The real migrant bus king of North America isn't the Texas governor. It's Mexico's president.
PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico – It took Ana Elizabeth Melgar four tries to reach the U.S. border.
Each time she made her way north, Mexican immigration authorities caught her and bused her south – not to her home country of El Salvador but to a city in southern Mexico.
"If you catch me and I am a migrant, send me back to my country," she said, while resting in a Catholic shelter in this Mexican border town across from Eagle Pass, Texas. "I get it: I don't belong here. But what is this nonsense that you're sending me south in Mexico? It's illogical."
The Biden administration and Texas are taking credit for an unusual springtime lull in illegal border crossings, with the White House touting its legal pathways and Gov. Greg Abbott championing his troops and concertina wire. But analysts, immigrant advocates and migrants themselves say it's Mexico blocking the path north.
Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's immigration agency has intensified a busing program that aims to hurt migrants' chances of reaching the U.S. border – or at least delay their arrival – by apprehending them on highways, train routes and airports and shipping them to the southernmost part of his country.
Immigrant advocates say the policy drives vulnerable people into the arms of smugglers. Migrants report being extorted on routes north only to be intercepted at checkpoints and returned to southern Mexico to do it all again.
"The Mexican government is busing people in circles," said Andrew Selee, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute.
"The numbers aren't down because of busing in Texas," he said. "The numbers are down because of busing in Mexico."
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported fewer than 189,372 migrant encounters in March, down slightly from 189,914 in February, during a time when migration typically starts to spike. Encounters were lower than normal through the first 10 days of April, too, according to congressional testimony.
The drop bucked historical, seasonal trends and was "only the second time this century that encounters declined from February to March," said Adam Isacson, director of defense oversight for the Washington Office on Latin America.