(NewsNation) — The number of migrants and asylum-seekers crossing into the United States at the southern border has dropped significantly since April, but providing long-term solutions for border security remains an uphill battle for both Democrats and Republicans as November’s election draws closer.
Encounters between migrants and border agents along the U.S. southern border have dropped from 180,000 per month in April to around 108,000 in August, according to data provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
The drop comes after President Joe Biden signed an executive order in June to address the nation’s broken immigration system.
Since then, Democrats have touted Biden’s order as slowing the number of migrants crossing the border. In turn, fewer border encounters have led sanctuary cities like Denver and Chicago to see an end to buses of migrants being sent to those cities by Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott.
However, Abbott said in an exclusive interview with NewsNation that he expects to see border crossings and encounters increase as November’s election draws closer and that if that happens, he will resume sending buses to places like Chicago and Denver.
The governor said, however, that the goal isn’t to keep sending buses to sanctuary cities but instead to eliminate the number of border crossings into Texas altogether.
“We’ve solved the Texas problem, but the United States problem — that requires a new president to make sure that we are actually going to secure our border,” Abbott told NewsNation’s Ali Bradley in August.
This week, Denver city officials announced they are considering what aspects of the Asylum Seekers Program will extend into 2025.
In Chicago, city and state officials have taken the next step this week toward proposing a One System Initiative, which would combine Chicago’s legacy shelter program for the homeless and the shelter program for new arrivals.
Both cities said the decrease in new arrivals has led to these changes.
The politics of the U.S. border crisis
While the migrant shelter closures may indicate that progress is being made, Republicans led by former President Donald Trump have said dropping encounter numbers isn’t enough and that Democrats have failed to stop the flow of migrant traffic into the U.S.
“The (Biden) administration has to toe this line of saying that things are improving because of what we’re doing, but we still hear Americans when they’re saying we’re not doing enough and that enough hasn’t been done,” Alex Gangitano, White House correspondent for The Hill, told “NewsNation Now.” “They don’t want to dismiss people’s concerns.”
Those concerns among voters come as Trump has said that he will conduct a mass deportation of migrants and asylum-seekers if he defeats Vice President Kamala Harris in the upcoming election. Trump has not provided details of how that would be carried.
Harris has called for Congress to revisit the bipartisan border legislation that was introduced but that failed to clear the U.S. House of Representatives due to a lack of Republican support.
Gangitano said she believes it would take a Democratic majority in Congress for Harris to get her wish, creating issues for both candidates moving forward.
“It’s an uphill battle,” Gangitano said. “Both parties, I think, are not getting too far into details into what they actually would do to solve this issue.”
Migrant program changes in Denver and Chicago
Denver’s Asylum Seekers Program was launched five months ago as a way of assisting new arrivals to find housing and work toward gaining work authorization and asylum status. The city said this week that it has served 860 participants who are receiving six months of housing, job training and legal assistance through the initiative.
Jon Ewing, the spokesman for Denver Human Services, said that the city will consolidate its one remaining migrant shelter at the end of September. Ewing told NewsNation that the city has not had a bus of migrants arrive from the southern border since June, which has lessened the burden of providing housing for new arrivals.
Denver city officials announced this week that it will continue to provide emergency shelter for the homeless during cold-weather months when temperatures dip under 25 degrees or when two or more inches of snow falls. The city also said it will increase shelter capacity, meal services and access to transportation.
The city announced this week it received less than 160 new arrivals in August but said that it will maintain an emergency shelter system for migrants should the number of buses sent from the southern border increase, creating a rise “over normal migration patterns.”
Still, what care for migrants and new arrivals will look like in Denver remains a work in progress. Ewing told NewsNation on Friday that while the Asylum Seekers Program as it was introduced will not remain the same, the city will continue to provide some level of service to migrants.
“We are tremendously proud of the Denver Asylum Seeker Program, which has put 860 people on a path toward self-sustainability and has helped Denver move away from an emergency position and into a long-term response,” the city in a statement provided to NewsNation. “As the situation on the ground has changed — most recently with the announcement that we will be closing newcomer shelters at the end of the month — we are considering what aspects of the Denver Asylum Seeker Program, as well as the Newcomer Program as a whole, will be carried over into 2025.”
In Chicago, city officials announced that three migrant shelters will close in October with the city’s current new arrival shelter population at around 5,400, which is down from about 15,000 earlier this year.
The city is also taking steps toward introducing the One Shelter Initiative, which is slated to save the city millions of dollars in providing care for migrants, more than 48,000 of whom have arrived in Chicago since 2022.
