May 30, 2023 • 34 mins
In the first of four episodes, James discusses the last three years of immigration policy and what they Myrna for people seeking refuge in the USA.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:11):
You probably don't remember the passage of Title forty two,
let alone that of Title forty two taped to six
a sub chapter two, Part G Section two sixty four.
But it's a part of US federal law that gives
the government of the authority to take emergency action to
keep communical diseases out of the country. The portion, which
allows a sweeping disregard for asylum law passed in nineteen
(00:33):
forty four, reads in one giant run on paragraph sentences follows.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Whenever the Surgeon General determines that, by reason of the
existence of any communicable disease in a foreign country, there
is serious danger of the introduction of such disease into
the United States, and that this danger is so increased
by the introduction of persons or property from such country
that a suspension of the right to introduce such persons
and property is required in the interest of the public health.
(00:59):
The Surgeon General, in accordance with regulations approved by the President,
shall have the power to prohibit and whole or in part,
the introduction of persons and property from such countries or
places as he shall designate, in order to avert such danger,
and for such period of time as he may deem
necessary for such purpose.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Before President Donald Trump's administration used it on March twentieth,
twenty twenty. It had been used only in nineteen twenty
nine to keep ships from China and the Philippines from
entering US ports during the meningitis outbreak. But in March
of twenty twenty, when you probably weren't paying much attention
because the world was falling apart, or when I just
returned from a work trip to Rwanda, where I was
(01:36):
month before any precautions appeared in the USA screened for
a novel coronavirus. The Trump administration cited this public health
law in instructions to the Department of Homeland Security on
restrictions for migrants entering the United States. That very same day,
Center for Disease Control Director Robert R. Redfield relied on
(01:57):
this regulation to issue order suspending the introduction into the
United States of certain individuals who had been in quote
unquote coronavirus impacted areas and quote who would be introduced
into a congregate setting at the port of entry or
a border station. This includes individuals coming from Canada or
(02:18):
Mexico who would normally be detained by CBP after arriving
at the border people including asylum seekers and accompanied children,
and people attending to enter the United States between ports
of entry, citing the new CDC order. That same day,
the border patrol began expelling individuals who arrived at the
US Mexico border without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum.
(02:42):
Reports indicate the CDC scientists expressed opposition to the invocation
of Title forty two, arguing that there was really no
public health rationale to support it. Ever since then, public
health experts outside the CDC have continued to agree, arguing
that while international borders largy remain open to other travelers,
there is no need to turn away refugees and expel
(03:02):
them to their home countries or send them to Mexico.
Despite this, DHS has been applying Title forty two to
migrants for three years since then, and people have been
turned away without getting a chance to plead their case
for asylum three million times.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Trump is no longer president, but Title forty two has persisted.
It's actually persisted for much longer under Biden's watch two
years and four months than it did under Trump ten months.
But we'll get to that part later. First, let's look
at what this bureaucratic wrinkle does when it's applied for
three years across a land border spanning one and forty
(03:39):
five kilometers. That's nine hundred and fifty four miles for
the Americans listening at a time when climate change, economic decline,
and state and nonstate violence are driving more and more
people towards the USA's southern border in the hope of
a better life. We're talking about the title forty two
this week because it ended on eleventh. In a sense,
(04:01):
this marks the important change in immigration law. But in
a sense it doesn't. Immigration was complicated and cruel for
migrants and profitable for people on both sides of the
border before March of twenty twenty, and it's the same
after Title forty two has gone. But nonetheless, Title forty
two represented a distinct change in how asylum works in
the US, and, especially when combined with other Trump policies
(04:23):
that Biden has continued, a distinct change in how many
people die when coming to this country to try and
have a better chance at a save future. By April
of twenty twenty, Title forty two expulsions at the border
overtook the previous record for expulsions under the so called
Migrant Protection Protocol, which is better known as Remain in Mexico,
(04:45):
that was set in August of twenty nineteen under an
agreement reached with the Mexican government. In late March of
twenty twenty, the border patrol began sending quote unquote back
to Mexico most Mexican, but also Guatemala and honduranum Saldareian
families and seeing adults encountered at the border. This group
(05:05):
of nationalities remained unchanged until May of twenty twenty two,
when the Biden administration came to an agreement with Mexico
to accept quote unquote thousands of Cubans and Nicaraguans sent
from the United States to Mexico. But this doesn't really matter.
You'll see that alone these episodes. Immigration law on the
ground and immigration law in Washington, DC are two very
(05:28):
different things. There has been extensive documentation of individuals expelled
to Mexico who do not fit within these nationalities, including
Haitian asylum seekers, some of whom I've spoken to myself.
People who are expelled are often driven by bus to
the nearest port of entry that's a land border crossing
and told to walk back to Mexico, often without their
(05:51):
luggage and other belongings. I've found that luggage and belongings,
including ID cards, clothing, and even little stuffed animals, all
along the border in the three years since Title forty
two has been in place. I asked my friend Paul
to describe what we found in Texas, and we've been
for a walk along the border wall during our time
reporting on the National Butterfly Center.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
There you'd find driver's licenses. I believe at one point
we found like an almost an information packet for like
it was for a teenager, a teenage girl. I remember
that because we got pictures of it. And then when
we took that long walk, remember we walked down the
border wall, it's two and a half mile walk something
(06:34):
like that. When we got to the very end of
the wall where the river was, there was just a
giant pile of people's stuff. And some of it was
obviously trash, you know, they were abandoning clothes after they
changed from crossing and stuff like that, but a lot
(06:56):
of it was full backpacks, a lot of ID documents
just in piles, just piles of them. Yeah, yeah, just
big piles of documents that proved who you were.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
The other thing we found with ladders, tons of them.
Apparently someone built a gazebo out of them. The wall
varies in design a bit along the border depending on
when and by whom it was built. But the trum
design has a flat anti climb plate at the top.
I'll let Paul describe how that's going.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
It was literally like somebody went to the hardware store
bought two of the longest or actually sorry, three of
the longest two by four as you could put two
of them beside each other, and then just nailed steps
up them, so you know, they were like sixteen twenty
feet long, and which was enough to just climb over
the wall like there weren't There weren't many places actually,
(07:52):
because most of the wall had that anti climb barrier
at the top. Whereas when you didn't have the anti
climb barrier, you didn't actually have something to set it against.
But once you put that on there, you could just
lean the ladder up against it. It's like self defeating.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Sometimes these expulsions are not as straightforward as a bus
to nearest port of entry. CBP has carried out what
are called lateral transfers by plane or bus, taking migrants
to another location along the border, to towns like San
Diego or El Paso, even if they entered in Arizona
or California. This leaves families stranded in the town where
(08:34):
they have no connections, no resources, and no community. Again,
these are people I've met. It won't have escaped the listeners'
attention that those planes and buses and other means of
detention and transport are indeed congregate settings, but that doesn't
seem to matter here. Title forty two didn't stop people
trying to come, but it made the journey more difficult.
(08:58):
Instead of crossing and trying to turn them selves in
for asylum or approaching a port of entry, people began
crossing in more remote places, places without border walls or
barriers and with less frequent border patrols. In twenty twenty,
the Border Patrol found two hundred and forty seven dead
bodies along the border. This is unlikely to represent the
(09:19):
full human toll of border enforcement. Many deaths in the
desert go unreported and undiscovered, but it gives some kind
of point of comparison for the twenty twenty one number.
After a year of Title forty two, five hundred and
forty six people died that year. In twenty twenty two,
third year of Title forty two, eight one hundred and
(09:40):
fifty seven people died. None of those people were guilty
of any crime other than wanting a better life, but
under Title forty two, they lost their lives because the
US didn't give them a safe way to exercise a
human right to claim asylum. One local advocate, Hamaira Yusefi
from a group called PANA the to Ship for de
(10:00):
Bards with New Americans explain what Title forty two have
been like for her as an advocate for asylum seekers.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
When the pandemic hit, we saw that Title forty two
heavily restricted those who were able to seek asylum in
this country. So while there was chaos happening and folks
around the world who were trying to come to the
United States for refuge, they were unable to do so.
(10:27):
And what this resulted in is people taking an even
more dangerous path right than before and going between the
ports of entries in order to try to seek refuge.
And so we have had hundreds of cases of individuals
who have gotten themselves injured, who the hospitals are calling
us because they've tried to cross and got injured, and
(10:48):
where we're trying to help them with getting some basic
legal services and immediate shelter and those types of things.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Since Biden took off his human rights first says, it's
identified more than thirteen thousand incidents of kidnapping, torture, rape,
or other violent attacks on people blocked or expelled to
Mexico and a title forty two. That's because it's easy
for violence to follow people who have no resources and
no community to protect them. It's for that reason that
(11:16):
you won't always see faces in my photographs at the border,
and that some of the names in this series have changed,
or perhaps we're just using someone's first name. It's also
for that reason they're not everyone at the border always
wants to talk. But we do have some interviews coming
up for you tomorrow. Here's a clip from a discussion
about this which I recorded the border last week.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
I'm trying to get people's faces, and that's what everybody
is doing.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I can't speak to what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
That's what I'm doing.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
I don't know about other people.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
You should ask. You should if you think someone's taking
a photo of you.
Speaker 7 (11:48):
It's okay.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I don't have a why.
Speaker 7 (11:52):
You know, I wish I could.
Speaker 8 (11:53):
Yeah, I could tell you.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
People who are subject to Title forty to expulsion are
not given an opportunity to contest their expulsion on the
ground on silvered face persecution in the country to which
they will be expelled. There's a very limited exceptions Title
forty two for people who quote unquote spontaneously inform CBP
officers that they fear being tortured in the country to
which they will be expelled. However, in order to receive
(12:15):
an official screening by an asylum officer for exemption under
that provision, the CBP officer must first determine that the
claim is reasonably believable. From March twenty twenty through September
twenty twenty one, just two hundred and seventy two people
were granted the right to seek asylum under this exception.
The use of Title forty two has been despite the
relative lack of outrage sin sur bide. The administration took
(12:36):
office bipartisan in twenty twenty one. A few weeks before
Biden's inauguration, I spent some time talking to migrants at
the southern border for slate. Many of them had come
to a small, tense city that popped up just feet
from the pedestrian border crossing and the country that they
had traveled thousands of miles to get to, but that
they couldn't reach. You can see America through defense there,
(13:00):
but you can't get there. The camp was diverse in
its composition. On one trip, I interviewed folks from Haiti, Honduras,
Ol Salvador, Watemala, and Ethiopia. Here's what one of them
said to me when he asked his message to President Biden.
You recognize the voices Daniel's. That's because I don't have
his permission to use his voice.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Here we are appealing to President Biden. We aren't bad people.
Our goal is to work and get ahead in the
world for our children. We don't want to go back.
They will kill us, so we are here.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Some of them wore Biden T shirts, which I suspect
rightually a plant by right wing our Jean provocateur looking
to make the new administration look weak. They needn't really
have bothered with all the effort. Biden would do plenty
in the next few months to make himself look cruel
and unkind. Before we talk about that, I want to
play you a clip from Biden's first press confidence. President.
Speaker 9 (13:48):
You just listed the reasons that people are coming talking
about in country problems, saying that it happens every year.
You blamed the last administration, Sir. I just got back
last night from a recording trip to the border where
I met nine year old Jose, who walked here from
Honduras by himself, along with another little boy. He had
that snout on him and we were able to call
(14:11):
his family. His mother says that she sent her son
to this country because she believes that you are not
deporting unaccompanied miners like her son. That's why she's sent
him alone from Honduras. So, Sir, you blamed the last administration.
But is your messaging and saying that these children are
and will be allowed to stay in this country and
(14:33):
work their way through this process, encouraging families like Jose's
to come.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Well, look.
Speaker 10 (14:45):
The idea that I'm going to say, which I would
never do. If an unaccompanied child ends up at the border,
We're just gonna let him starve to death and stay
on the other side. No previous administrations dead either, except Trump.
I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to
do it. That's why I've asked the Vice President of
(15:08):
the United States yesterday to be the lead person I'm
dealing with focusing on the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala,
or Salvadora in the first.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Place in the coming months, some of which I covered
for an op ed in NBC about the Biden Administration's
cruel treatment of Haitian migrants. Things on the border didn't
get any better. Biden deported more Haitian people in a
few weeks than the Trump administration did in a year,
eight hundred and ninety five people reporting in twenty twenty
versus more than one two hundred people. From January twentieth
(15:43):
to March twenty second, twenty twenty one. While making declarations
about showing compassion to migrants, the Biden administration packed Haitians
onto crowded planes and buses and sent them back to
Haiti in the middle of a pandemic. In March, the
US sent another pointed disinvitation to Haitians. The US Embassy
(16:04):
in Haiti tweeted a picture President Joe Biden looking off
into the distance with a caption in both English and
Haitian creole. In Creole, it read wing cardi sa bienkie pavini.
The translation above it was.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I can say quite clearly, don't come over.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
In July of that year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcas,
himself a child of parents who fled from Cuba, said
that Haitians and Cubans fleeing unrest in their countries will
not find safety in the US, even if they have
a credible claim for asylum, and especially if they flee
by sea. In doing so, he was echoing statements to
the US broadcast from planes flying over Haiti following the
(16:46):
devastating earthquake in twenty ten. Following these announcements, the US
diverted resources that it could have used to help people
from suffering in a country which had been destroyed by
a natural disaster to stop them coming to this country.
He was also overlooking that under both international and domestic law,
asylum seekers are entitled to make claims no matter how
(17:08):
they enter the country. Here's what Mayoka said at his
press conference.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Allow me to be clear, if you take to the sea,
you will not come to the United States.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Part of this hardline is because of a perceived crisis
at the border. You don't have to go far on
Twitter dot com before you run into people like Fox
Newses Bill Malugan. Yep, the tampon in the coffee guy
is now a border reporter, and he's shamelessly repeating CBP
statistics about apprehensions on the southern border. Here he is
talking to his buddy Tucker Carlson. Do you remember that guy?
Speaker 11 (17:39):
Bill Malujin has covered the border more closely than any
reporter in the United States for the last two years,
and today, in his estimation, the single largest caravan of
illegal aliens flowing into this country in his two years
of watching crossed Today he broke the story. He's got
remarkable video for us. He's live at the border now, Bill,
Great to see you.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
What did you.
Speaker 8 (17:59):
See, Tucker cad Evings you you mentioned it right off
the top. This was easily the biggest group we have
ever seen during our nineteen months of covering this border crisis.
And they all crossed illegally into El Paso last night,
and we got some pretty wild camera footage to show you.
Take a look at this. This was last night in
Ol Paso, a massive caravan over one thousand illegal immigrants
(18:20):
crossing into El Paso last night. Local media they're reporting
it was potentially up to two thousand people and that
it was possibly the biggest mass crossing in the city's history. Now,
as you look at the video, you'll see just wave
after wave after wave of these people walking across the
river and then gathering on the US side of the
river where they kind of form a single file line.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
But it's not just Fox News doing this. You'll see
MPR and other more liberal outlets quoting these same statistics
without the necessary context. They're not lying. Apprehensions are higher,
but that is in some part because migrants are now
crossing more than once. In twenty nineteen, before Title forty
two went into effect, just seven percent of migrants apprehended
(19:02):
by the Border Patrol had previously been apprehended. The reapprehension
rate grew to twenty seven percent in fiscal year twenty
twenty two. This is because we're expelling people to places
where they have no hope of a better future and
not leaving them with many options other than to try
again in more remote and risky settings. Meanwhile, there's much
(19:23):
less concern from the right and from Democrats at the
fact that Ukrainians are exempted from Title forty two and
Russians and Ukrainians generally experience expedited processing of the sort
which one would hope this country could offer to other
people escaping conflicts around the world, including many that we started.
I asked my friend Gustavo Solis, a border investigative reporter
(19:44):
at KPBS in San Diego, to summarize the Biden administration
to take on Title forty two.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
Now, on paper of the rationalists, there's a pandemic going on.
We need to stop or slow the spread of COVID nineteen.
So because of this extraordinary circumstance, we need Title forty
two to shore up the border. That was bullshit, and
we know that now through reporting that it was total bullshit.
We know that from as early as twenty eighteen, Stephen Miller,
(20:12):
Trump's White House aid wanted to use Title forty two
to stop this type of migration. We know that Vice
President Mike Pence pressured the top doctors at the CDC
into doing this, basically saying, if you don't do this,
you might lose your job. Because even then, in March
twenty twenty, doctors at the CDC knew that there was
(20:33):
no real public health rationale for this. I mean, if
you look at the order, it's supposed to stop COVID,
but there weren't any exceptions for migrants who were vaccinated
or there was no testing component to it. So that's
kind of the beginning of Title forty two. By the
time Biden came in office, Biden had promised to end
it along with Roman in Mexico and restore the humane
(20:56):
asylum system, but he kept Title forty two place, and
he didn't just keep it in place, he expanded it
to include nationalities that weren't included when Trump first rolled
it out.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Even as a legal battle went back and forth, another
major bottle neck emerged in a migration system in the
form of never ending clusterfuck. That is the CBP one app.
Again a Le Gustavo explain his reporting here.
Speaker 7 (21:20):
It actually kind of started with the Ukrainians. That was
kind of how they started using it for the asylum context.
But CBP one is essentially a phone app for asylum,
and on paper it kind of makes sense, right instead
of like, you know, Joe Biden and the Dems are
(21:40):
really terrified of the optics of a lot of people
at the border, and they a lot of their policy
is revolved around stopping that right. They don't want masses
of people at the border. The CBP one app aims
to address that by telling micros, hey, instead of coming
all the way to Mexico and showing up to the border,
just download this app and schedule an appointment to come here,
(22:04):
and we'll let you to see if you're eligible for
asylum or not. Another example of a policy in Washington,
DC that has no reality in what's going on the
border because migrants live in shelters with really bad Wi
Fi access, and they have crappy phones. So what I
(22:29):
found in the reporting is that CBP one rewards people
with the best phones, not necessarily people who are most vulnerable.
And the story I came out with last week was
about how data from the Mexican government shows that at
least in Tijuana, about forty four percent of every migrant
who has gotten a CBP one application to enter the
country is a Russian national, and Russian nationals makeup at
(22:53):
most ten percent of the overall migrant population in Tijuana,
So you have this situation where a relatively affluent ten
percent of the population is getting almost half of these
humanitarian protection appointments that are designed for the world's most
vulnerable people. And that's what If you one does like it,
(23:15):
they call it the ticketmaster of asylum. And that's not
a compliment. That is like ticketmaster fucking sucks. Nobody likes it.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I also spoke to Cava, an activist who participated a
mutual aid at the border. We talked about the app
because CABA has some professional insight into the technologies used.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I do data science and machine running the native things
for a living, and the problem of building these systems
trained entirely on databases of white faces and then the
motain working for people, you know, the backgrounds is very
(23:52):
well known in this field. That is a very well
documented issue for more than a decade. And anyone who
could tell you about building a facial recognition or some
kind of a camera app that does image processing and
and I'm only training it on my faces, it was
like that this is a This is not something that
I think any competent software development house who would have
(24:14):
done and not expected. So I have a hard time
believing that the whole chain of everyone that's had to
go through from the developers on up to you know,
anyone who does it or you know has authority of
these things at CBP or Homland Security. This is just
(24:36):
it's it's it's like, I don't know, it's it's, it's
it's it's hard to believe that this was an ass.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Anyway, before we get too far from discussing things to
fucking suck is an advertising break, you might be wondering
why Title forty two is ending now and how we
got here, given that there seems to be a consensus
in DC that the border is in crisis, and that
(25:05):
that crisis is not that people were leaving to die
on the streets on the other side or in the
deserts of California and Arizona, but the people were allowing
to come to the richest country's ever existed, from countries
that we've destabilized for decades to have a chance of
a decent life. Well, the answer is complicated. Some of
it's a bit too complicated for me to really spend
the time explaining, and you don't really need to know
(25:27):
the ins and outs of court cases to understand that. Essentially,
the Biden administration had planned to end Title forty two
in late twenty twenty two, right after the midterms. Title
forty two actually became theoretically unenforceable in November of that
year thanks to a court ruling, but the Supreme Court
in December prevented the Biden administration amending Title forty two.
(25:47):
While the Justice is considered a request by a group
of Republican led states that want to continue the expulsions,
which had previously been decarred unlawful by lower court. Biden's
Department of Justice had previously defended Title forty is necessary
to public health, but by the end of twenty twenty two,
they were ready to end enforcement a Title forty two politically,
even if they were nowhere near prepared on the ground.
(26:10):
A coalition of Republican led states, however, managed to get
a federal judge in Louisiana to prevent officials from ending
Title forty two, saying the Biden administration did not taken
adequate steps required to terminate the policy. Then, on November fifteenth,
another federal judge declared Title forty two are lawful, saying
the CDC had not properly explained the policy's public health
rational or considered its impact on asylum seekers at the
(26:32):
request of the Biden administration. The judge gave border officials
five weeks until December the twenty first to end Title
forty two nineteen. Republican led States asked several courts to
delay Title forty two's resision indefinitely, warning that chaos would
otherwise ensue. After their request was denied by lower courts,
the States asked a Supreme Court to intervene. On December
(26:53):
twenty seventh, the Supreme Court said it would suspend the
lower court order that found Title forty two to be
illegal until it dic I did whether the Republican led
States should be allowed to intervene in the case. That's
some Christmas spirit for you. Eventually, with the end of
the federal emergency over COVID nineteen, Title forty two just
kind of went away. Customs and Border Protection, the federal
(27:14):
agency which put up the most staunch resistance to vaccine mandates,
would begin processing migrants under Title eight of US immigration
law on the eleventh of May twenty twenty three. I'll
let them summarize what they see this to mean. According
to the USCIS website, individuals who unlawfully cross the Southwest
border will generally be processed under Title eight Expedited Removal
(27:37):
authorities in a matter of days. They will be barred
from re entry to the United States for at least
five years if ordered removed, and they will be presumed
ineligible for asylum under the proposed Circumvention of Lawful Pathways
regulation absent and applicable exception. What this means is, if
you cross into the United States not a the pordam entry,
(28:00):
you will be assumed ineligible for asylum and the process
to remove you from the United States will begin immediately.
You have a chance to file a defensive asylum claim
against that, but the process can be rushed and more difficult.
Despite this, and having almost three years to repair, they
were by no means Ready, let's hear from Gustavo again. Gustavo,
(28:22):
can you explain to us a little bit about what
you found that by the administration has been planning for
the end of Title forty two.
Speaker 7 (28:31):
Yeah, what I found is they haven't really been doing
much planning, right, I mean they talk about I think
with Title forty two, it's a clear example of immigration
policy being decided in Washington and no one really from
the border being involved or told what's going on. So,
like I think it was last week the HS Secretary
(28:55):
Majorca did this press release about what they're doing in
terms of processing centers in Guatemala and Columbia so people
can just go there instead of coming all the way
to the border, which actually there have been timelines of
when those will open. But they had asked all these
things for like big picture things, right, to stop people
from coming in the first place, expanding some legal pathways,
(29:18):
like making it easier for people with families already here
to get sponsors, fixing some of the little things for
CVP one, but they don't talk about like on the
ground logistics right. So for example, I went to Tijuana
to talk to the head of the Department of Migrant
Affairs there who told me this, and I checked with
(29:39):
him yesterday morning, who said, still to this day, less
than forty eight hours before Title forty two ends, he
doesn't know how many migrants CBP will allow to cross
through the ports of entry in Sandy Erro. His guess
is that maybe two hundred, because that's kind of the
number that they floated around in December when they originally
(30:00):
wanted to get rid of Title forty two before their lawsuit,
and if it's two hundred, he basically said, Tijuana's gonna
be screwed because two hundred doesn't even cover the number
of new migrants coming in and deporties being sent to Tijuana.
So it's gonna like we have this bottleneck of migration
in Tijuana and all over the border because of Title
forty two. For the last three years, no one's been
(30:21):
able to move. And if they just open it up
to two hundred people, that's not really going to address
any of the bottleneck.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Right There's like, I think, is it sixteen thousand people
are waiting like an asylum application right now?
Speaker 7 (30:36):
Yeah? Yeah, I hear different numbers throwing around, like teny, fifteen, sixteen,
and nobody really knows because there's like a network of
official shelters, and there's a bunch of unofficial shelters, and
there's a bunch of Russian dudes staying in hotels in airbnbs.
But I think, yeah, tens of thousands. I think sixteen
is an accurate number.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I think it's intructive here to listen to the Fox
News coverage of this and how much Secretary my Orcus
tries to pandit to them.
Speaker 7 (31:01):
Want to be very clear, our borders are not open.
Speaker 6 (31:05):
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcis says, when Title forty two
expires at midnight tonight, anyone who arrives at the southern
border will be presumed ineligible for asylum and face consequences.
But withholding facilities already overwhelmed, the administration is ratcheting up
tough rhetoric while also clearing the way for mass releases
into US communities with no way for authorities to track people.
(31:27):
You said at the beginning that you've prepared for this
moment for almost two years. So why is part of
that plan and honor system?
Speaker 7 (31:36):
Oh, it is not an honor system. They are a
subject of our apprehension efforts.
Speaker 6 (31:40):
But under parole release authorized by the US Border Patrol
Chief last night, migrants do not receive an alien registration
number for authorities to track them. They don't even get
a court date. Instead, migrants are asked to turn themselves
into Ice within sixty days to start immigration proceedings on themselves.
Speaker 11 (31:57):
The American people are watching this.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
They know what they see.
Speaker 11 (32:00):
They see a wide open border.
Speaker 6 (32:01):
Florida's Attorney General is suing the administration, arguing the parole
plan is identical to a policy a federal judge struck
down earlier this year.
Speaker 7 (32:09):
You have confidence in the lawfulness of our actions.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
Plans to release migrants at bus stops, gas stations, and
supermarkets was first detailed last year, according to a memo
uncovered by the Florida Legal Proceedings. Today, Texas Governor Greg
Abbott sent a busload of migrants to the Vice President's residents.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Greg Abbott's disgusting antics acide. There was a real attempt
by the Biden deministration to come to Republican side on
migration that we can see clearly here in the hours
before we expected Title forty two to die. Folks like
me who cover the border made plans the day before.
On the tenth, Majorcas announced the Title forty two would
(32:46):
be enforced up until eleven fifty nine pm Eastern time,
and in San Diego, border patrol offices closed down the
port of entry at Sandy Sedra, the border town just
south of San Diego, for a training exercise in which
they lined up in front of the cars waiting to
cross the border with plexiglass shields and ryotgear. Meanwhile, in
(33:08):
between the two thirty foot board offenses that divide Sanisidra
from Tijuana. Board of Patrol began corraling migrants. Afghans, Colombians, Vietnamese,
Koreans and Golan, Sudanese, Tagis and Congolese people all shared
little more than a few tarps and cardboard boxes for
shelter as they waited for something to happen. Despite having
(33:30):
months to repair in years to plan, it appears at
Department of Homeland Security totally failed to create so much
as a scrap of shade or shelter, and instead chose
to house people detain pending processing in the open air.
In tomorrow's episode, we'll hear from some of them. It
(33:51):
Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple pot Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Thanks for listening
You probably don't remember the passage of Title forty two,
let alone that of Title forty two taped to six
a sub chapter two, Part G Section two sixty four.
But it's a part of US federal law that gives
the government of the authority to take emergency action to
keep communical diseases out of the country. The portion, which
allows a sweeping disregard for asylum law passed in nineteen
(00:33):
forty four, reads in one giant run on paragraph sentences follows.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Whenever the Surgeon General determines that, by reason of the
existence of any communicable disease in a foreign country, there
is serious danger of the introduction of such disease into
the United States, and that this danger is so increased
by the introduction of persons or property from such country
that a suspension of the right to introduce such persons
and property is required in the interest of the public health.
(00:59):
The Surgeon General, in accordance with regulations approved by the President,
shall have the power to prohibit and whole or in part,
the introduction of persons and property from such countries or
places as he shall designate, in order to avert such danger,
and for such period of time as he may deem
necessary for such purpose.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Before President Donald Trump's administration used it on March twentieth,
twenty twenty. It had been used only in nineteen twenty
nine to keep ships from China and the Philippines from
entering US ports during the meningitis outbreak. But in March
of twenty twenty, when you probably weren't paying much attention
because the world was falling apart, or when I just
returned from a work trip to Rwanda, where I was
(01:36):
month before any precautions appeared in the USA screened for
a novel coronavirus. The Trump administration cited this public health
law in instructions to the Department of Homeland Security on
restrictions for migrants entering the United States. That very same day,
Center for Disease Control Director Robert R. Redfield relied on
(01:57):
this regulation to issue order suspending the introduction into the
United States of certain individuals who had been in quote
unquote coronavirus impacted areas and quote who would be introduced
into a congregate setting at the port of entry or
a border station. This includes individuals coming from Canada or
(02:18):
Mexico who would normally be detained by CBP after arriving
at the border people including asylum seekers and accompanied children,
and people attending to enter the United States between ports
of entry, citing the new CDC order. That same day,
the border patrol began expelling individuals who arrived at the
US Mexico border without giving them the opportunity to seek asylum.
(02:42):
Reports indicate the CDC scientists expressed opposition to the invocation
of Title forty two, arguing that there was really no
public health rationale to support it. Ever since then, public
health experts outside the CDC have continued to agree, arguing
that while international borders largy remain open to other travelers,
there is no need to turn away refugees and expel
(03:02):
them to their home countries or send them to Mexico.
Despite this, DHS has been applying Title forty two to
migrants for three years since then, and people have been
turned away without getting a chance to plead their case
for asylum three million times.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Now.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Trump is no longer president, but Title forty two has persisted.
It's actually persisted for much longer under Biden's watch two
years and four months than it did under Trump ten months.
But we'll get to that part later. First, let's look
at what this bureaucratic wrinkle does when it's applied for
three years across a land border spanning one and forty
(03:39):
five kilometers. That's nine hundred and fifty four miles for
the Americans listening at a time when climate change, economic decline,
and state and nonstate violence are driving more and more
people towards the USA's southern border in the hope of
a better life. We're talking about the title forty two
this week because it ended on eleventh. In a sense,
(04:01):
this marks the important change in immigration law. But in
a sense it doesn't. Immigration was complicated and cruel for
migrants and profitable for people on both sides of the
border before March of twenty twenty, and it's the same
after Title forty two has gone. But nonetheless, Title forty
two represented a distinct change in how asylum works in
the US, and, especially when combined with other Trump policies
(04:23):
that Biden has continued, a distinct change in how many
people die when coming to this country to try and
have a better chance at a save future. By April
of twenty twenty, Title forty two expulsions at the border
overtook the previous record for expulsions under the so called
Migrant Protection Protocol, which is better known as Remain in Mexico,
(04:45):
that was set in August of twenty nineteen under an
agreement reached with the Mexican government. In late March of
twenty twenty, the border patrol began sending quote unquote back
to Mexico most Mexican, but also Guatemala and honduranum Saldareian
families and seeing adults encountered at the border. This group
(05:05):
of nationalities remained unchanged until May of twenty twenty two,
when the Biden administration came to an agreement with Mexico
to accept quote unquote thousands of Cubans and Nicaraguans sent
from the United States to Mexico. But this doesn't really matter.
You'll see that alone these episodes. Immigration law on the
ground and immigration law in Washington, DC are two very
(05:28):
different things. There has been extensive documentation of individuals expelled
to Mexico who do not fit within these nationalities, including
Haitian asylum seekers, some of whom I've spoken to myself.
People who are expelled are often driven by bus to
the nearest port of entry that's a land border crossing
and told to walk back to Mexico, often without their
(05:51):
luggage and other belongings. I've found that luggage and belongings,
including ID cards, clothing, and even little stuffed animals, all
along the border in the three years since Title forty
two has been in place. I asked my friend Paul
to describe what we found in Texas, and we've been
for a walk along the border wall during our time
reporting on the National Butterfly Center.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
There you'd find driver's licenses. I believe at one point
we found like an almost an information packet for like
it was for a teenager, a teenage girl. I remember
that because we got pictures of it. And then when
we took that long walk, remember we walked down the
border wall, it's two and a half mile walk something
(06:34):
like that. When we got to the very end of
the wall where the river was, there was just a
giant pile of people's stuff. And some of it was
obviously trash, you know, they were abandoning clothes after they
changed from crossing and stuff like that, but a lot
(06:56):
of it was full backpacks, a lot of ID documents
just in piles, just piles of them. Yeah, yeah, just
big piles of documents that proved who you were.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
The other thing we found with ladders, tons of them.
Apparently someone built a gazebo out of them. The wall
varies in design a bit along the border depending on
when and by whom it was built. But the trum
design has a flat anti climb plate at the top.
I'll let Paul describe how that's going.
Speaker 4 (07:27):
It was literally like somebody went to the hardware store
bought two of the longest or actually sorry, three of
the longest two by four as you could put two
of them beside each other, and then just nailed steps
up them, so you know, they were like sixteen twenty
feet long, and which was enough to just climb over
the wall like there weren't There weren't many places actually,
(07:52):
because most of the wall had that anti climb barrier
at the top. Whereas when you didn't have the anti
climb barrier, you didn't actually have something to set it against.
But once you put that on there, you could just
lean the ladder up against it. It's like self defeating.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
Sometimes these expulsions are not as straightforward as a bus
to nearest port of entry. CBP has carried out what
are called lateral transfers by plane or bus, taking migrants
to another location along the border, to towns like San
Diego or El Paso, even if they entered in Arizona
or California. This leaves families stranded in the town where
(08:34):
they have no connections, no resources, and no community. Again,
these are people I've met. It won't have escaped the listeners'
attention that those planes and buses and other means of
detention and transport are indeed congregate settings, but that doesn't
seem to matter here. Title forty two didn't stop people
trying to come, but it made the journey more difficult.
(08:58):
Instead of crossing and trying to turn them selves in
for asylum or approaching a port of entry, people began
crossing in more remote places, places without border walls or
barriers and with less frequent border patrols. In twenty twenty,
the Border Patrol found two hundred and forty seven dead
bodies along the border. This is unlikely to represent the
(09:19):
full human toll of border enforcement. Many deaths in the
desert go unreported and undiscovered, but it gives some kind
of point of comparison for the twenty twenty one number.
After a year of Title forty two, five hundred and
forty six people died that year. In twenty twenty two,
third year of Title forty two, eight one hundred and
(09:40):
fifty seven people died. None of those people were guilty
of any crime other than wanting a better life, but
under Title forty two, they lost their lives because the
US didn't give them a safe way to exercise a
human right to claim asylum. One local advocate, Hamaira Yusefi
from a group called PANA the to Ship for de
(10:00):
Bards with New Americans explain what Title forty two have
been like for her as an advocate for asylum seekers.
Speaker 5 (10:06):
When the pandemic hit, we saw that Title forty two
heavily restricted those who were able to seek asylum in
this country. So while there was chaos happening and folks
around the world who were trying to come to the
United States for refuge, they were unable to do so.
(10:27):
And what this resulted in is people taking an even
more dangerous path right than before and going between the
ports of entries in order to try to seek refuge.
And so we have had hundreds of cases of individuals
who have gotten themselves injured, who the hospitals are calling
us because they've tried to cross and got injured, and
(10:48):
where we're trying to help them with getting some basic
legal services and immediate shelter and those types of things.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Since Biden took off his human rights first says, it's
identified more than thirteen thousand incidents of kidnapping, torture, rape,
or other violent attacks on people blocked or expelled to
Mexico and a title forty two. That's because it's easy
for violence to follow people who have no resources and
no community to protect them. It's for that reason that
(11:16):
you won't always see faces in my photographs at the border,
and that some of the names in this series have changed,
or perhaps we're just using someone's first name. It's also
for that reason they're not everyone at the border always
wants to talk. But we do have some interviews coming
up for you tomorrow. Here's a clip from a discussion
about this which I recorded the border last week.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
I'm trying to get people's faces, and that's what everybody
is doing.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
I can't speak to what they're doing.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
That's what I'm doing.
Speaker 6 (11:42):
I don't know about other people.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
You should ask. You should if you think someone's taking
a photo of you.
Speaker 7 (11:48):
It's okay.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I don't have a why.
Speaker 7 (11:52):
You know, I wish I could.
Speaker 8 (11:53):
Yeah, I could tell you.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
People who are subject to Title forty to expulsion are
not given an opportunity to contest their expulsion on the
ground on silvered face persecution in the country to which
they will be expelled. There's a very limited exceptions Title
forty two for people who quote unquote spontaneously inform CBP
officers that they fear being tortured in the country to
which they will be expelled. However, in order to receive
(12:15):
an official screening by an asylum officer for exemption under
that provision, the CBP officer must first determine that the
claim is reasonably believable. From March twenty twenty through September
twenty twenty one, just two hundred and seventy two people
were granted the right to seek asylum under this exception.
The use of Title forty two has been despite the
relative lack of outrage sin sur bide. The administration took
(12:36):
office bipartisan in twenty twenty one. A few weeks before
Biden's inauguration, I spent some time talking to migrants at
the southern border for slate. Many of them had come
to a small, tense city that popped up just feet
from the pedestrian border crossing and the country that they
had traveled thousands of miles to get to, but that
they couldn't reach. You can see America through defense there,
(13:00):
but you can't get there. The camp was diverse in
its composition. On one trip, I interviewed folks from Haiti, Honduras,
Ol Salvador, Watemala, and Ethiopia. Here's what one of them
said to me when he asked his message to President Biden.
You recognize the voices Daniel's. That's because I don't have
his permission to use his voice.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
Here we are appealing to President Biden. We aren't bad people.
Our goal is to work and get ahead in the
world for our children. We don't want to go back.
They will kill us, so we are here.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
Some of them wore Biden T shirts, which I suspect
rightually a plant by right wing our Jean provocateur looking
to make the new administration look weak. They needn't really
have bothered with all the effort. Biden would do plenty
in the next few months to make himself look cruel
and unkind. Before we talk about that, I want to
play you a clip from Biden's first press confidence. President.
Speaker 9 (13:48):
You just listed the reasons that people are coming talking
about in country problems, saying that it happens every year.
You blamed the last administration, Sir. I just got back
last night from a recording trip to the border where
I met nine year old Jose, who walked here from
Honduras by himself, along with another little boy. He had
that snout on him and we were able to call
(14:11):
his family. His mother says that she sent her son
to this country because she believes that you are not
deporting unaccompanied miners like her son. That's why she's sent
him alone from Honduras. So, Sir, you blamed the last administration.
But is your messaging and saying that these children are
and will be allowed to stay in this country and
(14:33):
work their way through this process, encouraging families like Jose's
to come.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Well, look.
Speaker 10 (14:45):
The idea that I'm going to say, which I would
never do. If an unaccompanied child ends up at the border,
We're just gonna let him starve to death and stay
on the other side. No previous administrations dead either, except Trump.
I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to
do it. That's why I've asked the Vice President of
(15:08):
the United States yesterday to be the lead person I'm
dealing with focusing on the fundamental reasons why people leave Honduras, Guatemala,
or Salvadora in the first.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
Place in the coming months, some of which I covered
for an op ed in NBC about the Biden Administration's
cruel treatment of Haitian migrants. Things on the border didn't
get any better. Biden deported more Haitian people in a
few weeks than the Trump administration did in a year,
eight hundred and ninety five people reporting in twenty twenty
versus more than one two hundred people. From January twentieth
(15:43):
to March twenty second, twenty twenty one. While making declarations
about showing compassion to migrants, the Biden administration packed Haitians
onto crowded planes and buses and sent them back to
Haiti in the middle of a pandemic. In March, the
US sent another pointed disinvitation to Haitians. The US Embassy
(16:04):
in Haiti tweeted a picture President Joe Biden looking off
into the distance with a caption in both English and
Haitian creole. In Creole, it read wing cardi sa bienkie pavini.
The translation above it was.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
I can say quite clearly, don't come over.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
In July of that year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcas,
himself a child of parents who fled from Cuba, said
that Haitians and Cubans fleeing unrest in their countries will
not find safety in the US, even if they have
a credible claim for asylum, and especially if they flee
by sea. In doing so, he was echoing statements to
the US broadcast from planes flying over Haiti following the
(16:46):
devastating earthquake in twenty ten. Following these announcements, the US
diverted resources that it could have used to help people
from suffering in a country which had been destroyed by
a natural disaster to stop them coming to this country.
He was also overlooking that under both international and domestic law,
asylum seekers are entitled to make claims no matter how
(17:08):
they enter the country. Here's what Mayoka said at his
press conference.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
Allow me to be clear, if you take to the sea,
you will not come to the United States.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Part of this hardline is because of a perceived crisis
at the border. You don't have to go far on
Twitter dot com before you run into people like Fox
Newses Bill Malugan. Yep, the tampon in the coffee guy
is now a border reporter, and he's shamelessly repeating CBP
statistics about apprehensions on the southern border. Here he is
talking to his buddy Tucker Carlson. Do you remember that guy?
Speaker 11 (17:39):
Bill Malujin has covered the border more closely than any
reporter in the United States for the last two years,
and today, in his estimation, the single largest caravan of
illegal aliens flowing into this country in his two years
of watching crossed Today he broke the story. He's got
remarkable video for us. He's live at the border now, Bill,
Great to see you.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
What did you.
Speaker 8 (17:59):
See, Tucker cad Evings you you mentioned it right off
the top. This was easily the biggest group we have
ever seen during our nineteen months of covering this border crisis.
And they all crossed illegally into El Paso last night,
and we got some pretty wild camera footage to show you.
Take a look at this. This was last night in
Ol Paso, a massive caravan over one thousand illegal immigrants
(18:20):
crossing into El Paso last night. Local media they're reporting
it was potentially up to two thousand people and that
it was possibly the biggest mass crossing in the city's history. Now,
as you look at the video, you'll see just wave
after wave after wave of these people walking across the
river and then gathering on the US side of the
river where they kind of form a single file line.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
But it's not just Fox News doing this. You'll see
MPR and other more liberal outlets quoting these same statistics
without the necessary context. They're not lying. Apprehensions are higher,
but that is in some part because migrants are now
crossing more than once. In twenty nineteen, before Title forty
two went into effect, just seven percent of migrants apprehended
(19:02):
by the Border Patrol had previously been apprehended. The reapprehension
rate grew to twenty seven percent in fiscal year twenty
twenty two. This is because we're expelling people to places
where they have no hope of a better future and
not leaving them with many options other than to try
again in more remote and risky settings. Meanwhile, there's much
(19:23):
less concern from the right and from Democrats at the
fact that Ukrainians are exempted from Title forty two and
Russians and Ukrainians generally experience expedited processing of the sort
which one would hope this country could offer to other
people escaping conflicts around the world, including many that we started.
I asked my friend Gustavo Solis, a border investigative reporter
(19:44):
at KPBS in San Diego, to summarize the Biden administration
to take on Title forty two.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
Now, on paper of the rationalists, there's a pandemic going on.
We need to stop or slow the spread of COVID nineteen.
So because of this extraordinary circumstance, we need Title forty
two to shore up the border. That was bullshit, and
we know that now through reporting that it was total bullshit.
We know that from as early as twenty eighteen, Stephen Miller,
(20:12):
Trump's White House aid wanted to use Title forty two
to stop this type of migration. We know that Vice
President Mike Pence pressured the top doctors at the CDC
into doing this, basically saying, if you don't do this,
you might lose your job. Because even then, in March
twenty twenty, doctors at the CDC knew that there was
(20:33):
no real public health rationale for this. I mean, if
you look at the order, it's supposed to stop COVID,
but there weren't any exceptions for migrants who were vaccinated
or there was no testing component to it. So that's
kind of the beginning of Title forty two. By the
time Biden came in office, Biden had promised to end
it along with Roman in Mexico and restore the humane
(20:56):
asylum system, but he kept Title forty two place, and
he didn't just keep it in place, he expanded it
to include nationalities that weren't included when Trump first rolled
it out.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
Even as a legal battle went back and forth, another
major bottle neck emerged in a migration system in the
form of never ending clusterfuck. That is the CBP one app.
Again a Le Gustavo explain his reporting here.
Speaker 7 (21:20):
It actually kind of started with the Ukrainians. That was
kind of how they started using it for the asylum context.
But CBP one is essentially a phone app for asylum,
and on paper it kind of makes sense, right instead
of like, you know, Joe Biden and the Dems are
(21:40):
really terrified of the optics of a lot of people
at the border, and they a lot of their policy
is revolved around stopping that right. They don't want masses
of people at the border. The CBP one app aims
to address that by telling micros, hey, instead of coming
all the way to Mexico and showing up to the border,
just download this app and schedule an appointment to come here,
(22:04):
and we'll let you to see if you're eligible for
asylum or not. Another example of a policy in Washington,
DC that has no reality in what's going on the
border because migrants live in shelters with really bad Wi
Fi access, and they have crappy phones. So what I
(22:29):
found in the reporting is that CBP one rewards people
with the best phones, not necessarily people who are most vulnerable.
And the story I came out with last week was
about how data from the Mexican government shows that at
least in Tijuana, about forty four percent of every migrant
who has gotten a CBP one application to enter the
country is a Russian national, and Russian nationals makeup at
(22:53):
most ten percent of the overall migrant population in Tijuana,
So you have this situation where a relatively affluent ten
percent of the population is getting almost half of these
humanitarian protection appointments that are designed for the world's most
vulnerable people. And that's what If you one does like it,
(23:15):
they call it the ticketmaster of asylum. And that's not
a compliment. That is like ticketmaster fucking sucks. Nobody likes it.
Speaker 1 (23:22):
I also spoke to Cava, an activist who participated a
mutual aid at the border. We talked about the app
because CABA has some professional insight into the technologies used.
Speaker 3 (23:32):
I do data science and machine running the native things
for a living, and the problem of building these systems
trained entirely on databases of white faces and then the
motain working for people, you know, the backgrounds is very
(23:52):
well known in this field. That is a very well
documented issue for more than a decade. And anyone who
could tell you about building a facial recognition or some
kind of a camera app that does image processing and
and I'm only training it on my faces, it was
like that this is a This is not something that
I think any competent software development house who would have
(24:14):
done and not expected. So I have a hard time
believing that the whole chain of everyone that's had to
go through from the developers on up to you know,
anyone who does it or you know has authority of
these things at CBP or Homland Security. This is just
(24:36):
it's it's it's like, I don't know, it's it's, it's
it's it's hard to believe that this was an ass.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Anyway, before we get too far from discussing things to
fucking suck is an advertising break, you might be wondering
why Title forty two is ending now and how we
got here, given that there seems to be a consensus
in DC that the border is in crisis, and that
(25:05):
that crisis is not that people were leaving to die
on the streets on the other side or in the
deserts of California and Arizona, but the people were allowing
to come to the richest country's ever existed, from countries
that we've destabilized for decades to have a chance of
a decent life. Well, the answer is complicated. Some of
it's a bit too complicated for me to really spend
the time explaining, and you don't really need to know
(25:27):
the ins and outs of court cases to understand that. Essentially,
the Biden administration had planned to end Title forty two
in late twenty twenty two, right after the midterms. Title
forty two actually became theoretically unenforceable in November of that
year thanks to a court ruling, but the Supreme Court
in December prevented the Biden administration amending Title forty two.
(25:47):
While the Justice is considered a request by a group
of Republican led states that want to continue the expulsions,
which had previously been decarred unlawful by lower court. Biden's
Department of Justice had previously defended Title forty is necessary
to public health, but by the end of twenty twenty two,
they were ready to end enforcement a Title forty two politically,
even if they were nowhere near prepared on the ground.
(26:10):
A coalition of Republican led states, however, managed to get
a federal judge in Louisiana to prevent officials from ending
Title forty two, saying the Biden administration did not taken
adequate steps required to terminate the policy. Then, on November fifteenth,
another federal judge declared Title forty two are lawful, saying
the CDC had not properly explained the policy's public health
rational or considered its impact on asylum seekers at the
(26:32):
request of the Biden administration. The judge gave border officials
five weeks until December the twenty first to end Title
forty two nineteen. Republican led States asked several courts to
delay Title forty two's resision indefinitely, warning that chaos would
otherwise ensue. After their request was denied by lower courts,
the States asked a Supreme Court to intervene. On December
(26:53):
twenty seventh, the Supreme Court said it would suspend the
lower court order that found Title forty two to be
illegal until it dic I did whether the Republican led
States should be allowed to intervene in the case. That's
some Christmas spirit for you. Eventually, with the end of
the federal emergency over COVID nineteen, Title forty two just
kind of went away. Customs and Border Protection, the federal
(27:14):
agency which put up the most staunch resistance to vaccine mandates,
would begin processing migrants under Title eight of US immigration
law on the eleventh of May twenty twenty three. I'll
let them summarize what they see this to mean. According
to the USCIS website, individuals who unlawfully cross the Southwest
border will generally be processed under Title eight Expedited Removal
(27:37):
authorities in a matter of days. They will be barred
from re entry to the United States for at least
five years if ordered removed, and they will be presumed
ineligible for asylum under the proposed Circumvention of Lawful Pathways
regulation absent and applicable exception. What this means is, if
you cross into the United States not a the pordam entry,
(28:00):
you will be assumed ineligible for asylum and the process
to remove you from the United States will begin immediately.
You have a chance to file a defensive asylum claim
against that, but the process can be rushed and more difficult.
Despite this, and having almost three years to repair, they
were by no means Ready, let's hear from Gustavo again. Gustavo,
(28:22):
can you explain to us a little bit about what
you found that by the administration has been planning for
the end of Title forty two.
Speaker 7 (28:31):
Yeah, what I found is they haven't really been doing
much planning, right, I mean they talk about I think
with Title forty two, it's a clear example of immigration
policy being decided in Washington and no one really from
the border being involved or told what's going on. So,
like I think it was last week the HS Secretary
(28:55):
Majorca did this press release about what they're doing in
terms of processing centers in Guatemala and Columbia so people
can just go there instead of coming all the way
to the border, which actually there have been timelines of
when those will open. But they had asked all these
things for like big picture things, right, to stop people
from coming in the first place, expanding some legal pathways,
(29:18):
like making it easier for people with families already here
to get sponsors, fixing some of the little things for
CVP one, but they don't talk about like on the
ground logistics right. So for example, I went to Tijuana
to talk to the head of the Department of Migrant
Affairs there who told me this, and I checked with
(29:39):
him yesterday morning, who said, still to this day, less
than forty eight hours before Title forty two ends, he
doesn't know how many migrants CBP will allow to cross
through the ports of entry in Sandy Erro. His guess
is that maybe two hundred, because that's kind of the
number that they floated around in December when they originally
(30:00):
wanted to get rid of Title forty two before their lawsuit,
and if it's two hundred, he basically said, Tijuana's gonna
be screwed because two hundred doesn't even cover the number
of new migrants coming in and deporties being sent to Tijuana.
So it's gonna like we have this bottleneck of migration
in Tijuana and all over the border because of Title
forty two. For the last three years, no one's been
(30:21):
able to move. And if they just open it up
to two hundred people, that's not really going to address
any of the bottleneck.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Right There's like, I think, is it sixteen thousand people
are waiting like an asylum application right now?
Speaker 7 (30:36):
Yeah? Yeah, I hear different numbers throwing around, like teny, fifteen, sixteen,
and nobody really knows because there's like a network of
official shelters, and there's a bunch of unofficial shelters, and
there's a bunch of Russian dudes staying in hotels in airbnbs.
But I think, yeah, tens of thousands. I think sixteen
is an accurate number.
Speaker 1 (30:55):
I think it's intructive here to listen to the Fox
News coverage of this and how much Secretary my Orcus
tries to pandit to them.
Speaker 7 (31:01):
Want to be very clear, our borders are not open.
Speaker 6 (31:05):
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorcis says, when Title forty two
expires at midnight tonight, anyone who arrives at the southern
border will be presumed ineligible for asylum and face consequences.
But withholding facilities already overwhelmed, the administration is ratcheting up
tough rhetoric while also clearing the way for mass releases
into US communities with no way for authorities to track people.
(31:27):
You said at the beginning that you've prepared for this
moment for almost two years. So why is part of
that plan and honor system?
Speaker 7 (31:36):
Oh, it is not an honor system. They are a
subject of our apprehension efforts.
Speaker 6 (31:40):
But under parole release authorized by the US Border Patrol
Chief last night, migrants do not receive an alien registration
number for authorities to track them. They don't even get
a court date. Instead, migrants are asked to turn themselves
into Ice within sixty days to start immigration proceedings on themselves.
Speaker 11 (31:57):
The American people are watching this.
Speaker 3 (31:58):
They know what they see.
Speaker 11 (32:00):
They see a wide open border.
Speaker 6 (32:01):
Florida's Attorney General is suing the administration, arguing the parole
plan is identical to a policy a federal judge struck
down earlier this year.
Speaker 7 (32:09):
You have confidence in the lawfulness of our actions.
Speaker 6 (32:11):
Plans to release migrants at bus stops, gas stations, and
supermarkets was first detailed last year, according to a memo
uncovered by the Florida Legal Proceedings. Today, Texas Governor Greg
Abbott sent a busload of migrants to the Vice President's residents.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
Greg Abbott's disgusting antics acide. There was a real attempt
by the Biden deministration to come to Republican side on
migration that we can see clearly here in the hours
before we expected Title forty two to die. Folks like
me who cover the border made plans the day before.
On the tenth, Majorcas announced the Title forty two would
(32:46):
be enforced up until eleven fifty nine pm Eastern time,
and in San Diego, border patrol offices closed down the
port of entry at Sandy Sedra, the border town just
south of San Diego, for a training exercise in which
they lined up in front of the cars waiting to
cross the border with plexiglass shields and ryotgear. Meanwhile, in
(33:08):
between the two thirty foot board offenses that divide Sanisidra
from Tijuana. Board of Patrol began corraling migrants. Afghans, Colombians, Vietnamese,
Koreans and Golan, Sudanese, Tagis and Congolese people all shared
little more than a few tarps and cardboard boxes for
shelter as they waited for something to happen. Despite having
(33:30):
months to repair in years to plan, it appears at
Department of Homeland Security totally failed to create so much
as a scrap of shade or shelter, and instead chose
to house people detain pending processing in the open air.
In tomorrow's episode, we'll hear from some of them. It
(33:51):
Could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 6 (33:53):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
iHeartRadio app, Apple pot Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated
monthly at coolzonemedia dot com slash sources.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
Thanks for listening
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