By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Venezuelan migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has plummeted as a new bilateral policy has pushed thousands back to Mexico in the past week, according to U.S. and Mexican officials and a local shelter.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus told Bloomberg News on Thursday that U.S. border agents had encountered just 155 Venezuelans on Wednesday, down from a daily average of 1,200 earlier this month.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration announced last week that it would begin expelling Venezuelan migrants back to Mexico under a pandemic-era order known as Title 42, denying them the chance to seek U.S. asylum at the border.
At the same time, Biden’s Democratic administration launched a new program to allow up to 24,000 Venezuelans with U.S. sponsors and who meet other criteria to apply for humanitarian entry by air.
More than 4,500 Venezuelans have been returned to Mexico since the new U.S. expulsion policy began on Oct. 12, the Mexican government said, straining shelters there.
The new effort comes as Republicans have criticized Biden’s handling of the border and seek to gain control of the U.S. Congress in Nov. 8 midterm elections.
At a shelter in the U.S. border city of Deming, New Mexico, Venezuelans went from being the most common nationality to absent, according to Ariana Saludares, executive director of Colores United, which runs the center.
On Thursday, a U.S. government bus transporting migrants from El Paso to the shelter to alleviate overcrowding instead carried about 50 Colombians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, Dominicans, and Nicaraguans, she said.
The Republican governors of Texas and Arizona have bused thousands of migrants to Democrat-led cities this year in high-profile campaigns to call attention to what they say is Biden’s failure to secure the border.
A spokesperson for Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the busing could continue until Biden “does his job.”
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Additional reporting by Paul Ratje in Deming, New Mexico, and Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Richard Pullin)
