing people to the Iris trolley station.”
A big reason for the change are executive actions President Joe Biden signed on June 4. The actions all but closed the border to asylum seekers unless they used the government’s CBP One App.
“We’re beginning to see a real improvement,” San Diego Congressman Mike Levin, D-49, said in a video posted on social media.
There were weeks during the spring when CBP agents in San Diego apprehended more than 10,000 migrants. Now there are about half as many apprehensions as there were before the executive order, Levin said.
“Perhaps the best news is that for the last three weeks, we’ve seen virtually no street releases in the San Diego sector,” Levin said.
Levin lauded Biden’s efforts to slow irregular migration and thanked the Mexican government for increased cooperation. He also stressed the need for congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform.
The decrease in San Diego apprehensions mirror a national trend. July’s preliminary data shows approximately 57,000 apprehensions along the entire southern border — which is the lowest ever during the Biden administration.
Advocates working with San Diego’s migrant population were more reluctant to give Biden all the credit for the drop in apprehension numbers. Enhanced enforcement in Mexico and hot summer temperatures are other reasons, Rios said.
Advocates said it’s important to note that less apprehensions do not necessarily mean less migration. Poverty, crime and persecution continue to push people out of their home countries. Biden’s executive actions do not address those root causes, nor do they increase legal pathways into the country.
Data from the Panama’s migration agency shows that more than 170,000 migrants crossed that country’s dangerous Darien Gap in June — a 2% increase from 2023.
