Tangle - The End of Title 42 (for real this time).

Starting point is 00:00:00 Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.

Starting point is 00:01:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I'm your host, Isaac Zoll, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the end of Title 42. We're going to explain what's happening, why it's happening, and what might be coming around the corner. Before we jump in, though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. though, as always, we'll start off with some quick hits. First up, House Republicans released a pair of reports on Wednesday tying a CIA employee to a letter aimed at helping the Biden campaign

Starting point is 00:01:56 and laying out allegations of quote-unquote influence peddling in the Biden family during his time as vice president. Number two, Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Democrat from California, returned to the Senate, though she said she'd be keeping a lighter schedule as she continues to recover from shingles. Number three, the Biden administration proposed new rules to limit emissions from coal and gas-fired power plants that would reduce emissions equivalent to removing 137 million cars from the road. Number four, Representative George Santos, the Republican from New York, pleaded not guilty to 13 charges filed against him in New York State. Number five, Missouri lawmakers approved bills that ban

Starting point is 00:02:37 quote-unquote gender-affirming care for youth and ban trans women and girls from participating in sports in the girls' and women's divisions. It's going to be chaotic just behind me. Hundreds of migrants. The conditions here are miserable. Attempting to cross the Rio Grande for weeks. Sleeping on the street. Pushing border communities to the brink. Our resources are stretched and they're stretched quite thin. At the center of it all, Title 42, the public health measure was introduced in 2020 by the Trump administration. Overnight, the border getting fresh reinforcements.

Starting point is 00:03:21 Armed U.S. troops building a new layer of barbed wire fencing just steps from Juarez. With the pandemic era Title 42 set to expire at midnight, the crowds of migrants gathering here are growing. This morning, the Biden administration says it's taking new action to manage the surge of migrants at the southern border as Title 42 comes to an end tonight. migrants at the southern border as Title 42 comes to an end tonight. A new policy will require migrant families seeking asylum to be subjected to home curfews and GPS monitoring while immigration officials determine whether they should be deported. On Thursday, May 11th, the controversial Trump-era public health restriction will come to an end at midnight. Title 42 was a public health order issued during the pandemic that was used to promptly turn away migrants who arrived at the U.S. border as a way to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The order allowed border officials to deport

Starting point is 00:04:17 migrants who are typically allowed to seek asylum in the United States, sending them back to Mexico or their home country. Since the policy began, more than 2.8 million migrants have been expelled from the border, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. Now, because Biden is ending the COVID-19 public health emergency nationally, Title 42 will end too. Even before this moment, the border has been chaotic, with record numbers of unauthorized migrants crossing into the U.S. and border facilities overwhelmed. President Biden has suggested that the end of Title 42 could bring fresh problems and warned reporters on Tuesday that, quote, it's going to be chaotic for a while. Immigration experts believe the migrants who have been waiting in Mexico will

Starting point is 00:05:00 attempt to cross when Title 42 ends, and smugglers will use the end of the order to recruit new migrants on dangerous journeys into the United States. An estimated 150,000 people are already in Mexico and headed toward the U.S. as migration restrictions end. On Sunday alone, close to 10,000 migrants were encountered by border officials. Several U.S. border cities have declared emergencies, and Biden sent an additional 1,500 active-duty troops to the border to help manage the surge. Additionally, the Biden administration has already implemented policies to prepare for the end of Title 42. They will automatically reject asylum seekers who illegally cross into the U.S. without first seeking asylum protections in one of the countries they travel through. This is a change to the United States'

Starting point is 00:05:44 long-standing policy, which allowed migrants to seek asylum regardless of whether they cross the border illegally. The U.S. will also change rules to allow more migrants to be sent back to Mexico and impose severe penalties for those who cross illegally, like a five-year ban on re-entry. Additionally, the Biden administration wants to build new facilities along the border, bolster transportation of migrants, and fast-track the deportation process. The Biden administration is expanding opportunities for people from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to apply with U.S. sponsors to come and work in the United States. Meanwhile, House Republicans are pushing H.R. 2, the Secure Border Act of 2023, which the House will vote on today.

Starting point is 00:06:27 That bill includes some Republican-favorite immigration policies like completing Trump's border wall, designating Mexican cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and adding new restrictions on asylum seekers. Today, we're going to take a look at some reactions to the end of Title 42 and some commentary about what's next from the right and the left, then my take. You can find our previous coverage on the border with a link in today's episode description. All right, first up, we'll start with what the right is saying. Many on the right criticize the Biden administration's border policy, saying this chaos is a result of his actions. Some say the end of Title 42 is going to create a whole new slew of problems the administration is not prepared for.

Starting point is 00:07:21 Others argue Biden's decision to send troops to the border is going to be ineffective unless they're tasked with spotting and detaining migrants. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the collapse of the border is on full and painful display. Here are some scenes from the Biden administration's immigration policy. More than 10,000 illegal migrant apprehensions on Tuesday, a record for a single day. Emergencies are declared in El Paso and other border cities, but also in Democratic-run New York State and Chicago, far from the border. Tens of thousands more migrants from all over the world sit across the border in Mexico,

Starting point is 00:07:55 waiting for the right moment to walk or swim to the U.S. This is what failure looks like, the board said. Biden is hoping Americans won't notice if only Fox News reported on the chaos. But with Title 42 expiring, it can't be asserted away. Remember how we got here, the board said. Democrats campaigned against the Trump administration's policies as cruel. President Biden ended such Trump-era policies as remain in Mexico. The signal went out to migrants that the border was essentially open. If you entered the U.S. and claimed asylum, the chances were good you'd be admitted with a future date for asylum tribunal you may never have to show up for. Millions of migrants took the hint and came in record numbers. In Heritage, Simon Hankinson said the end of Title 42 means the end of a secure border.

Starting point is 00:08:41 Think of Title 42, which covers public health, as a bouncer keeping someone out of a bar. Easy, no paperwork. Then there's Title 8, which deals with immigration. Think of it as how you evict terrible tenants from a rental property. Lawyers, lots of paperwork, and very slow, even if you usually win at the end, he said. Under U.S. law, anyone arriving at the border illegally is supposed to be arrested and detained until they have their due immigration process. But with a backlog of 1.5 million asylum cases, some newly released migrants won't get their first appointment for a removal hearing until 2033. The Biden administration believes that almost every person attempting to cross should have the right to enter the U.S. and make an asylum claim, no matter how unfounded. Now, we're about to fire the Title 42

Starting point is 00:09:25 bouncer while thousands of migrants are waiting in Mexico and all the way down to the Darien Gap in Panama to swarm our open borders. John Uliot, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, wrote in the New York Post that Biden was wasting the skills of U.S. troops by sending them to the border to do paperwork. Biden's troop deployment gambit falls flat as a solution to the crisis, and it insults our troops by shunting them primarily to clerical and warehousing activities instead of the complex military maneuvers for which they are trained and where they can make the most difference, he wrote. I know because I was one of them and I served on the border. Texas Governor Gray Abbott has already deployed 10,000 National Guard to the border to fill the gaps of the Biden administration. Deploying active duty troops to the

Starting point is 00:10:09 border is a good thing, but needs to be done in the right way, he said. Troops should be using sophisticated thermal and night vision equipment to track migrants and smugglers as they cross into the U.S., then alert the Border Patrol in real time. U.S. reconnaissance Marines are among the best in the world for such a serious military assignment, given their ability to gather U.S., then alert the Border Patrol in real time. U.S. reconnaissance Marines are among the best in the world for such a serious military assignment, given their ability to gather intelligence across vast areas of land with just a handful of operators and do so undetected by enemy forces, in this case, dangerous smugglers and human traffickers. All right, that is it for the rightist saying, which brings us to what the left is saying.

Starting point is 00:10:56 Many on the left criticize Title 42 as ineffective and welcome its ending. Some point the finger for the border crisis at Congress and Republicans, saying Biden is doing his best despite an ineffective legislative branch. Others say the Biden administration's new policies are cruel and ineffective, and asylum seekers have a right to seek refuge in the United States. The Los Angeles Times editorial board said that with Title 42 ending, Biden is relying on the same failed immigration policies. For three years, Title 42 has allowed the United States to expel asylum-seeking migrants en masse, yet it hasn't stopped desperate people fleeing countries ravaged by violence or authoritarian regimes Title 42 has allowed the United States to expel asylum-seeking migrants en masse,

Starting point is 00:11:29 yet it hasn't stopped desperate people fleeing countries ravaged by violence or authoritarian regimes from trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border. These migrants brave jungles, teaming with bandits, travel atop dangerous trains, and walk through scorching deserts for the opportunity to live and work without fear. Yet our mishmash of policies to replace Title 42 will try to scare migrants from arriving at the border rather than addressing the root cause of migration. Our system is broken because a dysfunctional and deeply divided Congress can't agree on how to deal with the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the United States, immigration and asylum case backlogs, or even legislation to protect those who were brought to the country illegally when they were young. Much of the blame, the board argued, falls on Republican

Starting point is 00:12:09 legislators for their anti-immigrant rhetoric and their inability to acknowledge the role migrants play in our economy. The Washington Post editorial board said Biden is doing his best with little help from Congress. The Biden administration's overall immigration policy has been waffling and contradictory, the board said, and the end of Title 42 is forcing a reckoning. Republicans have a point that Biden's immigration policies have crossed purposes with itself. The administration has featured tough talk designed to dissuade migrant crossings, while well over one million migrants, many of them in families, have been admitted to the country. Often, those migrants pursue asylum claims that can take years to adjudicate in overwhelmed immigration courts. The result

Starting point is 00:12:50 has been to encourage an ongoing crush of a legal border crossing. Yet Republicans' own approach is hardly a panacea. They've flown and bused migrants to Democratic states as stunts and pressed to retain the legally unsteady Title 42. Biden deserves credit for vastly expanding the admission of refugees from Ukraine and Afghanistan, ending Trump's family separation policy, and opening processing centers in Colombia and Guatemala. The asylum system was designed for another era, and until Congress manages to act, administrations will be forced to rely on improvisations and stopgaps inevitably challenged in court. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu,

Starting point is 00:13:36 a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu

Starting point is 00:14:09 vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at FluCellVax.ca. Learn more at fluselvax.ca. In the New York Times, Alejandra Oliva said we have a legal responsibility to those seeking refuge. But these days, the door to stability, much less economic growth, has been shut against asylum seekers even before they're allowed to enter the country, she wrote. There's no better example than Biden's new asylum laws, which will bar from asylum

Starting point is 00:14:44 all non-Mexican migrants who arrive at the southern U.S. border without having first sought and been denied asylum in at least one of the countries they pass through on their journey. In order to apply, they need to make an appointment through a notoriously glitchy phone app that struggles to identify dark-skinned faces. faces. Biden's expanded parole system to allow up to 30,000 people from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua to enter the United States per month is purportedly a more humanitarian approach, Oliva wrote, but it's still fundamentally an unjust policy. Baked in are prerequisites that exclude a large majority of people, like having a financial sponsor and arriving by plane, which necessitates a passport. Instead of toggling one ineffective deterrence strategy to another or sending troops to manage people who are here looking for peaceful lives, Biden should reallocate the billions of dollars for deterrence to ensure asylum seekers

Starting point is 00:15:35 can receive work permits and settle in communities that welcome them. All right, that is it for the left and the right are saying, which brings us to my take. So it's been more than a year since we wrote a newsletter titled The End of Title 42. At that time, the New York Times was reporting that Biden was planning to end Title 42 in May of 2022, but that move never came. Back then, they were already constructing new border facilities and making contingency plans for taking 12,000 to 18,000 migrants into U.S. custody every day. It's been a year now, and the Biden administration is actually ending Title 42 this time. They seem to have expanded the capacity of facilities on the border, and since last March have introduced some new policies to manage the increased flow. The CBP1 phone app to process applications, severe penalties and expulsions for those who cross illegally, and a parole system for

Starting point is 00:16:35 migrants from certain countries. Yet not even the Biden administration seems to think they've done enough, preemptively warning that more chaos is around the corner and the overwhelmed facilities on the border may not get a reprieve anytime soon. I've expressed skepticism about some of the Trump-era policies for a long time. Family separations were obviously immoral and also unhelpful. The border wall was nonsensical in most areas, ineffective in others, and is more expensive than deploying technology or humans, who can do a better job apprehending unauthorized migrants. Those solutions also don't require the government to seize property or destroy important land along the Rio Grande River. But whatever disagreements I or anyone else had with Trump's border policies, he adds something Biden didn't,

Starting point is 00:17:18 a clear and consistent mandate. As the Washington Post put it under what the left is saying, Biden's policies have been waffling and contradictory. He oscillates between the progressive vision of the border and Trump's, and similarly seems to implement policies that pull from both. In some arenas, a person like me might applaud a multifaceted and bipartisan approach, but the tangible result has been confusion and the worst of all worlds. To recap, during the Biden administration, we've now covered the return of Trump's remain in Mexico policy, the flood of Haitian migrants on the border in September of 2021, then the record 1.9 million border apprehensions in 2021, then the purported end of Title 42 that never came in March of 2022, then the new record of migrants crossing in June and July of 2022 with an increase of asylum

Starting point is 00:18:03 seekers from across the globe, then the Senate's two immigration bills that never moved, then Biden's new border plan in January of this year to turn away Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans, then his new immigration rules in March to punish asylum seekers crossing illegally, and now the official end of Title 42 and the expectation of chaos. There's no doubt Title 42 had to end. It was legally dubious during the pandemic and is outright ridiculous with the public health emergency ending. But Biden has had over two years to formulate a consistent set of policies to address it, and instead we have glitchy apps and a hodgepodge of policies whose goals seem difficult to categorize into a cohesive vision for what this administration wants. I actually applaud the idea for the Plan 100 processing centers in the Western Hemisphere, but the administration is

Starting point is 00:18:49 arguing it will take time to set those centers up and see results. The obvious point is that they have had nothing but time, and they are working from behind because they didn't take the border crisis seriously early on. Biden missed an opportunity with full Democratic control of Congress to burn political capital on an immigration solution, and now we're back to the congressional deadlock that has defined the last 20 years. It's all very, very bad, and it's hard to see the way out. We have a moral and legal obligation to give asylum seekers their day in court, but we don't have the capacity to do that. As I've screened from the rooftops over and over, this is and remains the central problem in my view. We need more lawyers, judges, and processing centers on the border to actually evaluate the merits of asylum claims. Neither side seems to want to do

Starting point is 00:19:35 that because if this capacity existed, their side may end up on the wrong end of a functioning administration and legal system. Worse yet, one of the core elements of Biden's new plan is both a reversion to what Trump was doing and legally dubious. He's going to try to use Title VIII and a slew of new rules to quickly expel migrants who haven't first applied for asylum in Mexico, which is the kind of policy apparatus that federal courts struck down in the Trump era. So not only is Biden reverting to policies that he could have left in place, he's also likely to face legal challenges as he steps backward. As ever, real action needs to take place in Congress. I feel like a very broken record,

Starting point is 00:20:13 but there is no president who can do this with executive actions and administrative rules alone. Without Congress actually moving a comprehensive immigration bill, which we seem to have been talking about for decades now, we're just going to keep ending up back here with ebbs and flows of dysfunction on the border. That dysfunction hurts American citizens, it hurts the migrants who want to come here for a better life, and it creates more and more animosity between all the groups involved. I wish I had any hope Congress would get to work, but the prospect seems increasingly unlikely, especially with a new presidential election now around the corner.

Starting point is 00:20:50 All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This one's from Bill in Sanibel, Florida. Bill said, you stated that convicted felons who serve their time should have their rights restored. What about their Second Amendment rights? That's a great question, Bill. Speaking generally like I was yesterday, yes, I meant their full rights, which includes all of their rights, including the Second Amendment rights. I would offer, though, one caveat to that and my comments about voting rights, which I think your question kind of brings to the forefront. I do think there are legitimate arguments to permanently remove certain rights in the wake of certain criminal action. For instance, I was making the case that all felons should have their

Starting point is 00:21:33 voting rights restored once their time was served. However, imagine for a moment there was someone who was a felon because they organized a massive election fraud scheme to win a city council race. If a judge ruled that this person was permanently barred from voting or from running for city council again, I think I could get behind that kind of ruling, especially if that punishment were tied to more leniency on something like a jail sentence. It's a specific and targeted punishment that fits the crime. Similarly, if someone were convicted of a violent crime with a gun, I think it'd be fair for a judge to allow them out at the end of their sentence or on parole, but also forfeit their right to firearm permits. That is a targeted specific punishment,

Starting point is 00:22:15 the same way someone convicted of child molestation might be allowed out of prison, but prohibited from entering school zones or certain settings where there were children. So yes, I think broadly speaking, if someone serves their time, they should re-enter society with their rights fully restored. The point of our justice system should be to punish, rehabilitate, and deter. And I don't think punishing people in perpetuity is the right way forward, like having laws that ban all felons from voting. But I do think there are circumstances where the targeted removal of certain privileges or rights in response to criminal activity might be appropriate or just.

Starting point is 00:22:55 All right, that is it for your questions answered, which brings us to our under-the-radar story, and this one is a pretty splashy bit of news, I think. Senator Joe Manchin, the Democrat from West Virginia, has not announced any plans to run as a third-party candidate, but he sure is acting like one. Manchin took time away from his Senate schedule to gather with Iowa business and community leaders and has been running a quote-unquote no mercy campaign against President Biden and his quote radical climate agenda. Manchin might be Democrats' most endangered incumbent senator, and the group No Labels is raising money to build a presidential launchpad for a bipartisan ticket. Meanwhile, some bipartisan groups like Third Way are expressing horror that

Starting point is 00:23:36 a Manchin ticket could throw a potential 2020 rematch to Trump. Axios has the story and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, next up is our numbers section. The number of migrant encounters on the border in fiscal year 2022 was 2.4 million. The number of migrant encounters on the border in December alone was 250,000. The estimated number that are re-encounters with previously expelled individuals is 25%. The estimated percentage of encounters that ended with Title 42 expulsion is 45%. The estimated number of immigration cases that are in the backlog is now 1.5 million. All right, and last but not least, our have a nice day story. Philadelphia has implemented a plastic bag ban that actually appears to be working. In the last year, the ban on plastic bags has prevented some 200 million

Starting point is 00:24:30 plastic bag uses in the city, roughly equivalent to filling City Hall with plastic bags every eight months. Retailers can no longer give out single-use plastic bags or paper bags that aren't made up of at least 40% recyclable material. As a result, the use of reusable bags has skyrocketed in the city, according to a new study, and other Pennsylvania towns are now following Philadelphia's lead. The success of the plastic bag ban ordinance shows how the city, together with local businesses and consumers, can stop waste before it starts, Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said.

Starting point is 00:25:02 As a newly minted Philly resident myself, I can attest to the ease of bringing reusable bags to the grocery store Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney said, The Philadelphia Enquirer has the story, and there's a link to it in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. As always, if you want to support our work, please go to readtangle.com slash membership. We're going to be dropping a bit of an interesting Friday edition tomorrow on some of our language and writing policies here at Tangle. I'm not exactly sure the best way to describe it, but I think it's going to be fascinating for some readers and listeners to dive into. So keep your eyes out for that. And if not, we'll see you on Monday.

Starting point is 00:25:50 Have a great weekend. Peace. Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited by John Law. Our script is edited by Ari Weitzman, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bikova, who's also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. For more on Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. a background character trapped in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime,

Starting point is 00:26:51 Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu.

Starting point is 00:27:15 It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed.

Tangle - The End of Title 42 (for real this time).

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