The Daily - The Day Title 42 Ended

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

For weeks, officials have feared that the end of Title 42 would create a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border that would strain and possibly cripple America’s immigration system.Natalie Kitroeff, the New York Times bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, reports from the border about what actually happened when the pandemic-era policy expired.Guest: Natalie Kitroeff, the New York Times bureau chief for Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.Background reading: Economic hardship, climate change, political instability and gang violence will continue to spur emigration from many corners of the world.Why are so many migrants trying to cross the border?For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today. And we are counting down to chaos. Title 42 will officially expire in less than 18 hours. The pandemic-era policy allowed the U.S. government to quickly expel migrants who crossed into the U.S. illegally. After Thursday, it's going to be a free-for-all. The Biden administration... For weeks, officials have feared that the end of Title 42 would create a crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border that would strain and possibly cripple America's immigration system. Title 42 goes away on Thursday,

and migrants will be in crisis as soon as next week. It will be a humanitarian crisis because we are not prepared. My colleague, Natalie Kitchoeff, has been at the border and describes what actually happened when the milestone policy came to an end. It's Tuesday, May 16th. Okay, can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay, great. We're just pulling off to this part of the border that I'm trying to get to. I'm sorry. It's super dusty. So Natalie, just by way of context, it's Thursday, May 11th. You're right at the U.S.-Mexico border. It's the middle of the day. Can you just describe exactly where you are geographically and what you're seeing?

First of all, I'm seeing the group of migrants, maybe 300 or 400 people that have gathered on the other side of the Rio Grande. Crossing the Rio Grande, which, by the way, is not that grand at this particular part of Ciudad Juarez. It's like a shallow and very crossable stream-like body of water almost. And they just have walked across the other side, which means they're on U.S. soil. They get off the riverbank and there's this barbed wire. They've been going through the barbed wire and now they are between the barbed wire and this massive border wall. That's what you might

imagine. It looks like a big, very tall fence, but they're on U.S. soil. And so they want to turn themselves in to border officials, some of them to apply for asylum. Natalie, what does it mean for the people on the other side of this river who are successfully crossing to some degree to do that today? Yeah, we're hours away from this border restriction being lifted. And what that means for folks is that the migration landscape in the United States is about to radically change. They're going to be the first people, we think, depending on when border agents start processing them, to really test out what is this new system.

You know, before, under the measure which is called Title 42, the U.S. government could summarily expel people when they crossed illegally. That's no longer an option anymore, starting later tonight. Now, folks who are on U.S. soil are going to have to be processed. It's going to take longer. Whether or not they're actually going to get legal status, we don't know. It's going to be difficult. The Biden administration has put in new rules. And the people that I'm looking at right now are the ones who are really, we think, again, it depends on when they get across or what's really going to happen. But these are going to be the first people to kind of test it out. very clearly over the past couple of days, I think as recently as earlier today on Thursday,

the border is not open and we will not let you in. And yet, from what you're describing, that's not really the issue. People are getting in. They are there. So how do you reconcile all that? Yeah, I mean, you know, it's true that the border isn't open. I mean, it's not as if the gates were just flung wide open and people are walking through. But folks are getting on U.S. soil right now. And the reality is that when Title 42 lifts later tonight, the administration is going to have to process these people one by one. But if the policy right in this moment before midnight is to summarily expel migrants who come to the border, why is this group crossing now? Honestly, it's impossible to know exactly why any group of migrants is crossing right now. We don't have any really clear sense, and there's just a lot of mixed messaging, so it's difficult to parse, you know, the individual rationale of each person. But what we know is that over the last several days, we have seen a rush to

the border, and we are still seeing people crossing today, and it remains to be seen what's going to happen over the next few days. Right. But as we've said on the show, for weeks, there have been reports of a surge of people coming to the border in anticipation of this change. Do you have any sense of how many people are at or just inside of the border right now? So we've been hearing that there's going to be this massive surge today on the day that this pandemic rule lifts. But the reality is the numbers show that the surge is already here. The number of encounters at the border has gone up to 11,000 a day. That's up from 6,000 a day just a few weeks ago. So that's a huge increase. I mean, in effect, this thing that we were all racing for,

it's already upon us. It's been happening. This is the reality at the border right now. Nell, you have been where you are for the past week. So describe what you have been seeing as all these migrants have arrived at the border. Well, you're seeing people coming in on buses. You're seeing them coming in on planes.

And one of the most dangerous ways that they're getting here is on this train that's known as the Beast. It's also known as the Train of Death because it's a really dangerous method for people to be traveling. It's this massive cargo train that, you know, people risk their lives just getting on. But I wanted to see what it was like to ride it into Juarez to try to migrate on this train. So I boarded it south of the city. We're sitting here among construction material. Looks like steel rebar. And I got into a car that was full of steel rebar and about 40 migrants who had been traveling, some of them for four days.

The guys that I'm talking to said they've seen people killed when they've gotten off it and the train has run over them. There's not much water. There's barely any food. They're hungry. They're scared. It gets so cold at night. And during the day, it's unbearably hot. And they're surrounded by metal. So during the day, touching that scalding hot surface can be dangerous. And at night, sleeping on it is really uncomfortable. Yeah. really uncomfortable.

Yeah. And one of the people I talked to was this 33-year-old named Jonathan Arevalo. He's from Venezuela. Jonathan said that danger's been with us since we left. He has crossed the Darien Gap. This treacherous jungle that was once considered impassable but is now basically a highway for migrants to get here.

He spent days doing that. His friends told me that they had to basically eat sugar for a couple of days because that's the only food that they had left. Yeah. Jonathan's saying his choices were basically to stay in Venezuela and risk his life or leave and risk his life. He didn't think he was going to survive in Venezuela, so he decided to give it a shot. He's crossed into the United States several times already

and been returned under Title 42. He was expelled at a different part of the border from where he entered and then bussed to the south of the country. So that's why he had to take a train all the way up north to try again. And he wanted to try one more time because he actually thinks it's going to get a lot harder when the measure lifts. So Jonathan has heard basically that when the measure lifts, you really could just be deported. I think there's a couple of mixed messages happening here. And so he had been on this train trying to make it one last time for several days.

And he basically said, I'm going to walk to the border if I can. And right now we're rolling through. Cuadras, we're coming from the south up until the north. But when you're on the train, as soon as they catch a glimpse of the Juarez city limits, you know, a cheer will go up. People are also still really hopeful. And when they start to arrive to this city, you can feel the kind of spirit lift.

you can feel the kind of spirit lift and people people are looking at each other and they're saying you know we finally made it of course for many of them this is they hope the last leg of a very long journey but i think they know and we know that there's no guarantee that that this is really the end of it. And the questions that the administration is asking itself and that we're all waiting to see is how long that takes, how much chaos unfolds, and whether the system gets overloaded. Well, Natalie, thank you for now. And we will check back in with you once Title 42 is lifted and everything is different.

Sounds good. Thanks, Michael. We'll be right back. So, Natalie, when we talked to you on Thursday during that afternoon, things were looking to be at kind of a fever pitch. There was this sudden wave of migrants at the border. The shelters on the U.S. side were full. Everyone had this question in their mind. Is this going to basically break the United States system for processing migrants? So what ended up happening once Title 42 was actually lifted? Well, it didn't break the United States system for processing migrants. So what ended up happening once Title 42 was actually lifted? Well, it didn't break the system. And it turned out that what we'd been

seeing over the last few days, that was kind of the peak. And so when the clock struck midnight Eastern time, I was sitting there watching the border. I was looking at the Rio Grande and looking at this group of migrants waiting to try to get in. It wasn't getting any bigger. We weren't seeing a big rush to the border. You know, for the whole week, we had kind of seen people walking with their kids and their belongings toward the border. We didn't see any of that that night. I mean, it was really calm from where I was standing. There was a lot of news media. There were a lot of cameras pointed at the border wall.

But what they were capturing was a pretty tranquil scene. How do you explain that, Natalie, that the worst-case scenario for the U.S. didn't quite materialize? It sounds like perhaps the president's message about the end of Title 42, don't come, the border isn't open, perhaps sunk in. Well, yeah, I think a lot of people on both sides of the border think that Biden and his administration were very clear that the new rules being put in place were not going to mean open doors at the

border. And there's some sense that that message filtered down into the migrant WhatsApp groups, the Facebook groups, the chats that are constantly spreading that information. And I was talking to migrants in Juarez who were telling me that, you know, they had heard this message from the Biden administration. Right. Because so much of the information that these migrants were receiving and spreading seemed to be that this wasn't a good time to come because of these new rules that you just referenced. And Natalie, we talked about these rules last week with our colleague Miriam Jordan, but just briefly remind us why these new rules would have this cumulative effect of making people pause, wait, not rush to

the border. So remember that under Title 42, there was a benefit for migrants. There was a built-in incentive to cross the border illegally. Because if you cross the border illegally and got caught, you would probably be expelled immediately from the country, but there was no black mark on your record. As soon as Title 42 lifts, that's over. If you are caught crossing illegally, migrants know that you could be subject to criminal proceedings. And most importantly, there's a five-year ban on re-entering the United States. And so the migrants that I talked to are terrified of this. This is the last thing that they want. And it's really on their minds, this notion that they wouldn't be

able to try to come back in if this didn't work. And the other issue that they're talking about is this new set of rules that makes it really hard to qualify for asylum, which is this legal status that gives you protection from persecution in your home country. If migrants tried to claim asylum under these new restrictions Biden put in place, you have to prove that you requested and were rejected for asylum in Mexico or another country that you pass through on the way to the United States. There were some exceptions baked into these new rules, but all of the migrants that I talked to felt that these new rules made it essentially impossible for many of them to qualify for this kind of protected status. So, you know, the overwhelming sense or the fear,

So, you know, the overwhelming sense or the fear, really, was that the new system being put in place was bad. Right, which is exactly what the president and those around him hoped would be the message that reached these migrants. them. And it resulted in the averting of a momentary surge, perhaps even a crisis at the border over the past few days when this three-year-old emergency rule came to an end. Yeah, it does seem that that may have happened, at least in the short term. But honestly, the border is an extremely dynamic place and people are making decisions based on information that changes daily. And, you know, the slightest sign that this new system actually isn't so bad that people are getting in when migrants start getting those messages, that is going to change their decision. That is going to impact the flows. People are not static for long. They are in wait-and-see mode for now, but that can change really quickly. Well, so what do we know about that, Natalie? Specifically, what do we know

about the people that you saw crossing into the U.S. late last week? What ended up happening to them, and what kind of signal might that be to everyone else about whether this is, in fact, a good or bad moment to try to come into the U.S.? Well, we don't really know yet. There's not a lot of information, but here's what migrants are watching and really what everybody's watching. How successful is the Biden administration going to be at implementing its own policy? And essentially the question is, how quickly is the Biden administration going to be able to deport large numbers of people? If the Biden administration can quickly deport large

numbers of migrants, that is going to send the message that it is not a good time to cross. It remains a bad time to cross, and migrants may sit back and wait. But it's not a sure thing that the Biden administration will be able to deport large numbers of people very quickly and efficiently. It's logistically difficult to do that. And if the administration doesn't do that, what we're going to see and what migrants will see is people being let into the country with a notice to appear before an immigration judge, basically being allowed to stay and live in the country legally, at least for some period of time while they wait for a hearing.

Children, for example, will definitely be let in to wait. Families will very likely be let in to wait. And if large numbers are being let in to wait, that is going to send a message to people at the border that, you know what, there is a chance that at least for some period of time, you could get into the United States. So maybe it isn't so bad to try right now. Right. this dynamic situation where migrants are looking for any sign that actually maybe it is a good time to go to the border, even a failure to execute these scary new policies might end up undermining this entire program designed to replace Title 42 for the Biden administration. Oh, it definitely

would. And on top of that, there's this other threat to the new system, which is that Biden's new policies are facing a bunch of legal challenges. So tell us about this. So the administration is facing a couple of legal challenges to its new policies. The first legal challenge comes from Florida, and it really targets the way the Biden administration is letting migrants out of custody and into the United States. The argument is that this is happening in an unlawful way that puts an undue burden on the local government

and the systems in the state. If the lawsuit works, if it's successful, that wouldn't be great for the administration. But it's not really clear what's going to happen with that one. A potentially bigger threat, experts are saying, is a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. And basically what the ACLU and others are saying in that suit is that it's not fair and it's a violation of U.S. law to require people to apply for and get

rejected for asylum in another country in order to get it in the United States. And if the ACLU succeeds, and even if this rule is just suspended while the litigation is happening, that could be very difficult for the Biden administration because a big part of their policy at the border is making it difficult for people to get in. And if all of a sudden this new rule that makes it harder for people to qualify for this legal status goes away, then again, you could see more people getting in and that would reinforce the message to migrants waiting that now is a good time to try to cross.

So at any moment, a judge could just throw this entire system into chaos and all these signals that the White House has been sending not to come could be turned on their head and the Biden administration will be back to square one. That's a real possibility, I think. And, you know, it really speaks to this moment that we're in at the border right now, which is just uncertainty. We really don't know what's going to happen. There are a lot of people waiting in Mexico, and there's an administration that is looking at how this is playing out in the courts and how well they're able to execute their own new rules. And things are really in flux.

rules, and things are really in flux. Nelly, I'm curious, do you know what happened to all the people that you met last week, especially on the Beast, that terrifying train that so many of them take to try to get to the border? Yeah, so remember Jonathan Arevalo, the 33-year-old Venezuelan guy that I met on the train. He's been sending me voice memos. We've been keeping in touch since that day. And he told me that, you know, he was desperate to try to cross illegally before the end of Title 42. He thought that would give him a better chance

of making it in. And he told me how he got off the train that day and he basically spent all day and night walking. He stopped for a quick bite to eat and then went straight to the border. But when he got there, he said,

they ran into people from the cartel. He said that cartel members were attacking a lot of the people around him. He doesn't know what these cartel members were looking for. Maybe it was to rob them, maybe it was to kidnap them. But he's seen enough danger along the way that he knew to turn back. So he abandoned that mission of trying to get in and went back to Juarez, found a place to sleep. You know, he's working at a fruit store.

He's trying to make a little money, and he's now waiting it out. He said he's looking at information every day. He is looking to see what happens with this new policy. He's being patient right now, but my sense is that patience isn't going to last long. He said that as soon as he gets any sign that people are getting in, he's going to try. He will cross the border and give it a shot. And, you know, it just gives you a sense. I mean, this guy has been through a shot. And, you know, it just gives you a sense. I mean, this guy has been through a jungle. He's been through several countries, several months of travel. People who have done

all of that aren't going to give up that easily. And, you know, there are tens of thousands of people just like Jonathan that are following close behind. The numbers of people that are going through this jungle, the Darien Gap, to get here, they are still hovering near record highs. The forces that are driving people to the United States border are bigger than any one policy can control. It's hunger and poverty. It's economic displacement. It's violence. And those things haven't changed. And, you know, that's the real issue right now, both for migrants and for the Biden administration. I mean, you have people that have their eyes trained on the border to just see what's going to happen because they are

desperate. And for the Biden administration, there's not a lot of leeway there. If this policy doesn't work out the way they want it to, they could see Jonathan and all of the other people that have suffered and sacrificed so much already just take one more step to try to test this system. And if that happens, all bets are off. test this system. And if that happens, all bets are off. Natalie, thank you very much. Thanks, Michael. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. President Trump to re-examine how the government investigated ties between Trump and Russia,

issued a final report on Monday that heavily criticized both the FBI and the Department of Justice. The report, overseen by John Durham, found that agents rushed into the investigation of Trump and that their handling of the probe was, quote, seriously deficient. But Durham's four-year investigation produced little new information, sent no one to prison, and failed to deliver the kind of embarrassing revelations that both Trump and his allies had promised that it would. And a man armed with a baseball bat

entered a district office of Congressman Jerry Connolly of Virginia on Monday morning and attacked two of his staff members. The motive of the attacker, who is now in custody, remains unclear, but the incident comes amid a sharp rise in threats against members of Congress, including a violent attack last fall on the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Today's episode was produced by Carlos Prieto, Claire Tennisgetter, Nina Feldman, and Shannon Lin. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Linn and Patricia Willans, contains original music by Dan Powell and Marian Lozano, and was

engineered by Chris Wood. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sarah Kerr, Maria Abihabim, Somia Karla-Mangla, Karen Zarek, Miriam Jordan, and Edgar Sandoval. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.