Mexico’s border response to the Trump era: A lesson from the biden administration on the dynamics of the border problem in Central and South America
Mr. Trump, Ms. Nielsen’s former chief of staff recalled, wanted to round up migrants in Republican-controlled states and “bus and dump” them in major cities. The former chief of staff said that he wanted to transport migrants who had been deemed to be murderers, rapists and criminals to places like California, where officials had refused to help carry out the administration’s strict deportation policies.
Washington. The secretary of State met with the foreign minister of Mexico on Thursday for the second time in just over a month, as the Biden administration focused on Latin America amid politically dangerous levels of migration at the southern US border.
But immigration was inevitably a key theme of the meeting, at a moment of vast migration across Central and South America — a subject with explosive political resonance less than a month before the midterm elections.
Biden officials chose their words carefully on the sensitive topic of immigration, avoiding phrases like “border crisis” and emphasizing that the effects of social and economic upheaval in the region, thanks in part to the pandemic, are not unique to the United States.
The Department of Homeland Security put together a plan for dealing with thousands of migrants who arrived at the border by flying them to US cities for processing.
It has been an endless cycle since President Joe Biden took office, according to multiple administration officials and sources close to the White House. Agency officials work on a plan but find it hard to get White House approval, as Republicans step up their criticism.
“Everything seems to influence each other,” one Homeland Security official told CNN. The things develop. People change their opinions. They lose one battle, and they do this instead.”
It is within the power of the new GOP majority to investigate the administration’s failure to stem a rise in encounters with border crossers in Biden’s term and its immigration policy as a whole. US border authorities encountered more than two million migrants in fiscal 2022, according to US Customs and Border Protection figures released in October – up from 1.7 million in 2021. Conservatives say this is proof of an open border that endangers national security, because many more migrants will get through. Many Democrats argue that a lot of migrants are sent back to their countries of origin after many attempts at cross into the US.
“Interior assistance and community support is something the White House is only serious about discussing when encounter rates rise,” another Homeland Security official told CNN, adding that additional big policy changes aren’t expected until after the midterm election.
The process is often bogged down by a back and forth between the White House and DHS. The department tries to mitigate the situation at the border by floating ideas to the White House but they end up asking for more information, so the two departments are not happy, sources told CNN. Disagreements and questions over policy, including interior processing, also bubble up among officials within DHS.
“These are areas that have we have been working through together,” a source familiar with internal discussions said, adding that there may be varying opinions across agencies as well as within them.
The Trump-Biden Border Crisis: Reopening Ports of Entry and Expanding the Trump-era Pandemic Emergency Restriction on the Border
And last week, one significant plan came to fruition: The administration announced a humanitarian parole program for Venezuelan migrants while also expanding the use of the controversial Trump-era pandemic emergency restriction on the border.
“Encouraging robust debate, hearing different ideas, and getting lots of expertise before making policy decisions that impact millions of lives is a feature, not a bug,” said Abdullah Hasan, a White House spokesperson, in a statement. “And it is through this smart, deliberative, and collaborative approach that we have seen significant progress in rebuilding the immigration system the prior Administration gutted.”
TheDHS defended its handling of the immigration system that it was given by the Trump administration.
The previous administration’s cruel and harmful policies have been reversed by the current administration, as they have effectively managed an unprecedented number of non citizens trying to enter the United States.
Immigration was among the first issues Biden faced when a surge of unaccompanied minors caught the administration flatfooted in the first months of his presidency. That crisis, officials say, along with the growing number of migrants at the border continues to loom over the administration’s immigration agenda.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has done his best to embarrass the administration for its immigration policies by sending busloads of migrants to New York and Washington, including a few that dropped migrants near Vice President Harris’s home. If Mr. Biden wouldn’t come to the border to see the crisis firsthand, Republicans were going to send the border crisis to him.
Immigrant advocates and Democrats have also slammed the administration over its increased emphasis on enforcement and most recently, moving to turn back thousands of Venezuelan migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border under the Trump-era Title 42.
“Expanding Title 42 to now include Venezuelans adds salt to an open wound while further eroding our asylum system that President Biden promised to restore,” said Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey in a statement.
A source with knowledge of the discussions said that reopening ports of entry in an orderly way using an application from Customs and Border Protection is one of the options that have been debated for months.
A source tells CNN that the White House has received briefings about the plans for the joint processing centers.
The appropriation from Congress should match the priorities the secretary of homeland security has set or is likely to set in coordination with the White House, according to a source.
Trump’s presidency failed to fix America’s biggest problem: a presidential emergency plan that tackles the border crisis with a new six point plan
Poor economic conditions, shortages of food and limited access to health care are pushing more and more people from Venezuela, posing an urgent challenge for the Biden administration. According to the UN, more people have fled from Venezuela than Syria and more people have been displaced by it than anyone else.
A Homeland Security official says that a significant number of people from Venezuela were caught at the US-Mexico border over the last few weeks. To compare, just under 1,000 Venezuelans arrived at the US southern border in the entire month of February 2021, US government data shows.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reiterated last week that Venezuelan migrants shouldn’t cross the border unlawfully, citing instead the humanitarian parole program.
Administration officials have also been working closely with countries across the Western Hemisphere to try to manage the flow of migration north and set up protections closer to migrant origin countries.
A former Obama administration official said the issue was sitting on the cracks of the White House’s structures. It is a very difficult process and just dealing with the management of moving people is what the process is about. Let alone, the expansion of alternative avenues for people to have access to relief.”
“Much of the focus, and much of the public focus, is on the short-term emergency and how do you manage the movement of people,” said Cecilia Munoz, the former director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Barack Obama, noting that Congress also hasn’t provided any new tools to the government.
“Every decision is fraught because the Republicans have made it so clear that they intend to make political payout of the situation. No decision is just about the action contemplated. All of it is related to politics, said Munoz.
It was the latest sign that a broken Washington can’t fix America’s biggest problem, and it will lead to what will unfold at the border next week.
The expiry on Wednesday of a Trump-era order that exploited public health justifications during the pandemic to turn away thousands of migrants is expected to severely strain an already stretched border, immigration and asylum system.
The Department of Homeland Security unveiled Thursday an emergency six-point plan to tackle the crisis as Republicans preparing to take over the House brandished the potential chaos as proof of their claims of gross White House negligence over the border.
Even some Democrats are warning that an huge influx of immigrants next week could cause multiple adverse consequences. Critics say the administration took too long to engage on the issue and hasn’t done enough, though they also fault Congress for failing for decades to reform the immigration system and border enforcement – a goal that polls repeatedly show the public supports.
The Pain of Title 42: The Case for a Solution to the Problems of the New Mexico City, Arizona, Border Region, and the United States
“We have a leak,” Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez said on “CNN This Morning” Thursday. “We need a plumber to come and stop the leak. And instead, what we’re doing is we’re sending us more buckets to hold the water.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom told ABC News this week that Title 42 could make it hard for his state to cope. “The fact is, what we’ve got right now is not working, and it’s about to break in a post-(Title) 42 world unless we take some responsibility and ownership,” he said.
In an interview with CBS News, Monaco said that she was worried about an increase in illegal migration. Some Democratic jurisdictions, like New York City for instance are already struggling to cope with immigrants who have already arrived as they brace for more.
Title 42 was introduced early in the Covid-19 emergency and allowed officials to turn away certain categories of migrants. Critics say it abused the public health principle of being in force long enough and that it was a bad idea for someone to try to get into the country. A federal judge in Louisiana had blocked a previous bid to cancel the order, which was struck down in November by a federal judge in Washington.
Concerns that large groups of migrants waiting in Mexico could cross over the border next week, spurred Biden’s team to surge resources to the area, improving processing efficiency for immigration claims, and imposing consequences for unlawful entry, among other things.
Republicans have been hounding President Biden for more than a year to travel to the southern border and see the situation there with his own eyes. He said that he should go down but that he had been too busy to make the trip. Fox News criticized Vice President Biden when he visited a computer chip manufacturing plant in Arizona but not the southern border.
A judge in Texas has halted the administrations attempt to end the “Remain in Mexico” program, which sends certain non-Mexican citizens who entered the US back to Mexico.
Some members of the new GOP House majority are determined to make a statement by impeachment of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Security Secretary, for a high crime and Misdemeanor, instead of working on a long-term solution to the nation’s many problems.
The Last Ditch Campaign to Give the South a First Look at Border Laws: The Case of the U.S. Representative Susan B. Biden
It is right for Republicans to highlight the increase in deaths from the drug Fentanyl in the U.S., which often comes from Mexico and China, and the use of pre-cursor chemicals from China. Four years ago they spent thousands of dollars on a border wall that did little to stop drugs from coming in through the border.
She claimed at the summit in Los Angeles in June that many migrants were forced to leave their homes because of the poor conditions. Harris has also sought to drum up private investment to mitigate the poverty that forces people to flee. But at the same time, there hasn’t been much public evidence recently that her efforts are bearing fruit or a sense that an issue that brings substantial political peril is her overwhelming priority.
Any permanent solution to border issues would involve a massive investment to secure the frontier, with barriers where it makes sense but also with new tracking technology and manpower where walls don’t help. The plight of children brought to the US as Dreamers is addressed by it. It would also provide a long-term path to legal status for millions more undocumented migrants, expand asylum courts to expedite claims and reform the system of legal immigration and visas for migrant workers needed to address economically damaging labor shortages in agriculture and catering industries, for instance.
During the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, Congress refused to agree to political tradeoffs for such a reform. The last-ditch efforts by Republicans and Democrats in Congress to protect Dreamers and to stop border crossings did not pan out.
On Sunday, Mr. Biden will finally give the southern border its due. He was on the campaign trail in 2008 and his planned trip to El Paso is the first time he’s visited a border community since.