Vance makes 1st Arizona-Mexico border visit amid drastic dip in migrant apprehensions

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance was in Cochise County on Thursday morning, marking the first border visit in his campaign.

Vance gave remarks to the media for about 10 minutes along a stretch of border near the town of Sierra Vista, and lambasted what he called the Biden administration’s open-border policies.

“They stopped deportations on day one, they stopped construction of the border wall on day one, we see the border wall sitting here, ready to be completed behind us, and that can’t happen because of Kamala Harris’ administration,” he said.

Just to the left of Vance’s podium, a section of the 30-foot steel bollard wall built by the Trump administration towered above a lineup of big construction vehicles and snaked up a steep mountain range. On his right, stacks of rusted bollard sections sat amongst the lush desert grasslands.

He said if elected, a second Trump administration would re-implement policies like Remain in Mexico — which forced asylum seekers to await their cases across the border.

“You’ve got to reimplement Remain in Mexico, you’ve got to stop catch and release, you’ve got to force the asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their claims are being adjudicated,” he said.

But, thousands of migrants are already being sent to Mexico or their home countries. Under an executive order implemented by the Biden administration in June, most migrants apprehended between ports of entry are turned back across the border through a speedy removal process, and banned from entering the U.S. for the next five years — even many who are asking for asylum.

The Department of Homeland Security says the number of daily apprehensions has dropped to less than 1,800 border-wide as a result, and it could dip low enough to lift the asylum restriction. The latest figures from Customs and Border Protection show Border Patrol agents made less than 84,000 apprehensions in June, a monthly low not seen since 2021. 

Border officials in the Tucson Sector report seeing some 400 apprehensions a day, down from a high of 2,500 a day late last year. Meanwhile, aid groups in Mexico report the number of people needing assistance there is way up.

Biden's asylum restriction is also the subject of a lawsuit brought by rights groups, who argue it violates a section of U.S. immigration law, which says people presently in the U.S. have the right to ask for asylum, regardless of how they arrived.