The increase in patrols followed the Biden administration’s push for more action by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. According to Mexico’s Migration National Institute, a government agency that works to regulate migration, the number of migrants has dropped since patrols increased. 

Human smugglers are changing their tactics in response. Further solutions will require the U.S. and Mexico to work together, Mexican migration official David Pérez Tejada said: "It has to be an in-depth, serious solution between both Congresses to determine what is going to be the real reform that we need." 

For migrants who try to reach the U.S. without authorized entry, even more perils await. Migrant deaths along the southwest border have jumped in recent years as record numbers make the dangerous journey north, report Arelis R. Hernández, Marina Dias and Daniele Volpe of The Washington Post.  

An increase in drowning deaths has left officials at an impasse as to how to handle the remains. "There is an overwhelming sense of ‘What are we going to do?’ You want to make sure they get back to their loved ones, but it’s too many people crossing the river. Where do we put the bodies?" said Jeannie Smith, a justice of the peace who records migrant deaths. 

Welcome to Monday’s edition of The Forum Daily. I’m Dan Gordon, the Forum’s strategic communications VP, and the great Forum Daily team also includes Jillian Clark, Ally Villarreal and Clara Villatoro. If you have a story to share from your own community, please send it to me at [email protected]. 

TALENT BACKLOG —Nearly 1.2 million highly skilled Indians and their dependents are waiting for green cards, writes Stuart Anderson for Forbes. The backlog for skilled immigrants in the top three categories of employment-based immigration could threaten the United States' ability to attract foreign-born talent, Anderson notes. Per-country limits in place for decades are one reason for the long wait. 

'EMBRACE HUMANITY’ — Elizabeth Nguyen’s father came to the U.S. as a Vietnamese refugee nearly 50 years ago. Now Nguyen and her husband are hosting migrants arriving in the Boston area, Anjana Sankar writes in The Boston Globe. "Whenever I see so much devastation around, I think about the family that hosted my dad and the moment they decided to embrace humanity," said Nguyen, a minister and advocate. Separately, more than 65,000 private sponsors are enrolled to resettle refugees through the Welcome Corps, Matthew La Corte of the Niskanen Center writes. 

TRAUMA — Children’s advocates in Texas are warning against busing migrant children and their families to new cities, as it may cause more trauma for the kids, reports Stella M. Chávez of KERA. The long journeys to get to the U.S.-Mexico border are traumatizing to begin with, they note. Instead of busing families to unknown destinations at all hours, "we should let these families know where they're going," said Bob Sanborn, CEO of Children at Risk, based in Houston. "We should help them decide where they are going to go." 

COURAGE — Despite threats, Guatemalan Cardinal Álvaro Ramazzini continues to fight for migrants and others who are marginalized, reports Giovanna Dell’Orto of the Associated Press. Ramazzini advocates for a "strictly and essentially human" approach to migrants. "You’d be hard-pressed to find another leader in the church or otherwise in Central America who is more trusted by the poor than he," said Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso, Texas, who is working with Ramazzini to address poverty and other root causes of migration. (Seitz is also a Forum board member.) 

Thanks for reading,  

Dan