As you've probably heard, the number of people crossing the southern border is finally headed down. After a peak last December of just over 300,000 border encounters, July dropped to 104,116. That's the lowest number since February of 2021, the first full month Joe Biden was in office, when the total was 101,099.

The way the Biden administration accomplished this is that is stopped allowing people to game the asylum system. Well, stopped is too strong a word but it made it less easy. Today the NY Times explains how. It all has to do with what the asylum system calls "manifest fear."

Under the new rules, border agents are no longer required to ask migrants whether they fear for their lives if they are returned home. Unless the migrants raise such a fear on their own, they are quickly processed for deportation to their home countries.

So under the old system, the migrants would find a place to cross the border and then wait to be picked up on the US side. They were all asked if they were afraid to return home and most of them said yes. That got them free entry into the country with just a promise that they would show up at an immigration court to file a claim for asylum when they got settled. And because the immigration courts are tremendously backed up, even after they filed for asylum they would have several years, sometimes as long as seven, before their case was heard. By that point it hardly mattered what the judge decided, they were staying.

ICE could in theory round up the people who were ordered to leave but didn't but in practice they prioritize criminal illegal aliens. In other words, unless you are convicted of a crime, or at least arrested for a serious crime, they won't come looking for you.

But the slight change in the new system is that you can't claim asylum unless you enter through a port of entry with an appointment. And even then, Border Patrol agents don't ask each person if they are afraid to return home. Unless the migrant themselves brings it up, the whole asylum process never starts. Naturally, the ACLU and many progressives are unhappy about this new system which they say could result in people with legitimate asylum claims being deported.

“The government knows full well from past practice that the manifestation standard will result in migrants with legitimate asylum claims being denied even a screening for danger,” Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has sued to block the policy in federal court, said in an email. “Put simply, the manifestation standard will send migrants fleeing for their life back to grave danger, and the government knows it.”...

Before the new rules went into effect, migrants would cross the border illegally and seek out border agents to surrender, knowing that anyone who set foot on U.S. soil could ask for protection. Often, after an initial screening, they would be released into the United States to wait, sometimes for years, for their cases to come up.

Mr. Biden’s order changed that. Now, the majority of migrants are turned back quickly.

The administration believes the new screening process is more fair, because migrants are more likely to express fear if they are prompted with a question. Instead of asking what could be seen as a leading question, border agents have been told to look out for any clues showing a fear of return, including crying or shaking. Signs and videos in detention facilities inform migrants that they can tell an officer they fear deportation.

So there are still signs and videos letting detained migrants know they can express "manifest fear." And this is why it seems unlikely to me that the current downturn will last very long. 

Most of these migrants are economic migrants looking for a better life. They have no credible claim for asylum but they have been told along the way that claiming asylum was the key to unlocking the door. In short, they learned to lie in order to get what they wanted.

Now the Biden administration has made that a little harder by requiring migrants to bring it up on their own. But how long will it be before word gets around that you can stay in the US if you bring up your manifest fear of being deported? It's the same gaming of the system as before, with just one more step. The migrants who've arrived in the past few months didn't know that extra step but they will catch on. And you can bet the aid groups that help organize groups of migrants traveling through Mexico will be telling them what to do.

Speaking of Mexico, that's the other change here. Mexico has reportedly clamped down somewhat on people crossing its southern border. But how long will that last? My own guess is probably not much longer than the election.

Nothing is certain at this point but there are good reasons to think the current downturn in border encounters is temporary. Migrants will eventually learn the new rules and the numbers will begin climbing again.