On January 17, Todd Bensman of CIS.org analyzed the puzzling boom-and-bust migrant flow out of Mexico in a CIS article titled “Mexico’s Duplicitous ‘Ant Operation’ Moved Tens of Thousands to the U.S. Border Sight Unseen — and Will Again Through 2022.”
Tapachula is the southern Mexico city where migrants from the south are sometimes halted in the trek to the U.S., then mysteriously released, only to have further migrants go through the same cycle. Bensman notes that in December last year, 50,000 had been pent up for months in Tapachula. Since the fiasco at the Del Rio bridge back in September, Mexico had been under pressure from the Biden administration to hold back massive releases of migrants. Frustrations were rising among the migrants, however, many of whom were running low on cash. Suddenly, just after Christmas, the gates were opened and thousands were transported on government buses north, toward the United States, temporarily defusing Tapachula’s problem but exacerbating our own.
How did it happen? Bensman writes that the Mexican government has adopted a tactic of the smuggler cartels called the “ant operation,” wherein large numbers of people are moved in small groups in many separate, single-file lines, ensuring that most will get safely past the authorities without attracting notice. In the case of this official, government operation, the movement out of Tapachula was made possible by the wholesale electronic distribution of a so-called “QR code visa,” which essentially functions as a “get-out-of-jail-free” card to the recipient.
Armed with their QR visas, just after Christmas, thousands boarded separate fleets of buses for the two- or three-day ride to the U.S. border. The bus routes were spread across a total of 14 different Mexican states in a “purposely diffused surge” that few even noticed at the time. Bensman says that by mid-January, “QR code visa recipients [were] already smashing U.S. southern border defenses. . . , and tens of thousands [were] . . . swamping Border Patrol from Brownsville, Texas, to Yuma, Ariz.”
But remember that these releases are temporary. By January 1, issuance of the QR visas had been discontinued, and Tapachula had already begun to fill up again with migrants, from Senegal, Angola, and Haiti. The cycle was beginning anew, and with an estimated 20,000 migrants currently en route through the Darien Gap, Bensman estimates another wholesale release in the March-April time frame.
And so it goes. Through this immigration game, Mexican President Obrador–in the words of a Mexican newspaper publisher–“wants to be in good standing with migrants and with Joe Biden at the same time.” We don’t know how well it’s working for him, but for us, it spells continual trouble.
For more, see CIS.org.