The Trump era of tighter borders: Resurrecting an old ludicrous policy of asylum seekers in the U.S.
Once they are resettling, the refugees can petition for relatives to join them in the US if they provide evidence of their relationship. The relative would then be interviewed at an embassy by a U.S. official before being approved for travel.
The United States is taking in millions of people outside of the traditional refugee program, which is making it hard for those who have waited for years to get help.
Republican governors have been sending buses filled with people to Washington D.C. and other so-called sanctuary cities in a campaign to call for tighter borders.
“This rule reaches into the dustbin of history to resurrect one of the most harmful and illegal anti-asylum policies of the Trump administration,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, President and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, in a statement. It is ludicrous and life threatening to force people tofirst seek asylum in countries with no functioning asylum systems.
In special circumstances, the United States government can grant “parole” to people from other countries, a legal tool that allows them to enter the country but does not automatically confer a green card or citizenship. Mr. Biden has done similar things in the case of many refugees from Afghanistan, Ukraine, and now Venezuela.
The Biden policy has earned wide condemnation from Democratic lawmakers and immigrant advocates. A source familiar with the meeting said that Democratic Hispanic senators voiced their concerns regarding the rule and opposition to it in a private meeting with Alejandro Mayorkas.
How many times do migrant encounters cross the El Paso border? When do anonymous sources tell us about the situation? The case of a caravan
In El Paso, the daily arrivals are dropping, but shelters are at capacity. Hundreds of migrants have ended up on the streets, and the mayor has declared a state of emergency.
What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know what’s going on? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they been reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor are aware of the source.
Title42 has become a policy officials frequently use at the border, but its not the only way migrants’ cases are handled. A CNN analysis of 10 months of data earlier this year found that the public health restrictions were applied in about 50% of migrant encounters at the southwest border.
However, the United States is limited in its ability to expel Nicaraguans under the public health authority for diplomatic reasons. The Biden administration cannot send flights back to Mexico because they will not accept them. As a result, most of the Nicaraguans apprehended are released on a short-term parole with a tracking device or sent briefly to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, where they are typically released after a few days.
They will get to face removal proceedings in immigration court. The process to get a warrant and appear in court can take about two hours for each person, which can lead to backups and overcrowding.
The group arriving on Sunday included migrants who had been traveling from several Central and South American countries, as well as Haiti, and who had been granted temporary legal status in Mexico that allowed them to travel freely in that country for 180 days, said Santiago González Reyes, the head of the human rights offices in Ciudad Juárez, across the border from El Paso.
The government in the Mexican state of Chihuahua had bused a caravan of about 1,100 migrants into Juarez on Sunday afternoon, Mr. González said. The buses, about 19 of them, were paid for by the Mexican government, he said, which had reasoned that the migrants would have walked north anyway and provided a police escort to keep them safe.
The group only stayed for a few days in Jurez. Around 4 p.m., the migrants decided to cross the border en masse, he said, and hundreds more joined them. Mr. Gonzlez said they crossed the river on foot.
In a document outlining border security preparedness and obtained by CNN, DHS broke down its six-pillar plan, which was released in the spring and has since been updated. It includes increasing the ability to transport migrants to and from the border and leaning on a mobile application to process asylum seekers, according to the document.
According to the document, the surge of resources to the southern border includes the hiring of nearly 1,000 Border Patrol processing coordinators and adding 2,500 contractors and personnel from government agencies – which allows federal agents to focus on field law enforcement duties.
The plan states that the federal government has added ten more soft-sided facilities to increase the capacity of Customs and Border Protection. The agency says that it has doubled transportation capacity for migrants.
“This includes hundreds of flights and bus routes per week to transport detained noncitizens to less crowded Border Patrol sectors for processing and to remove or return noncitizens to their home or third countries; we will continue to scale up our ground and air transportation capabilities in light of potential increases,” the document states.
According to the six-pillar plan, CBP spends 30% less time processing migrants now compared to early last year – which will help mitigate overcrowding of CBP facilities.
They are increasing referrals for prosecutions for people who are not in the country of their citizenship.
The DHS plans to target criminal organizations who smuggle migrants and work with other agency on the border.
The Schumer-Kalain Call for an Asymptotic Protection Law: State-of-the-Art and Political Desperateness
During the call between Schumer and Klain, the Senate majority leader raised concerns about the administration’s preparation for the looming termination and whether officials were indeed considering a new asylum policy, according to two sources with knowledge of the call.
The call – one of many that have come in from lawmakers to the White House – was indicative of the politically precarious position for Biden as officials try to fend off Republicans pounding the administration over its handling of the border and appease Democrats concerned about barring asylum seekers from the US.
Prelogar wrote that the government knows that the end of Title 42 orders will lead to disruption and an increase in illegal border crossing.
Schumer and Klain speak regularly and often daily or more in critical moments like the year-end legislative sprint currently underway. The emergence of the border issue provides an insight into a complex policy and political moment.
The Biden administration has differing opinions on Title 42. It had criticized Title 42 and promised to stop using it at the border, but recently it became dependent on the policy.
It’s a dynamic that has played out as the Biden administration intensively prepares for a moment officials have long grappled with how to navigate. The latest phase of the campaign has been underway for some time, and officials were aware at the opening days of office that there would eventually be an end to the policy. Staffing and technology infrastructure has been directed to the key entry points, with increased levels and resources expected in the days ahead.
When asked about the potential for a surge at the border once Title 42 goes away, the White House press secretary listed off a number of personnel, processing and infrastructure efforts that have been put into place.
Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday at the White House briefings that they were going to do the work, be prepared, and make sure that the process was humane.
The end of immigration reform: how the White House and the National Security Council are mobilizing to help promote asylum management in the 21st century
Still, the cross-cutting viewpoints on border policy have converged with the significant diplomatic component tied to managing a rapid shift in the countries of origin of the migrants apprehended at the border, one that has added a new layer of difficulty for the administration.
The only viable long-term solution will come from congressional action, administration officials have stressed throughout.
The bipartisan immigration deal led by Sen. Tillis and Ms. Sinema, who recently left the Democratic party and registered as an Independent, is effectively dead this congress according to sources familiar with the discussions.
The framework, which would have extended protections for Dreamers and extended Title 42, was unlikely to build momentum in the brief lame-duck session.
The White House and DHS are talking every day, sources told CNN. Sources said that the National Security Council has played an important part in migration management.
The request is intended to shore up resources for border management and technology and is part of broader funding discussions. It is not specific to the end of Title 42, the source said.
At the border, migrants have been waiting in encampments in Mexico for months, anticipating the end of the authority so they can make their claim of asylum in the US. Immigrant advocates have tried to update migrants, but desperation has grown even as temperatures drop.
In it, DHS also stressed the need for congressional action to update outdated statutes and help create a functioning asylum system, as the current one is under immense strain.
“The 21st (is) going to be a disaster. There are so many things in the pipeline, but nothing is ready (to) go,” one official said, referring to December 21 when Title 42 is set to end.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas: We Can’t Continue to Interact With the Interstellar Systems. He added: “Today’s Mexican immigration problem is coming to an end”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas underscored the whole of government approach in a statement, noting that mass movement of people around the globe has posed a uniquely difficult challenge.
The mayor said we can’t continue with broken immigration systems that have to be fixed. “It’s bigger than the United States. I have to work with the UN and countries around us to be able to fix it.”
He said that addressing the challenge would require time and resources, and it was needed by Congress, state and local officials, NGOs, and communities.
He said he does not know why they do not visit the border and say other things are more important. “If there’s a crisis, show up. Just show up.
Last month the Department of Homeland Security was projecting between 9,000 to 14,000 migrants may attempt to cross the US southern border daily when Title 42 ends, more than double the current number of people crossing, according to a source familiar with the projections.
The El Paso city officials said they are monitoring the situation and are in talks with other partners. Mayorkas also visited El Paso on Tuesday where he met with the Customs and Border Protection workforce and local officials.
The Biden Administration is Asking for More Than $3 billion as it prepares for the End of Title 42: a Brief History, Current Status and Next Steps
The Biden administration is also asking Congress for more than $3 billion as it prepares for the end of Title 42, according to a source familiar with the ask.
“Today’s order gives Republicans in Congress plenty of time to move past political finger-pointing and join their Democratic colleagues in solving the challenge at our border by passing the comprehensive reform measures and delivering the additional funds for border security that President Biden has requested,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
Cuellar, who represents Texas’ 28th District, told CNN he’s in close touch with the city of Laredo about preparations, adding that the city may bus migrants to other locations as they’ve done in the past if nonprofits can’t handle the influx of arrivals.
That means the December 21 deadline for lifting the Trump-era public health restrictions still stands, and that federal officials and border communities are continuing to brace themselves for an expected increase in migrant arrivals.
Here’s a look at some of the key questions and answers about the appeals court’s ruling, Title 42’s history, what’s happening on the ground and what could happen next.
The policy became a hot topic in April as the Biden administration announced plans to end it. But ultimately, the policy remained in place after a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the administration’s plans to roll it back.
Several Republican-led states urged the Supreme Court to step in and block a lower court’s decision to terminate the policy. In addition to placing the order’s termination on hold, the court said it would take up the state’s appeal in its upcoming term, which begins in February.
But the DC Circuit US Court of Appeals on Friday denied the states’ request to intervene in the case and dismissed as moot their request to put the lower court’s ruling on hold.
The administration is appealing Sullivan’s ruling, but it continues to prepare to end Title 42 expulsions as ordered on December 21.
The Crossing of the Border Between the United States and Mexico Under the Trump-Biden Border Policy: The Case Overturned by the Louisiana Supreme Court
Increases in migrant populations crossing the border used to be gradual. This time, he said, it has been rapid and over a few days.
The border restrictions were controversial from the moment the Trump administration announced them. Immigrant rights advocates argued officials were using public health as a pretext to keep as many immigrants out of the country as possible. The policy was slammed by public health experts.
After Sullivan’s ruling, the debate was re-opened as people began to hear about the increasing number of migrants in El Paso.
The number of people attempting to cross the US-Mexican border will likely rise, as officials anticipate that Title 42 will be lifted.
When the policy was first used, it drew attention because it turned away a group of Ukrainians at the border then granted exceptions to allow others to cross.
Advocates argued a racist double standard was at play as many migrants from Central America and Haiti continued to be turned back under the policy. Federal officials denied that accusation and said each exemption is granted on a case-by-case basis.
In August, CNN’s analysis found that migrants from outside Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador were far less likely to be subjected to Title 42.
Since Biden took office, Human Rights First says it has found more than 12,000 incidents of kidnapping, torture, rape and other violent attacks on people blocked or expelled from Mexico under Title 42.
Many advocates believed President Biden would lift the order as soon as he took office since he promised to build a more humane immigration system. The policy was defended in court for months after he took office.
The administration stated in April that it was not necessary given the current public health conditions and the increased availability of tools.
The Republican attorneys general argued that lifting the restrictions would cause a surge of illegal immigration at the southern border. The restrictions — first put in place by the Trump administration in March of 2020 — had been set to lift Wednesday at midnight.
In April of this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the Title 42 restrictions were no longer necessary to protect public health and moved to terminate the policy.
But that effort was blocked by a federal judge in Louisiana, in a separate case brought by a group of Republican attorneys general. They argued that the CDC did not go through the proper procedures to end Title 42, and should have considered the impact on state health care systems and other costs.
The Trump-Biden immigration dispute and the U.S. supreme court denied the delay of the end of the Title 42 immigration program
Immigration authorities have deported over two million migrants since Biden took office, including single adults and some families.
But it also asked for the court to delay the ending of Title 42 until at least December 27, citing ongoing preparations for an influx of migrants and the upcoming holiday weekend.
The administration said that the states, led by Arizona, do not have the legal right to challenge a federal district court opinion that had vacated the program and ordered its termination by Wednesday.
Chief Justice John Roberts asked the parties in the case to weigh in on Monday, after temporarily freezing the deadline.
The last-minute legal wrangling comes as federal officials and border communities have been bracing for an expected increase in migrant arrivals as early as this week as the issue of immigration continues to ignite both sides of the political divide. The Department of Homeland Security has been putting in place a plan for the end of the program that includes surging resources to the border, targeting smugglers and working with international partners.
In court papers Tuesday, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar stressed that it would be highly unusual for the court to allow the states to step in at the last minute when they had not been an official party in the dispute at hand.
“The government in no way seeks to minimize the seriousness of that problem. But the solution to that immigration problem cannot be to extend indefinitely a public-health measure that all now acknowledge has outlived its public-health justification,” Prelogar wrote in a filing with the Supreme Court.
The record in this case proves the horrors being seen on non-citizens every day by Title 42 expulsions.
EL PASO, Texas – The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling Tuesday, granted a GOP request to prevent the winding down of the Title 42 immigration policy – and agreed to decide in its February argument session whether 19 states that oppose the policy should be allowed to intervene in defense of it in the lower courts.
“We’re going on as if nothing’s changed,” a senior US Customs and Border Protection official told CNN, adding that policy discussions are still underway to provide other legal pathways to Nicaraguans, Haitians and Cubans who make up a large number of encounters.
Just across the border from El Paso in Ciudad Juarez, CNN’s David Culver has spoken with migrants who spent weeks traveling hundreds of miles, often on foot, and are now confused as they hope for asylum in the US.
The official thinks that some of them haven’t received the message and won’t cross until they do. Some people will cross.
Brnovich had told the justices in court papers that they should put the lower court ruling on hold. As an alternative, he said that the justices should grant an “immediate” temporary injunction to maintain the status quo and also consider whether to skip over the appeals court and agree to hear arguments on the merits of the issue themselves.
Failure to grant Stay here will cause massive irreparable harms on the States, particularly as the States bear a lot of consequences of illegal immigration, and that is why I want to get a stay here.
In the case at hand, six families that unlawfully crossed the US-Mexico border and were subject to the Title 42 process brought the original challenge.
In court papers, the ACLU previously argued that Covid-19 was always a thinly veiled pretense to increase immigration control. “There is no legal basis to use a purported public health measure to displace the immigration laws long after any public health justification has lapsed.”
“Courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency,” Gorsuch wrote.
The Supreme Court’s order blocking the lower court opinion that ended the authority is a victory for Republican-led states. The Biden administration put in place precautions to guard against a surge of migrants and was prepared for the authority to end.
In its order, the court also agreed to take up the states’ appeal this term. The court said it would hear arguments on the case during its argument session that begins in February 2023.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan said they’d deny the application, but they did not explain their thinking. Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch also dissented and explained his thinking in an order joined by liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
What will we learn to do when we leave the United States? Asymptotic freedom, a key ingredient in the reform of the border enforcement system
“We will continue to manage the border, but we do so within the constraints of a decades-old immigration system that everyone agrees is broken. We need Congress to pass the comprehensive immigration reform legislation President Biden proposed the day he took office,” the department said in a statement.
“The court is not going to decide until June apparently, and in the meantime we have to enforce it – but I think it’s overdue,” Biden told reporters on the White House South Lawn.
Elizabeth Prelogar told the supreme court that returning to traditional protocols along the border will be a challenge but that there is no longer a basis to keep the rules in place.
Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union, who are representing families subject to Title 42, had in arguments underscored the dangers faced by asylum seekers subject to the authority and sent back to Mexico.
The lead counsel, Lee Gelernt, told CNN that they will continue fighting to end the policy even though they were disappointed by the ruling.
The policy of Title 42 will continue to affect the asylum seekers, but Gelernt said that they would continue their fight to end it.
Rodriguez and her children were on a El Paso sidewalk on Tuesday wearing a jacket provided by the local church. She said she and her children attempted to cross into the US but were sent to Mexico where they were robbed and picked up by immigration officials as they slept.
Rodríguez is among the tens of thousands of migrants who have surged to the southern border despite the uncertain future of Title 42, a Trump-era policy which allows US authorities to swiftly return most migrants back across the border.
Rodrguez said that they wouldn’t be allowed to cross legally. “That’s what we wanted – to be able to cross legally – but you can’t.”
Dylan Corbett, the executive director of Hope Border Institute that assists with running some of El Paso’s shelters, warned Tuesday that he expects the Supreme Court decision “will extend the bottleneck at the border, create unsustainable pressure on border enforcement and lead to more deaths.”
A lifelong El Paso resident who is volunteering to help arriving migrants said he expects more to attempt the border crossing. Go for it. It’s coming,” he said. There is a wave of people looking for a better life.
The Biden Administration’s Open-Bridge Immigration Policy: The Case of El Paso, TX, and the State of the Border Region
Two vacant schools in the city are being prepared to house migrants, D’Agostino said. The first will be ready to use within two days, while the second won’t be changed for a few weeks.
Shelters have also been set up at hotels and some church parishes have volunteered to house migrants, he said. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, more than 480 immigrants were housed in El Paso’s convention center and over a thousand beds were set up.
Cruz-Acosta claimed that the city was unable to take in migrants without documentation because of state and federal policies.
If undocumented migrants show up at the government-run shelters, she said, they will be connected with Customs and Border Protection to turn themselves in or referred to shelters run by NGOs.
Two local NGOs who are accepting undocumented immigrants in their shelters told CNN last week that they were so crowded that they were closing their doors to many people trying to find a place to stay.
On Sunday, President Biden is going to the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time as president and will be in El Paso, Texas. The Biden administration’s immigration policy has been an issue of contention with Republicans for the past two years.
The Biden administration will expand its policy to include people from Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti who enter the U.S. through Mexico. The U.S. plans to accept up to 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela each month.
During his speech introducing the new immigration policies, Biden said there was a lot of different reasons why people came to America. To look for new opportunities in the strongest economy in the world. Can’t blame them wanting to do it. They leave oppression and go to the freest nation in the world. They chase their own American Dream in the greatest nation in the world.”
Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has sent many of the buses, hand-delivered a letter to Biden during his visit. The governor has been one of the most vocal critics of the Biden administration’s immigration policy.
The open-border policies have increased the wealth of the drug gangs, Abbot wrote in the letter. “Texans are paying an especially high price for your failure, sometimes with their very lives, as local leaders from your own party will tell you if given the chance.”
The new 153-page proposed regulation, which could affect tens of thousands of people, is the most restrictive of a patchwork of policies put in place by the Biden administration to try and manage the US-Mexico border and is reminiscent of a Trump-era policy.
The proposed rule would encourage migrants to avail themselves of lawful, safe, and orderly pathways into the United States or to seek asylum or other protection in countries through which they travel, thereby reducing reliance on human smuggling networks that exploit migrants for financial gain.
The rule would apply to people who cross the US-Mexico border without proper documentation. It doesn’t apply to children who are separated from their parents.
Reply to the Comment: “The Asymmetries in the U.S. have not satisfied the Biden asylum ban,” Sen. Tom Hanbury-Brown told the Physicist on Tuesday
The administration official said that this was not its first preference or second preference, but the onus is on Congress to pass reform.
Administration officials on Tuesday rejected the comparison to the Trump administration, saying that it’s not a categorical ban on asylum and emphasizing efforts to expand access to legal pathways to the US, including a recently launched parole program for certain nationalities.
The proposed rule will be posted in the Federal Register for a 30-day public comment period and likely take effect in May, when a pandemic-era border restriction, known as Title 42, is set to expire. The rule is also expected to last for two years.
Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus had previously voiced frustration with the administration when the rule was initially announced, describing being blindsided by new border policies and the lack of engagement. The Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, Jerry Nadler, a New York Democrat, and the Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement Subcommittee’s ranking member, Pramila Jaipal, a Washington Democrat, slammed the move.
Latino senators were shown through the regulation by Mayorkas, but it did not seem to address their concerns. Immigrant advocates also criticized the asylum rule Tuesday, arguing it violates President Joe Biden’s pledge to restore asylum.