Apps, 911 services and mobile phones don’t offset deadly consequences of more restrictive border policies

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Apps, 911 services and mobile phones don’t offset deadly consequences of more restrictive border policies

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The U.S.-Mexico border is once again dominating a U.S. presidential election.

With voters

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on their list of concerns, both Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and *********** contender Donald Trump have been pledging to

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and curb the flow of asylum-seekers across the country’s southern border.

As an

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and the daughter of immigrants, I wanted to understand what restrictive migration policies have accomplished in the past. Digging into

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,

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and accounts by

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from the early 1990s to the present, I found that while laws and policies intended to slow migration at the U.S.-Mexico border have not generally curbed migration, they have consistently led to more migrants dying along the journey.

I also found that mobile phone-based innovations meant to make asylum safer and easier may not help as much as intended.

More migration

Since 1993, decades of economic instability, political instability, intensifying ********* and the effects of climate change across ****** America have spurred

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as people flee life-threatening situations. In 2023, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported approximately

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of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. That’s up 750% since 1992.

This uptick in the early 1990s roughly coincided with

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, a federal government effort to tighten security at the then-

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border checkpoint in El Paso, Texas. By stationing about 450 border patrol officers across a

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to verify

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, the U.S. aimed to stop unlawful crossings in El Paso.

To avoid documentation checks, a growing stream of migrants began taking longer and more dangerous routes through the desert to cross into the U.S.

Many of them were asylum-seekers, fleeing persecution and other dangers at home, whose goal was to reach the U.S. and file a claim for asylum protection. This is called filing a

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, as opposed to an “affirmative” claim, which is filed before traveling to the U.S.

It’s a once-common process that’s gotten only more difficult in recent years. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trump administration’s Title 42 began requiring migrants to stay in Mexico and

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. After that rule lapsed

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, the

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a

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allowing border officials to deny asylum to almost any migrant at an official port of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border who has not previously applied for asylum en route to the U.S.

This new rule requires asylum-seekers to request affirmative asylum—that is, before they arrive at the border—using U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s new mobile phone app,

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.

This mobile phone innovation was meant to streamline the asylum process. The app is

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, however, and the agency

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to its calendar for the flood of new affirmative asylum appointments that would otherwise have been “defensive.”

Unable to cross legally into the U.S. until their claims are filed, asylum-seekers now remain trapped on the ******** side of the border for an average of

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awaiting their appointment with Customs and Border Protection.

Migrants staying at shelters in ******** border towns say they

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that the persecutors they fled will find them there. They are also vulnerable to the

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along the border.

****** now or later?

As the U.S. has hardened security at official border checkpoints over the years, as it did in El Paso, migrants have in turn taken to crossing the border in the remote reaches of Arizona’s Sonoran Desert.

This

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has made an already dangerous trek even more deadly. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that border-crossing ****** rates had

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from 1995 to 2005 despite no increase in the number of recorded migrant entries into the U.S. during this time *******.

In 2023, nearly half of the

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trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border ***** in the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts, mainly from extreme heat and cold. Before Operation Blockade, less than a third as many people ***** trying to make their way into the U.S.—

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.

“The punishment handed out by difficult terrain” is its own migration policy, to paraphrase scholar Jason De Léon in his 2015 book “

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.”

In an effort to reduce migrant deaths in Arizona’s deserts, in 2008 the humanitarian organization Humane Borders

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to have public safety communications equipment installed on the

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going up along the border that year. This equipment enabled migrants to call 911—but

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—to request emergency services.

By calling 911, however, migrants expose themselves to deportation. A

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by the humanitarian organization

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found that almost all 911 calls for help by suspected migrants in Pima County, Arizona, were redirected to Customs and Border Protection rather than receiving immediate search-and-rescue support. Border officials can then identify the caller’s location using the

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, including radar, imaging sensors and edge computing hardware.

Like local emergency dispatchers, border officials are required to assess needs and provide emergency medical assistance. But they may also then detain unauthorized migrants for deportation.

“As soon as you try to call somebody to come for you,” one migrant

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, border patrol agents “know where you are, and they will go looking for you.”

Those struggling with dehydration or injury face a grim choice. If they don’t call 911, they may **** in the desert. If they do call, they may

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, either in U.S. immigration detention centers—where

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each year—or back home, if they are sent back to the dangers they fled.

Research suggests that while some migrants do

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, knowing that

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can call for help in case of emergency, others

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to carry or use their mobile device.

The opportunity to call for emergency aid has prevented some deaths in America’s borderlands. Tucson’s 911 call center

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about 40 calls a day from the border region in 2021 alone. But restrictive border policies impede the mobile phone’s lifesaving potential.

The

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has only grown in recent decades, but the U.S.’s embrace of immigration has waned, with deadly consequences.

Provided by
The Conversation

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under a Creative Commons license. Read the

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Researcher: Apps, 911 services and mobile phones don’t offset deadly consequences of more restrictive border policies (2024, September 2)
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