Migration and Thirst: the Water Time Bomb

In 2025, the binational conversation around migration has been told almost exclusively through numbers—“encounters,” detentions, deportations, and crossings. Yet the real pressure gauge in border cities is not found in a monthly report, but in faucets, sewer systems, and wastewater treatment plants. The border is living a paradox: even as migration dynamics shift in volume or routes, demand for water and sanitation becomes more expensive, more political, and more technologically complex. This is because migration does not simply “arrive”; it settles, concentrates, relocates, and forces local governments to manage population spikes that exceed their hydraulic planning assumptions.

Data from 2025 show a significant shift. Organizations such as WOLA report that fiscal year 2025 closed with 443,671 CBP encounters, a 79 percent drop compared to fiscal year 2024. At the same time, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that between January 21 and late November 2025 there were 117,105 enforcement encounters along the southwest border, representing a 37 percent decrease from the comparable prior period. This decline represents progress in border enforcement, but it does not automatically translate into reduced water stress. The impact on water systems depends less on annual totals and more on geographic concentration: overcrowded shelters, temporary camps, waiting corridors at ports of entry, and cities absorbing floating populations for weeks or months.

At that point, water stops being just a service and becomes a governance variable. When a city receives irregular or sudden population flows, the first bottleneck is not potable water production, but distribution and hygiene: toilets, showers, washing facilities, waste management, and especially sewer capacity. Here, migration and water intersect as a public health issue. Larger populations without stable access to sanitation increase the likelihood of illegal discharges, sewer collapses, and higher operating costs for local utilities. In 2025, the Tijuana–San Diego case once again made this clear: both countries signed a new agreement to address the Tijuana River wastewater crisis, including infrastructure projects, research, enhanced monitoring, and long-term operation and maintenance planning that explicitly considers future population growth in Tijuana. The same agreement accelerated the use of 93 million dollars for sanitation system improvements in Tijuana. The message is unmistakable: demographic pressure, including migration, is now embedded in technical infrastructure planning.

The political economy of 2025 has also pushed the issue higher on the binational agenda. In December, the dispute over the 1944 Water Treaty escalated politically, with trade threats and diplomatic tension backed by hard numbers. Mexico is required to deliver 2,158 million cubic meters over each five-year cycle and was reported to have an outstanding deficit of 986 million cubic meters. Partial deliveries, such as a 249 million cubic meter release, were negotiated as signals of compliance. In parallel, the United States reported that Mexico would release 202,000 acre-feet, accompanied by a roadmap of actions and negotiations extending into early 2026. While this debate is often framed around agriculture and drought, its urban impact is direct: when water becomes a geopolitical bargaining chip, border cities bear the cost through supply uncertainty, tariff pressure, and difficult prioritization between industrial use, human consumption, and emergency services.

Technology is often presented in 2025 as the great potential shock absorber, but so far its impact remains limited. The most tangible progress has been institutional and infrastructural. Binational sanitation agreements and the renewed emphasis on monitoring and long-term operation and maintenance represent a quiet but significant paradigm shift. Building infrastructure is no longer enough; it must be sustained, measured, and managed over time. However, on the Mexican side, structural vulnerability persists. Northern aquifers face chronic stress, and governance fragmentation continues in a context where more than 45 percent of aquifers are estimated to be overexploited. When migration converges with industrial expansion driven by nearshoring and rapid urban growth, competition for water becomes a zero-sum game unless real efficiency solutions are implemented: leak reduction, large-scale reuse, telemetry, and demand management based on reliable data.

My assessment for 2025 is uncomfortable but necessary. The border continues to treat migration primarily as a security event, while its most persistent cost is being paid through water systems. The main challenge for unlocking the region’s potential in 2025—social stability, regional competitiveness, and sustained binational cooperation—will be shifting toward water and sanitation infrastructure designed for population variability. That requires three things simultaneously: binational coordination with shared performance metrics, not just political statements; multi-year financing insulated from electoral cycles; and technology focused on fundamentals—measurement, loss reduction, and reuse—rather than headline-grabbing solutions. If Mexico and the United States succeed in linking every migration negotiation to a serious technical water conversation, the border could transform a recurring crisis into a laboratory for urban resilience. If not, the next wave will not be measured in encounters, but in low water pressure neighborhoods, closed beaches, and accumulated social tension.

Written by: Editorial

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