'Listen to us': Border mayors reveal what they want to see from next president

Sitting in traffic on a sweltering afternoon, waiting to cross the border back into Arizona from a meeting in Mexico, Nogales Mayor Jorge Maldonado’s main request for the next administration was achingly relevant: more Customs and Border Protection staff.

“We got people trying to cross the border that are taking two or three hours long,” Maldonado said. “These are the legal crossers… and we’re not taking care of them.”

Perhaps a surprising priority, as video of people sneaking through holes in fences, wading through chest-deep rivers and steering boats onto beaches have dominated coverage of the United States’ border crisis.

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But despite being located in Arizona’s Tucson sector, a stretch of border that saw an explosion in migrant encounters earlier this year, Maldonado said Nogales hasn’t experienced as dramatic a flood of border crossings as other areas.

What they do have is a steady stream of American and Mexican citizens trying to legally cross the border for work, school, recreation and commerce.

“These are the people that are going to come into our country and leave their money,” Maldonado said. “We’ve lost focus on the legals because we were so concentrated on the illegals.”

Every section of the border is different and has different needs, Maldonado said. That’s why he and other mayors say it’s so important for the next presidential administration to visit the southern border.

“People in Washington are making policies a thousand, 2,000 miles away,” Dr. Victor Treviño, the mayor of Laredo, Texas, said. “We serve on the front lines… and if they come here and listen to us a little bit, that might help them.”

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During the Trump administration, Mayor Douglas Nicholls said he was invited to the Oval Office to discuss a surge of border crossings near Yuma, and left the meeting with more resources. Shortly after that, Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy took effect, which Nicholls said drastically cut back on illegal entries.

By contrast, Nicholls said requests for policy changes “haven’t landed anywhere” with Biden or Harris, despite the vice president being tasked with addressing the root causes of Central American migration.

“The term ‘border czar’… it’s become more of a political liability since there wasn’t a lot done,” Nicholls said when asked why the White House might be distancing Harris from the informal title.

The Biden Administration oversaw unprecedented levels of illegal immigration. While annual migrant encounters ranged from a low of about 303,916 to a high of 851,508 during Trump’s tenure, crossings surged to 1,734,686 in Biden’s first year in office.

Border encounters continued to rise, hitting 2.5 million in 2023 and 1.8 million with three months still to go in fiscal year 2024.

Migrants cross through a gap in the U.S.-Mexico border fence on Dec. 18, 2023, in Jacumba Hot Springs, California. (Mark Abramson/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

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But all three border mayors said they have seen a significant decrease in illegal crossings lately.

“We really don’t see a large amount of migrants crossing anymore,” Treviño said in Laredo.

He credited much of that decrease to Biden’s new border policies, which were implemented in June.

The measures restrict asylum eligibility and make it easier to remove people who crossed the border illegally. That month, encounters at the southern border hit their lowest point since Biden took office, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

Republicans slammed the move as a “political stunt” and “cheap” ploy to garner goodwill mere months ahead of the election. Biden in turn blamed congressional Republicans for blocking bipartisan border legislation earlier this year.

“That’s kind of been the frustration is, here at the 11th hour, now the president put an executive order that is along the lines of what we’re really looking for, but really it’s years, literally, late,” Nicholls said.

Nicholls hopes the next president will work with countries like Mexico to find “incentives for them to be a partner on solving this and not just a pass through.”

Vice President Kamala Harris and migrants at the southern border. (Getty Images)

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“The next administration that comes into power really needs to have a change of policy that is at the root of our immigration,” Nicholls said, adding that it “would be great” if Congress could act on the border, but that lawmakers would likely take too long.

He also suggested better funding for federal agencies like ICE, and local communities that find their emergency services overwhelmed by migrants.

“The impacts to communities and to the nonprofits, while they’re funded right now, those are not sustainable programs,” he said. And so we need to get to the point where the numbers make those programs not needed.”