Shifting Realities at the U.S.-Mexico Border: Immigration Enforcement and Control in a Fast-Evolving Landscape
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Highlights
Nearly 2.5 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023 exposed a system reacting to rather than managing realities at the border. Real control will require multiagency investment.
- In fiscal year (FY) 2023, U.S. authorities recorded about 2 million unauthorized crossings between ports of entry and 430,000 CBP One arrivals at ports, stretching agencies already short on capacity, coordination, and funding.
- The May 2023 Circumvention of Lawful Pathways asylum rule combined new enforcement with legal pathways, briefly reducing encounters by 46 percent by June 2023 before numbers rebounded, driven largely by Venezuelan and family arrivals.
- Bottlenecks in other agencies—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the immigration courts—magnified the strain on U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing.
- A more controlled system would require multiagency processing centers, formal NGO partnerships, asylum reforms, deeper engagement with Mexico, and expanded regional Safe Mobility Offices, backed by sustained congressional funding.
Migration at the U.S.-Mexico border looks profoundly different today than in decades prior, with record numbers of asylum seekers and other migrants arriving from a rapidly expanding array of countries. These shifts pose complex challenges for the U.S. immigration system both at and well beyond the border.
U.S. border policy has also undergone significant change in recent years. In May 2023, the Biden administration ended pandemic-era Title 42 expulsions, while introducing a suite of policies to deter unauthorized crossings and to incentivize migrants to arrive at ports of entry and utilize lawful mobility pathways. This multifaceted approach aims to create greater order at the border but faces significant hurdles—including longstanding capacity, coordination, and resource limitations across agencies that have a role in processing arriving migrants.
This report analyzes these policy changes and shifting on-the-ground realities. Drawing in part on extensive field research and interviews along the U.S.-Mexico border, as well as in Mexico, Guatemala, and Costa Rica, the study examines border operations at and between ports of entry, post-processing challenges within the country, and evolving cooperation with Mexico and other regional partners. The report concludes with recommendations for near- and longer-term measures that can lead to a more effective, well-coordinated system of border control.
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Changing Approaches to Migration and Border Management
3 Processing between Ports of Entry
A. Dispositions and Consequences
B. Credible Fear Interviews
C. Detention and Processing Capacity
D. Sector and State Differences
4 Processing at Ports of Entry
A. CBP One App and Processing
B. Daily Port Operations
C. Port Capacity and Stakeholders
5 Post Processing and Beyond the Border
A. Differences across Sectors
B. Federal Funding
6 Spillover Effects of Border Enforcement in Mexico
7 Coordinating Migration Responses in the Broader Region
8 Rethinking Border Control and Migration Management: Critical Next Steps
9 Conclusion
About the U.S. Immigration Policy Program
The U.S. Immigration Policy Program provides analysis of U.S. immigration pathways, the impacts of enforcement and other policies, and the characteristics of immigrant populations.
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