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“Thousands of migrants are crossing into the United States this week before a new regulation takes effect that could bar most who cross illegally from seeking asylum, while others gathered on the Mexico side amid confusion about U.S. policy. The U.S. rolled out a regulation on Wednesday that presumes most migrants are ineligible for asylum if they passed through other nations without seeking protection elsewhere first, or if they failed to use legal pathways for U.S. entry. The new rule is a key part of President Joe Biden's border enforcement plan as COVID-19 restrictions - known as Title 42 - are set to end just before midnight on Thursday.” Reuters
“After more than 11,000 migrants were caught crossing the southern border on Tuesday, the Biden administration is now preparing a memo that will direct Customs and Border Protection to begin releasing migrants into the U.S. without court dates or the ability to track them, according to three sources familiar with the plans… Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the migrants who will be affected by the policy represent ‘a fraction of the people that we encounter.’… A DHS spokesperson said the new policy will apply only to migrants who have been carefully vetted.” NBC News
Here’s our prior coverage of Title 42 and the border. The Flip Side
The right is critical of the administration’s handling of the border, and calls for Title 42 to be extended.
“More than 11,000 migrants were apprehended crossing the southern border on Tuesday. Thousands more illegally crossed without arrest and are now camping out in border communities such as El Paso, Texas. Also on Tuesday, Border Patrol agents began clearing out migrant encampments around El Paso, encountering mostly illegal immigrants who had not been apprehended. But instead of taking anyone into custody, agents simply instructed migrants to turn themselves in at the Border Patrol station in El Paso, where they could then be processed and allowed into the country…
“So what will happen to all those immigrants who crossed illegally and are now turning themselves in to Border Patrol stations in border communities? Well, according to NBC News, they will be given a piece of paper telling them to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office inside the U.S., then released to go wherever they want…
“The shape of Biden’s post-Title 42 border security plan is now becoming clear: Open the border and let everyone in, but then push them away from border communities, into the interior of the country, as quickly as possible so a humanitarian crisis doesn’t materialize on the border.”
Conn Carroll, Washington Examiner
“By the end of Biden’s term, his administration will have imported–by design–the equivalent population of a mid-sized state. In 4 years. Already 6-8 million illegal immigrants have violated our borders and spread out around the country. Every single one of them during a declared pandemic emergency that supposedly placed limits on border crossings. Those limits go away [today], and a larger flood is coming…
“Up until now, the Administration tried to maintain the fiction that they were tracking all those ‘refugees’ they were letting into the country. Now they aren’t even planning to do that. They are simply going to open the floodgates without even pretending that they will adjudicate the claim that the incoming migrants are actually anything but people skipping to the head of the immigration line.”
David Strom, Hot Air
“The better course of action for the president, his party and the country would be to back a bipartisan legislative extension of Title 42 authority and urge fellow Democrats to do the same. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, an independent from Arizona who typically votes with Democrats, have authored a bill that would allow the U.S. to continue expelling illegal immigrants without an asylum hearing for two more years…
“All the Republicans vying to face Mr. Biden in next year’s election stand to benefit politically from his immigration missteps, but none more so than Donald Trump. The former president’s successful elevation of the issue on the campaign trail arguably did more than anything else to rally supporters and put him in the White House, and the southern border is less secure today than when Mr. Trump left office.”
Jason L. Riley, Wall Street Journal
The left is divided over the administration’s restrictions on asylum.
The left is divided over the administration’s restrictions on asylum.
“Biden should be applauded for taking steps to vastly expand the admission of refugees… along with establishing wider legal pathways for others to enter the country. Those steps include the administration’s move, in conjunction with the United Nations, to open processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala, with more planned elsewhere. The centers are sensibly intended to encourage migrants from South and Central America to apply for entry to the United States without making the dangerous trip through Mexico to the U.S. border…
“The administration has established a humanitarian sponsorship program to admit up to 30,000 migrants monthly on a two-year entry permit from four countries: Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua… The administration [also] struck a deal with Mexico to continue accepting deported migrants from those four countries who arrive in the United States without having applied for the humanitarian sponsorship program…
“The U.S. asylum system, designed for another era, has been in dire need of an overhaul in the 21st century. Until Congress manages to act, administrations will be forced to rely on improvisations and stopgaps, inevitably challenged in court. Mr. Biden, dealt a bad hand, has at last crafted an array of enforcement and admission policies that attempt to respond to the push driving millions of migrants toward the U.S. border.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
Critics argue, “Biden’s vision of a post–Title 42 landscape includes curtailing the right to asylum as it has existed since enactment of the Refugee Act in 1980. That law provides that any person on U.S. soil may apply for asylum if they meet the definition of a refugee under international law. In contrast, Biden’s proposed new plan includes a provision that presumes, with minor exceptions, that any person who enters the United States outside of an official port of entry—that is, who crosses the border unlawfully—is ineligible for asylum…
“This provision bears a striking similarity to a 2019 Trump administration policy that was struck down by a federal court. In pursuit of an orderly transition from Title 42, Biden has demonstrated his willingness to sacrifice key components of the right to asylum — something he promised to protect in his presidential campaign… If Biden continues down this path, we may remember him—and not Trump—as the president who oversaw the end of asylum.”
Jacob Hamburger and Stephen Yale-Loehr, Slate
“We must not forget that the United States has legal obligations to provide protection to people who qualify as refugees under international law… Instead of toggling from one ineffective deterrence strategy to another, or sending troops to manage people who are here looking for peaceful lives, the Biden administration should allocate the billions of dollars in resources currently spent on deterrence on ensuring that asylum seekers are able to quickly receive work permits and settle in communities ready to welcome them.”
Alejandra Oliva, New York Times
A libertarian's take
“The use of Title 42 caused great suffering for little or no benefit. It was also an egregious example of the abuse of ‘public health’ emergency powers for unrelated policy goals… As a public health measure, Title 42 was a dismal failure. The original Covid variant and later ones such as Delta and Omicron all still quickly got into the US and swiftly spread throughout the country, despite Title 42 and other migration restrictions…
“Public health experts in both the Trump and Biden administrations knew early on that Title 42 had little if any effect on the spread of Covid. But first Trump and then Biden continued the policy for other reasons: Trump as part of his general anti-immigration agenda, and Biden because he hoped it would help curb politically damaging perceptions of disorder at the border.”
Ilya Somin, Volokh Conspiracy
