This crackdown comes amidst pressure the Biden administration is putting on Central and South American countries to do more to clamp down on border crossings.

Biden officials are holding up this enforcement strategy to show that the border problem can be handled without more extreme methods suggested by Republicans and Donald Trump.

“In one way, they are doing the dirty work of the U.S. in order to keep people from accessing the U.S. southern border and exercising their right to seek safety,” Fischer said.

“President Biden and President AMLO have developed a relationship in which they talk about the shared challenges [of migration], and they both jointly recognize the shared challenges,” a senior Biden administration official said. “They’ve had multiple conversations and multiple calls over the last couple of years tackling and talking about this issue.”

The Mexican general elections are also this same year and will be held in June. Both countries’ leaders are motivated to take steps to fix immigration issues to shore up supporters ahead of the vote.

A poll in April found that a majority of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration. 68 percent of US adults disapprove of Biden’s immigration policy while only 31 percent approve of it. Only 56 percent of Democrats thought the president had a good handle on the issue.

19% percent of respondents who disapprove of Biden’s job performance said immigration was at the top of their mind. The economy clocked in at 9%, inflation at 5%, and 4% said foreign affairs.

In February, Trump took credit for “killing” a bi-partisan border bill introduced in the Senate by Republican Mitch McConnell.

He doesn’t want to be seen as “cracking down” on migrants, an impression which might anger his supporters. However, he also doesn’t want to take the blame for the current migrant influx, which has been straining resources across America’s cities.

In March, Axios reported that “The bullet’s in the chamber,” and the Daily Mail reported that there was a possibility of implementing it at the end of April, though it still remains to be seen.

Meanwhile, Democrats are working hard to revive legislative efforts to fund border security in Congress ahead of the November election

US Customs and Border Protection numbers in March showed 137,480 encounters. While this number is relatively high for recent years, it is 45% lower than the peak in December, and 16% lower than March from last year.