FOCUS: The Seismic Consequences of Ending Title 42

 AMERICANS ARE NOT FLOCKING TO CLEAN TOILETS OR DO THE BACK BREAKING WORK OF PICKING CROPS!

IT'S TIME FOR REPUBLICANS TO ACT LIKE GROWN-UPS (I KNOW IT'S A STRETCH!) & SEEK REASONABLE SOLUTIONS....

DREAMERS NEED TO BECOME TAX PAYING CITIZENS!

President Biden has offered solutions that Republicans have ignored.

Republicans don't want to solve problems!

On May 11, Heather Cox Richardson offered this commentary:

excerpt:

The other thing that will change is that the emergency health authority the Trump administration put in place in March 2020 to turn migrants back at the border will end. That authority is known as Title 42, and it can be invoked to keep out illness. Title 42 will end along with the public health emergency, and the normal, congressionally passed, system of immigration laws will once again be the law of the land. Those laws are known as Title 8.

Republicans have demanded the continuation of Title 42 as a general immigration measure to keep out migrants, since it overrides the law that individuals are allowed to request asylum in the U.S. Although immigration has been central to the U.S. since the beginning, far-right Republicans now adhere to what is known as the “great replacement theory,” the idea that immigration will destroy a nation’s culture and identity (a theory Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán used with great success to cement his power). But Title 42 is an emergency public health authority, and if the emergency is over, the rule doesn’t apply.

President Biden sent an immigration bill to Congress on his first day in office to modernize and fund immigration processes during a time of unprecedented global migration, and the Biden administration has continued to beg Congress to pass new legislation that will adequately fund border enforcement and immigration courts—which currently have backlogs of more than 1.6 million people whose cases take an average of five years to get decided—and provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants including the “Dreamers” who were brought to the U.S. as children and have known no other home.

No such measure has passed, as Republicans refuse to accept any bill that allows for a path to citizenship, even for the Dreamers, and Democrats, who would like to expand immigration, refuse at the very least to agree to any bill without that provision in it. Today the House Republicans passed a bill that would fund the border wall that Trump demanded (and last night claimed to have finished) and significantly harden the border with new agents and more restrictive policies. Two Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the measure. Biden said he would veto the bill if it came to him because it “does very little to actually increase border security while doing a great deal to trample on the Nation’s core values and international obligations.”

On February 2, 2021, less than two weeks into his term, Biden signed Executive Order 14010 to create a regional framework to address migration by addressing its root causes. The Biden administration says its “approach to border management is grounded in this strategy—expanding legal pathways while increasing consequences for illegal pathways, which helps maintain safe, orderly, and humane border processing.”

Vice President Kamala Harris took the lead in the “diplomatic efforts to address root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras,” and in July 2021 she released a report on strategies to slow migration from the region. In June 2022, at the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, the administration helped to bring to reality a long-standing realization among many countries that migration must be addressed on a regional level rather than with patchwork attempts by individual nations. The U.S. worked to get 21 governments to sign on to “a comprehensive response to irregular migration and forced displacement in the Western Hemisphere,” known as the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection.

In an interview today, Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized the regional scope of immigration measures, noting Mexico’s commitment to take 1,000 people a day from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba, as well as new rules that migrants cannot apply for asylum in the U.S. if they have not applied for it in other countries they have traveled through, with the hope of building a “shared sense of responsibility…across the hemisphere.” The administration is also backing 100 brick-and-mortar regional processing centers to enable migrants to determine if they are eligible for admission to the U.S. before they leave their home countries.

It is not entirely clear what the long-term effects of the return to normal immigration law will be. In the short term, it is likely that there will be a surge as human smugglers tell hopeful migrants that the border is now open. At a press conference today, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas tried to undercut them: “I want to be very clear,” he said. “Our borders are not open. People who cross our border unlawfully and without a legal basis to remain will be promptly processed and removed.”

Still, expecting a surge, the administration has moved personnel to the border, including more than 1,400 Department of Homeland Security staff, 1,000 processing coordinators, and an additional 1,500 troops. They have moved $332 million to communities near the border to help them handle an influx of migrants.

The return to enforcement of Title 8 will likely not, itself, be a big shock to the system. Between October 2022 and March 2023, only about 40% of migrants were processed under Title 42, and that number has continued to drop. Most were already being processed under Title 8.

Having more effect was the implementation of a new application system for migrants from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua in January, directing them to apply for an admission interview on their phones and permitting 30,000 a month to enter the U.S. for two years if they pass a background check and have an eligible sponsor. A similar system had been in place for migrants from Venezuela since October.

An attempt to cross into the U.S. illegally would shut off that option, though, and in the weeks after the policy went into effect, migration from those regions dropped by more than 90%. Those trying to use the app say it is broken and hard to use; the administration counters by saying officers need more resources to handle the volume of calls.

Yesterday, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who chartered a plane to fly unsuspecting migrants who were legally in the U.S. to Martha’s Vineyard last fall, signed a measure to rid the state of undocumented immigrants entirely. “This is something that is the responsibility of Joe Biden,” he said. “This is a responsibility that he has defaulted on really from day one of his presidency. Obviously if we had a different administration it would be a lot easier to actually deal with the problem at its source.”

“We are…a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws,” Mayorkas said today. “We are doing everything possible to enforce those laws in a safe, orderly, and humane way. We are working with countries throughout the region, addressing a regional challenge with regional solutions. We again, yet again, call on Congress to pass desperately needed immigration reform and deliver the resources, clear authorities, and [modernized] processes that we need.”

 

12 May 23

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FOCUS: The Seismic Consequences of Ending Title 42
Nicole Narea, Vox
Narea writes: "A controversial Trump-era policy that has allowed the US to expel migrants en masse is ending Thursday, radically altering US immigration policy at a moment that's seen an increasingly large influx of migrants at the southern border."    

Acontroversial Trump-era policy that has allowed the US to expel migrants en masse is ending Thursday, radically altering US immigration policy at a moment that’s seen an increasingly large influx of migrants at the southern border.

The so-called Title 42 policy was first implemented by former President Donald Trump using emergency powers granted to the executive branch in the event of a public health emergency. Trump, and later President Joe Biden, claimed — on dubious grounds — that migrants needed to be turned away to help prevent the spread of Covid-19. Biden’s choice to continue the policy for more than two years, despite the pandemic waning, has led to lawsuits and the resignation of a senior administration official, and has become a political flashpoint on the left.

Keeping Title 42 in place solved a problem for the Biden administration: It summarily got rid of migrants that the US is not equipped to humanely process and absorb. The policy has allowed the US to expel migrants more than 2.8 million times since 2020, with many being expelled multiple times after reattempting to cross the border.

Biden warned reporters Tuesday that it’s “going to be chaotic for a while” on the border following the expiration of Title 42. The Biden administration has been planning for more than a year for the policy’s end, including by establishing new protocols for processing asylum seekers, creating new legal pathways to the US, and bulking up on resources at the border.

But critics have argued that the administration hasn’t gone far enough in preparing, and when asked whether the administration is prepared for the influx, Biden said “it remains to be seen.”

“We’re doing all we can,” he said.

Here’s what you need to know about the policy and what it means for migrants, the border, and the 2024 campaign.

What is Title 42, and why is it ending?

Title 42 is a previously little-known section of US health law that allows the US government to temporarily block noncitizens from entering the US “when doing so is required in the interest of public health.”

When the Trump administration invoked Title 42 in March 2020 at the outset of the pandemic, White House officials argued that it had been recommended by public health officials to prevent the spread of Covid-19 among migrants in crowded Border Patrol stations.

But public health officials weren’t the ones pushing the policy. In fact, there was notable outcry from public health experts about the wisdom and potential effectiveness of the policy. Instead, the effort was led by Stephen Miller, a former senior adviser to Trump and the chief architect of his nativist immigration policy, which focused on reducing overall immigration levels to the US, at times by deliberately cruel means. Even before the pandemic, Miller had been looking for opportunities to use Title 42 to expel migrants, including when there was a mumps outbreak in immigration detention and flu spread in Border Patrol stations in 2019.

The policy has effectively shut out migrants arriving at the southern border from legal pathways to enter the US, with some limited exceptions. Before Title 42, migrants would have been processed at Border Patrol facilities and evaluated for eligibility for asylum and other humanitarian protections that would allow them to remain in the US. Migrants have a legal right, enshrined in US and international law, to seek asylum. But under Title 42, migrants are returned to Mexico within a matter of hours and without any such opportunity.

Biden refused to roll back the policy for more than a year as a means of managing the border. When the administration finally moved to end the policy last May, Republican attorneys general challenged the decision, arguing that it had been rushed and would potentially trigger a surge of migrant crossings in their border states. Courts have since delayed the policy’s expiration, but now that the national emergency related to Covid-19 is ending Thursday, so too is any public health rationale for keeping Title 42 in place.

The state of play at the border right now

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned in a press conference Wednesday that, even after two years of preparation, his agency was still expecting large numbers of migrants at the southern border in the days and weeks following Title 42’s expiration.

“We are already seeing high numbers of encounters in certain sectors,” he said. “This places an incredible strain on our personnel, our facilities, and our communities with whom we partner closely. Our plan will deliver results, but it will take time for those results to be fully realized.”

On Tuesday alone, 11,000 migrants were intercepted while trying to cross the border without authorization, up from an average of about 6,000 daily in March, the latest month for which data is available. The administration has previously projected that unauthorized crossings could spike as high as 13,000 a day in Title 42’s absence.

The current level of migrant crossings is already stretching DHS’s resources. NBC reported that the administration had temporarily started releasing migrants Wednesday for fear of overcrowding in DHS facilities — which were already well above their 18,500-person capacity — without giving them a date to appear in court or having any means of tracking them.

Biden’s plan to manage the southern border

Biden has expanded lawful pathways for migrants to come to the US with the aim of reducing pressure on the southern border. The Biden administration has already created a program under which the US-based family members of migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua — who have arrived in increasingly large numbers at the southern border in the last year — can apply to bring them to the US legally.

The administration has outlined a plan that involves opening new processing centers in Central and South America where migrants can apply to come to the US, Spain, or Canada legally. It’s unclear, however, when those processing centers will open. It has also pledged to accept 100,000 people from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras under another family reunification program.

Some of those programs have proved successful. But they’re still not enough on their own to meet the current need for legal migration channels, after years in which Trump administration policies created pent-up demand, said Doug Rivlin, a spokesperson for the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice.

“That’s not enough. And it can’t replace the need to have a functioning asylum system at the border,” he said.

To that end, the administration is also planning to speed up processing on the border, quickly identifying individuals who have valid asylum claims and turning away those who don’t. Those who cross the border without authorization will be barred from legally reentering the US for five years.

Biden is surging personnel to the border to make all of that happen, including 1,400 DHS staffers, 1,000 asylum officers, and an additional 1,500 active-duty troops on top of the 2,500 military personnel already at the border, Mayorkas said. DHS has assured that the troops would be “performing non-law enforcement duties” — including “detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support” — and would not “interact with migrants.”

“All of these individuals will allow our law enforcement officers to stay in the field and focus on their critical mission,” Mayorkas said.

A new rule, set to go into effect when Title 42 ends Thursday and widely opposed by immigrant advocates, will also restrict access to asylum in the US for individuals who cross through another country without first applying for protections there. It is likely to face court challenges and could very well be overturned.

“This rule will only jeopardize the lives of people seeking safety and create even more chaos and as the administration well knows, it’s also blatantly illegal,” Melissa Crow, a litigator at the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, said in a press call. “Essentially, the new rule combines and repackages to Trump-era asylum bans that President Biden himself denounced on the campaign trail [and that] were struck down as unlawful in federal court.”

Though the Biden administration is releasing some people into the US on an ad hoc basis for now, it is establishing a new program that will allow it to track migrant families released into the US and subject to fast-tracked deportation proceedings, including by requiring them to abide by a curfew and stay in one of four cities.

Congress’s solutions to the end of Title 42

Mayorkas said Wednesday that the pressure placed on the border by the end of Title 42 is a direct result of Congress’s failure to pass new immigration laws. He also said that the agency had requested additional funding in December, but lawmakers only delivered about half of what was needed.

“I cannot overemphasize that our current situation is the outcome of Congress leaving a broken, outdated immigration system in place for over two decades, despite unanimous agreement that we desperately need legislative reform,” he said.

The House GOP and a bipartisan group of senators, including centrist Democrat Joe Manchin and independent Kyrsten Sinema, have recently put forth legislative proposals to bolster border security.

The GOP proposal, which is expected to go to a House vote Thursday, would continue building the wall on the southern border that Trump started, and end the program that has allowed the Biden administration to fast-track the processing of migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and Nicaragua. It would also make it harder for migrants to apply for and receive asylum, introducing a $50 fee and making the criteria stricter.

The bipartisan Senate proposal would essentially replace Title 42 with a substantially similar program, allowing the federal government to rapidly expel migrants who cross the border without authorization for a period of two years.

Biden has already threatened to veto the GOP proposal if it is passed, and Kerri Talbot, deputy director for the immigrant advocacy group Immigration Hub, said that the Senate bill isn’t any more likely to become law.

“There is no way that that bill will see the light of day on the Senate floor,” she said. “It’s just not going to have bipartisan support because it doesn’t provide enough protection to asylum seekers.”

The primary purpose of those bills might be messaging, but it’s possible that different legislation designed to fill the gaps in DHS’s funding could actually draw bipartisan support. That could come either through ongoing negotiations over the budget or through a separate, supplemental spending bill, as Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) has proposed.

Democrats are starting to line up behind Gallego’s proposal. “We need to modernize those ports, we need to invest in processing immigrants. And we need to invest in the border organizations that are doing the work of connecting people and making sure they get to where they need to go, making sure they’re housed and fed,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the ranking member on the House immigration subcommittee.

And while some Republicans, including Texas Sen. John Cornyn, have already come out against supplemental funding absent additional border reforms, others have said they are open to the idea.

What Title 42’s expiration and the influx of migrants mean for the 2024 election

Biden came into office following a campaign in which he promised to renew the US’s focus on protecting vulnerable immigrant populations. And he began his tenure making an effort to distinguish himself from Trump’s cruelty on the border as well as the harsh immigration enforcement policies of the Obama administration, which oversaw record deportations.

But the issue has proved intractable, in part because Republicans have used the border as a political cudgel against the president. In a CNN town hall Wednesday night, Trump said that Thursday, the day Title 42 ends, was “going to be a day of infamy” and accused Democrats of “destroying our country” by letting it expire. In recent months, some members of the GOP have called for the impeachment of Secretary Mayorkas, and the Republican-controlled House launched an investigation of Biden’s border policies.

Even if Republicans fell short of expectations in border districts amid a lackluster midterm performance nationally, they were able to narrow the margins in south Texas with their messaging on immigration in 2022. They may be looking to double down on that strategy ahead of 2024.

“There’s been a lot of glee on the part of Republicans to have people coming to the border,” Rivlin said.

But even consensus among Democrats has proved hard to come by. Progressives and those who have long been working on immigration issues have been openly critical of the president’s move to further militarize the border. But some vocal moderates have advocated for a continuation of Title 42 or something like it. That includes Manchin and Sinema, as well as Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who has recently called for tougher border security measures. He proposed increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, improving technology at the border, and constructing new barriers in places “where they make sense” to deter unauthorized crossings.

“I think that the vast majority of the Democratic caucus actually is united,” Jayapal said. “When there are specific proposals that are just about the border, then it becomes very difficult because people don’t want to be called ‘soft on the border.’”

Ahead of 2024, Biden has been wary of the same criticism being levied against him. And absent the possibility of congressional action, he’s in a tough position to defend politically. Polls conducted in the first months of 2023 have repeatedly shown that voters are divided over Biden’s strategy on the border. An April poll by Global Strategy Group, for instance, found that more than half of voters across seven battleground states disapproved of his handling of immigration and thought that he was ignoring problems at the border.

“House Republicans are showing their hand this week with their extreme legislation. They’ve made it clear they don’t plan to be reasonable and come to the table and seek real solutions,” Talbot said. “So unfortunately, it’s left to the agency to do the best they can with the resources that it has.”

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