Today, Explained - The new border crisis

Episode Date: May 16, 2023

Title 42, a Covid-era policy that included strict limits on migration into the US from Mexico, has expired. El Paso Times reporter Lauren Villagran explains what that means for both the border communities and the far-flung cities feeling the brunt of border politics. This episode was produced by Victoria Chamberlin, edited by Matt Collette, fact-checked by Laura Bullard, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained Support Today, Explained by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Up until just a few days ago, Title 42 was the law of the land on the U.S.-Mexico border. Yeah, so Title 42 was the pandemic-era rule started during the Trump administration in March 2020, when COVID-19 had just sort of begun hitting the U.S., that prevented border authorities from holding migrants in quote-unquote congregant settings. Tonight, again at midnight, we will execute the CDC order by immediately returning individuals arriving without documentation to Canada, Mexico, as well as a number of other countries without delay. Title 42 was divisive as hell. Immigration advocates hated it.

Lawmakers who wanted to circumvent U.S. asylum policies loved it. But Title 42 was a pandemic-era rule. It was never going to last forever, and it expired on Thursday. So what now? Coming up on Today Explained. The all-new FanDuel Sportsbook and Casino is bringing you more action than ever.

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Estar escuchando a Hoy Explicado. Today Explained. Lauren Villagran has been reporting on the U.S.-Mexico border for the better part of two decades, currently for the El Paso Times and USA Today Network. We asked her what's up now that Title 42 is over and done with. I mean, to everyone's surprise, not a heck of a lot. You know, before Title 42 ended last Thursday, we had about two weeks of heavily increased migration to El Paso through El Paso.

At dawn, the migrants covered in blankets stretch for blocks. And tonight, El Paso is under a state of emergency because city officials say they don't have enough resources to handle this. And it was really hectic here. And we had, you know, a bona fide humanitarian crisis on the streets of El Paso for about two weeks. But since Title 42 has ended, it's been quiet. With Title 42 out, the new law of the land is actually the old one, Title VIII. Yeah, Sean, so I can tell you what I understand the policies are, but how they end up getting applied in border patrol sectors like El Paso, like the Rio Grande Valley, Yuma, or San Diego remains to be seen. Title VIII is the nation's immigration law, okay, and it contains everything.

It's got a pathway for asylum, but it also has civil and criminal penalties, like, for example, expedited removal with a five-year ban on entering, again, you know, through any lawful means. It includes criminal penalties, a 1325 misdemeanor for crossing illegally, a 1326 felony, federal felony for re-entering the country illegally. And in the old days, by old days, I mean pre-2020, you know, we saw criminal prosecution of migrants skyrocket. It rose through, you know, from George W. Bush through Obama, and then skyrocketed again under Trump. And really what we ended up with during that period of heavy criminal prosecution

of migrants, we ended up with family separation. And that was something that we know the American public just couldn't stomach, this idea that we were going to prosecute everybody, including adults traveling with children. And that was a period when the Trump administration began separating children from their parents. But the fact of the matter is, is that criminal prosecution is part of Title VIII. And Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of Homeland Security has said, If anyone arrives at our southern border after midnight tonight, they will be presumed ineligible for asylum and subject to steeper consequences for unlawful entry, including

a minimum five-year ban on reentry and potential criminal prosecution. All this boils down to the devil being in the details in Border Patrol sectors that have limited resources. Do we have any idea how many people tried to enter the United States in the lead-up to Title 42 expiring last week? Yeah, I mean, it was thousands. I can tell you that here in El Paso at one point, we had 3,300 people living in unhoused, homeless conditions in downtown El Paso, and the vast majority had crossed illegally, meaning sneaking through holes cut in the floodgates of Trump's

border fence. And what we've seen repeatedly over the past six months were people who couldn't access the CBP One app because it keeps crashing or it's freezing or it's not, it's kicking them out. Customs and Border Protection launched a new app in hopes to expedite the process for asylum seekers. Almost immediately, migrant advocates found some issues, including sending migrants to asylum interviews more than 1,500 miles away. And they basically got impatient

and they crossed illegally, you know, through holes in the border wall, over the border wall, and ended up on the streets of El Paso. And NGOs and the city and the county have their hands tied in some ways in terms of helping people because of the way the federal funding is dispersed. There's a stipulation in a stream of FEMA funding that requires that NGOs or cities and counties along the border who are doing this humanitarian work, if they are audited, they have to prove that the people that they were serving crossed lawfully. Basically, one of the ways to prove that is that someone has what is called by the government a quote-unquote alien identification number or an A number.

But we know that in El Paso last week and over the winter and again late last summer, there were many, many people who ended up on the street seeking refuge who had crossed illegally and didn't have in possession that A number. So, you know, border communities are really between a rock and a hard place in the sense that organizations like the local food bank want to feed anyone who's hungry, but they can only be reimbursed for helping migrants who crossed lawfully. Well, we've been talking this whole time, Lauren, about what's going on at the border in the lower United States, but tell me what things look like on the other side of the

border in Mexico right now. Yeah, so, you, so Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border cities are not easy places for migrants. I love Ciudad Juarez. I crossed the border. But one thing is to be a local or a resident or a U.S. citizen and have that ability to crisscross the border. And it's quite another thing to be in a city as rife with organized crime as Juarez is, as a vulnerable migrant who's a target of criminal organizations, cartels, who doesn't have any resources. And, you know, Mexico has not made it easy for people to integrate into society or to work. You know, there have been different periods of migration. We saw waves of Cubans arrive. We saw waves of Haitians arrive. And they were able to access the ability to work or seek some kind of refuge in Mexico for

a short time while they waited for an opportunity to come into the U.S. And the migrants that we're seeing right now over the last six months or so don't have the same level of resources. Some of those earlier demographics, they've got family members in Miami or in New York or all over the United States who can help support them with U.S. dollars sent to Mexico. The Venezuelans, for example, don't have that. They don't have that long history of migration to the United States. And so they're very much on their own. They're vulnerable.

And they're taking risks that we haven't seen others take. Like what? Well, for example, crossing the border unlawfully and then just sitting downtown, hoping for an opportunity to stay. Families like Robert, Yaskeri, and their four-year-old son, Jason, from Venezuela. They tell us they've been here for eight days. You've been sleeping on this floor for eight days? They say they are desperate.

Migrants who are crossing illegally, trying to evade Border Patrol apprehension, typically are in the hands of smugglers. They're trying to move into the interior of the United States. They don't believe they have a claim to stay. And in this case, you had this large group that was just so desperate that they crossed illegally and then just congregated around the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in downtown El Paso, Texas, around a homeless shelter, knowing that Border Patrol has a longstanding policy of not arresting or apprehending people in the close vicinity of sanctuaries like a church or a school, for example.

Can I ask you how this current crisis and sort of chaotic situation compares to the ones you've seen in your two decades of reporting? Oh my God, that's a big question, Sean. What's changed so much is the rhetoric in Washington, where I think 20 years ago, there may still have been some interest in building consensus or cooperation was still viewed as a virtue, you know, the last 15, you know, 10, 15 years, that's no longer the case. And I have the sneaking suspicion that for elected officials, for politicians in Washington, being in a constant state of border crisis is, you know, a motivator for their base. And I think that's true of both parties in different ways. I mean, it must be, right? Because we've not seen any substantial immigration reform since 1996, and that was a fairly small reform. The real big one goes back

to 1986, you know, when I was a kid. So, you know, when we didn't have internet. So it's, I do think that the level of humanitarian crisis is something that we didn't see 20 years ago because it was mostly adult males trying to cross the border seeking work. And since 2014, when we first started seeing unaccompanied children come to the border, and then 2016 and 2018, when you were seeing families, entire families, mothers, fathers, and their children, the border infrastructure is not set up to welcome them or create a safe place to review their claims and maybe a safe way to remove them if they don't have claims or, you know, a safe way to welcome them in if they do. It's a strictly law enforcement approach. And it does seem from a border perspective, you know, folks, Republicans and Democrats

who live and work on the border see this issue in a completely different way than the rest of the country. It comes down to logistics. It comes down to the practical matters like feeding hungry people or getting children off the street. But really, the devil is going to getting children off the street.

But really, the devil is going to come down to the details. How does one Border Patrol agent in a particular sector handle what he or she is faced with in terms of people crossing illegally or trying to make a claim and how they make that claim and where they make that claim and how many people. So we're in the middle of a massive transformation in border enforcement, and it's going to take a few days or weeks to shake out. More with Lauren when we're back on Today Explained. card and spend management software designed to help you save time and put money back in your

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Please play responsibly. If you have any questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Lauren, I think you've given us a vivid impression of what this crisis looks like at the U.S.-Mexico border. But as we've learned in recent years, this isn't just a crisis on the border. It's a crisis throughout the United States. What does this situation look like for the rest of the country? You know, it's interesting when you think about the name of the community, El Paso, it really means the pass. And most of the people who are arriving here,

nearly all of them, are on their way somewhere else. They're just passing through. And what's interesting about this latest group of people coming, and when I say latest, I mean like the last six months, especially, you know, the Venezuelan diaspora, they're headed to very specific places. New York City, for one, that's been the major destination for months. Chicago now is on that list, and so is Denver. And so, you know, you have a situation where you have a large group of people headed to a place where they may not know anyone. And that's really different from past groups of migrants who often were migrating, whether it was for economic reasons or because they were fleeing persecution, they still had a destination in mind where they knew somebody. Maybe it was a sister

or a cousin, someone who could receive them. And so this larger group of people who don't know anyone and who don't have any resources does create a new burden for cities in the interior. laws. If you're a migrant there who needs shelter, you're going to get it. But Mayor Adams is now reconsidering those laws and loosening them because he says they're just plain out of space. New York cannot take more. They're sending people up to Canada and Canada's getting mad. Is the influx of migrants forcing so-called sanctuary cities to reconsider how much they can provide sanctuary. So, you know, last year during the height of the busing program in Texas, where you had both Governor Greg Abbott and also the city of El Paso providing kind of quote-unquote free, you know, taxpayer-funded buses out of town, out of state, hundreds of people were headed

for New York City. And we followed one family at the El Paso Times in USA Today, a Venezuelan family, a mother, a father, and their two young children to Manhattan. So it's 4.15 in the morning, and we are driving to the Port Authority in Manhattan, where we expect the bus from El Paso to arrive in the next couple of hours. We'll be waiting.

Where they ended up in a hotel room, you know, funded by the city, they're relieved to have made it so far. But they don't know where they'll end up or what the conditions will be like. Hey! Buenos Aires! Brittany! And they're still there. So that's October, November, December, January, February, March, April.

It is now May. And they are still, and I'll say this, stuck in a hotel room. You know, it may sound great. Okay, you've got a hotel room in Times Square. But when you're talking about having two small children, no kitchen, it's not ideal. But they've also been working really, really hard. And of course, it's still not enough to afford shelter in New York City. So I think cities do need to think about what their policies are going to be. But, you know,

Sean, it's interesting. When you look at the number of people coming here, the Venezuelans specifically, you know, Colombia took in 2 million Venezuelans. Peru took in, I think, something like 1.5 million Venezuelans before anybody started heading here. So I think that cities are going to have to reevaluate how are we going to welcome people, if we're going to welcome people, and what that's going to look like. Of course, you know, we've seen border cities getting a lot of extra attention in light of the end of Title 42. How are cities far from the border, be it New York, Chicago, Denver, feeling about the end of Title 42? Is it something that's going to affect them as well? I don't think cities in the interior need to be worried about the end of Title 42 in part because, you know, the influx that we saw in the

lead up to the end of Title 42 is essentially over. So do we need to pay attention to how migrants respond to the new policies? Yes, we do. And from a policy perspective, again, I'm a journalist, I'm not a policymaker, but I would think that this would be a good time for cities to think about how they want to participate in America's immigration process, whether they want to participate in America about immigration policy or who cover immigration policy or who watch the border really ought to think about putting pressure on congressional representatives to take up the issue. You know, the Biden administration has taken a lot of steps recently, as presidential administrations have done, Republican and Democrat for the past 30 years. But at the end of the day, the things that they do that are executive decisions could be undone at the next election. Whereas if Congress acts, you're talking about a body that is supposed to come to some kind of consensus, some kind of political consensus, and those laws are the laws that will more likely last.

But you were telling us earlier in the conversation that there may be political incentives for Congress, for both parties, to not solve this problem because perhaps using migrants as a political cudgel is more effective for them. And we saw a great example of this last year when both Governor Greg Abbott in Texas and Governor Ron DeSantis in Florida were sending migrants to Martha's Vineyard or to New York City or to Washington, D.C. on buses and planes. What did that accomplish, if anything? Did that prove something to Massachusetts or to New York State or to Washington, D.C. about what it's like at the border? Or did it just spread the crisis out? And is that in and of itself an accomplishment for these governors?

I'm not a political reporter, but I would say from the view from the border, of course, was that that sort of thing of delivering migrants to the vice president's residence or to Martha's Vineyard. It was clearly a political stunt. Did it make a point that Governor Greg Abbott wanted to make? Absolutely. You know, when that community had to scramble to provide food and shelter for a vulnerable group that didn't have anything in that moment, they did. And that's something that border communities in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California are doing every single day. So I think that point was made. Now, should anyone be making a point using actual suffering humans? You know, that's,

I'm not going to answer that. You know, that's up to people's politics, I guess. I'll answer. It seems like no. I think that a lot of certainly immigrant advocates thought that that was a political stunt and not the right move for people who truly did not know where they were going or what they were being thrust into. But that's what we're left with in the absence of real policy on immigration. And it feels like we're in this moment where President Biden is really struggling to come up with functional policy in the absence of Title 42. And this is just left to the courts, the Supreme Court, state courts to figure out or even governors who resort to the inhumane treatment of human beings. Is that the status quo? Is that where we are? Yeah, if the question is, is it going to be a functional policy? I mean, call me back in like

four weeks. So, you know, returning to Title VIII, there's a lot in there. It's like if you come down here, let's say to El Paso, to El Paso sector, the Border Patrol's El Paso sector, you've got about 2,400 Border Patrol agents patrolling an area that's 264 miles long, stretches all the way from the Arizona border east of El Paso into West Texas. And it's massive. And so people are crossing between ports of entry. And whenever you sort of force people outside of the actual international port of entry infrastructure, there's a whole lot of problems that come along with that. You know, people are crossing through a deep and heavy current of the Rio Grande. They are climbing over a 30-foot border wall, ending up paralyzed, dying, or losing a limb, or breaking hips and legs. I mean, it's dangerous. You know, I think it remains to be

seen whether the Biden administration's new policies, its CBP One app, which as much as everyone has complained about that, is an attempt to use technology to facilitate a legal pathway into the country. You know, will it work? Will it bring people to that port infrastructure instead of crossing a dangerous river, crossing a hot desert, crossing over a 30-foot wall, you know, I think we have to give it a chance, right?

We have to see what's going to happen. Lauren Villagran is an El Paso-based reporter with the El Paso Times and the USA Today Network. Find her work at ElPasoTimes.com. Victoria Chamberlain produced our show today. She had help from Matthew Collette, Laura Bullard, Amanda Llewellyn, and Patrick Boyd. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. you