Today, Explained - Why are more children crossing the border?

Episode Date: March 17, 2021

A growing number of unaccompanied minors at the US-Mexico border is highlighting President Biden’s struggle to fulfill his campaign promises on immigration — as well as the difficult path to comprehensive immigration reform. Transcript at vox.com/todayexplained. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. It's Today Explained. I'm Halima Shah filling in for Sean Ramos-Furham today. The U.S. is seeing more and more unaccompanied minors crossing the southern border. So many that the White House is considering repurposing military bases and a NASA site into temporary shelters for kids. Children now being housed in facilities meant for adults. The Biden administration conceding

they need more space. The options here are send the kids back on the journey, send them to unvetted homes, or work to expedite moving them into shelters where they can get health treatment by medical doctors. As of Tuesday night, there were over 13,000 unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody, including a record number in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection specifically. We haven't had updated numbers from CBP on this, but as of Sunday morning, more than 4,000 unaccompanied children were in Border Protection custody. They're not supposed to be in that custody for more than 72 hours, but the Biden administration has been really struggling to keep pace with the number of people arriving on the southern border before they can transfer them to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is authorized to administer care to children.

Kids are now either in permanent shelters operated by that agency or in some new temporary facilities that have been opened along the border, including in Carissa Springs, Texas, which was a tent facility that opened under the Trump administration, but that the Biden administration has now reopened. Axios reports the White House may need as many as 20,000 total beds. Migrant children currently occupy 7,700 of the some 13,000 beds operated by Health and Human Services, but that number has doubled since just the end of last year. At the moment, the Biden officials have been trying to urge patience with the response to the border, but they really don't have time to put in the kind of sophisticated systems that they were seeking to initially put in place, just because the immediate situation is so dire. Nicole Nerea is Vox's immigration reporter, and she says the Biden administration was not prepared for this. I think it's important to note that, including unaccompanied children, the majority of people that people on the ground are observing coming to the border have, in fact, been waiting for a chance to cross the border for more than a year now. Many of them have been kept out by Trump administration policies,

including some pandemic era restrictions that resulted in expulsions of tens of thousands of people to Mexico. So many of them have been waiting for an opportunity to cross the border for a long time. And the Trump policies basically just created this pent up demand that we're only now seeing coming to the fore.

But otherwise, you know, this is the result of a really longstanding crisis in Central America's Northern Triangle countries, which are Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. They've been enduring for a long time now government corruption, gang-related violence, frequent extortion, and high levels of poverty. There's also been a pandemic-related economic downturn in the region and a series of hurricanes late last year that devastated Honduras and Guatemala in particular. Eta and Iota were two of the strongest storms of 2020 in one of the most active Atlantic hurricane seasons in recorded history.

The impact of the storms in Honduras has been particularly devastating. Bridges and power lines collapsed, roads buried under mudslides, and entire towns flooded. Those crises have only exacerbated the more long-standing problems driving people to make a dangerous journey north to seek protection and a better life. You know, Nicole, I think any time we hear about kids crossing the border, it conjures images of kids in cages a few summers ago. What do we know about the conditions that these kids are being sheltered under? For those who are still in U.S. Customs and Border Protection custody, they're being held in these temporary processing centers, which really aren't designed

to administer care to children. They were initially built in mind with the fact that the migrant flow was primarily single adult men from Mexico. And so we've been hearing reports of children being held in facilities where they're not allowed to go outside for days at a time, only allowed to shower every 48 hours, if that. They're sleeping on gym mats and with Mylar blankets, like the kind that you would get after finishing a marathon that are very thin. So at this point, it is quite dire. And for people who remember the refrain, kids in cages, which came about in 2014 when the Obama administration was facing an influx of migrant children, as well as in 2019 when the Trump administration was experiencing

a similar increase in unaccompanied children arrivals. This is, in fact, the same facilities that we saw during those periods. But the difference here is that the Biden administration is trying to mitigate the amount of time that children spend in those facilities, even if at the moment their capacity to transfer them to better facilities is kind of limited. They are kind of using a whole-of-government approach here. FEMA is providing immediate relief, just like they would during a disaster, to the children, including food, water, and basic medical needs. They're also setting up long-term shelters.

Invoking authorities like FEMA and collaborating across departments in an effort to try to transfer these children to better facilities that are equipped to offer them care and protection, but it's just not happening quickly enough right now. So aside from the Biden administration trying to get these children out of facilities that really weren't even built for them, how well is he delivering on this promise to treat migrant children more humanely than the last administration? So the Biden administration has made public statements signaling that they're taking a different approach from the Trump administration. And this is an across-the-administration effort that we are committed from the top to making changes on as quickly as possible. At this point, their intentions are in the right place. But in practice, there is still a very dire

situation on the border with respect to unaccompanied children. Basically, in the short term, the Biden administration is expanding the capacity of permanent shelters for migrant children, as well as opening these new temporary influx centers that at least have the equipment to care for children. But the temporary centers aren't subject to the same level of oversight as the permanent shelters operated by the Department of Health and Human Services and are relatively costly. But again, they are definitely better equipped to care for children than Border Patrol holding facilities at the border. The administration is also making it easier for children to be released to their family members in the U.S. or other sponsors, which can include foster families.

And they're facilitating cooperation between Border Patrol, Department of Health and Human Services, and FEMA to ensure that children are transferred to shelters and released more quickly. The administration also restarted the Central American Minors Program, which would allow children to apply for protection in their home countries. But it's not clear to what extent that's going to mitigate the flow of migrant children from Central America, just because many of them are fleeing very desperate situations and don't want to necessarily wait in their home countries for much longer. Has there been any direct messaging from the Biden administration to people who are crossing the border? Yeah, at this point, the message is don't come.

Do you have to say quite clearly, don't come? Yes, I can say quite clearly, don't come. And what we're in the process of getting set up, and it's not going to take a whole long time, is to be able to apply for asylum in place. So don't leave your town or city or community. Biden said that as late as last night, but I think that message falls on deaf ears to some extent.

These migrants, you have to remember, are fleeing situations where they may be in immediate and present danger or where they just don't see any hope for their lives in Central America anymore. They have been waiting in many cases for years to make the decision to go to the U.S. At the same time,

smugglers are trying to take advantage of migrants in that situation and spreading disinformation about what's actually happening on the border. They correctly perceive that the Biden administration is pursuing friendlier policies towards immigrants, but the smugglers are sort of capitalizing on that and saying, you know, the border might open at midnight or migrants in one particular camp are going to be processed. That's obviously not true, but for migrants who are all too eager to hear that message,

it is effective. So far, we've really focused on the White House response to this. But what are Congress and other lawmakers asking Biden to do right now? So Biden is facing pushback right now from both the left and the right. Progressives are really asking Biden to take a more humane approach to the border and overhaul the asylum system. But Republicans, on the other hand, are calling this a Biden border crisis. Kevin McCarthy and a host of other GOP representatives went to the border earlier this week and said a lot of untrue things like terrorists are coming across the border and are basically trying to make this a political wedge issue and perhaps even run on it in the midterms. Right now, they are really going back

to the Trump era talking points and seeking to put this on Biden. I think that's somewhat unfair because, as I said, we've been dealing with this kind of migration flow since at least 2014, when the Obama administration faced the first real influx of migrant children in the year since the federal government has really failed to act on that issue and create systems to accommodate this new kind of migration. Coming up, it's going to take more than a Band-Aid to address a child migrant crisis that was years in the making. Thank you. by Wirecutter. AuraFrames make it easy to share unlimited photos and videos directly from your phone to the frame. When you give an AuraFrame as a gift, you can personalize it, you can preload it with a thoughtful message, maybe your favorite photos. Our colleague Andrew tried an AuraFrame for himself. So setup was super simple. In my case, we were celebrating my grandmother's birthday and she's very fortunate. She's got 10 grandkids and so we wanted to

surprise her with the AuraFrame and because she's a little bit older, it was just easier for us to source all the images together and have them uploaded to the frame itself. And because we're all connected over text message, it was just so easy to send a link to everybody. You can save on the perfect gift by visiting AuraFrames.com to get $35 off Aura's best-selling Carvermat frames with promo code EXPLAINED at checkout. That's A-U-R-A-Frames.com, promo code EXPLAINED. This deal is exclusive to listeners and available just in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions do apply. So, Nicole, the Biden administration clearly wants to take a completely different approach than the Trump administration. So what are the longer term changes that the Biden administration is trying to implement to address kids crossing the border right now?

I would look at this in terms of four prongs. First of all, Biden has effectively ended the migrant protection protocols such that no one knew will be enrolled in the program. And he's also begun processing tens of thousands of people who were kept in Mexico awaiting their chance to have a day in court and make their case for asylum in the U.S. under Trump. Some of them have been allowed to come into the U.S. and he's also hoping to identify people whose cases were closed or who decided to leave Mexico in the months while the program was still under effect. And that could involve an additional tens of thousands of cases of people who have already been returned to their home countries or are still waiting for a chance to get asylum under MPP. The Migrant Protection Protocols Program, or MPP, will now allow those who have pending cases in the U.S. to stay in the country. Secondly, he's hoping to introduce reforms to the asylum system,

including a regulation that would speed up processing of asylum applications at the border, such that the process would take months rather than years. But at this moment, we're not exactly clear on what the specifics of that would be. And I think there's a lot of questions as to whether speeding up people's cases might infringe on their due process rights in some capacity. I spent close to 100 hours with the leaders of those three countries and the UN making sure that what we were going to do, for example, in one of the major cities down there, they said the crime rate is terrible. That's why people are leaving this particular city.

But we have no street lighting. And the government said, give us the money. I said, I'm not going to give you the money, but I'll tell you what. Show me what you need. I'll get contractors down there. We'll put in the streetlights for you because a lot of corruption down there. And guess what? Violence came down. Thirdly, he's looking to take a more regional approach to migration. And I think this is something that could take well beyond his presidency to actually implement. He's hoping to work with countries in Central America and Mexico,

expanding their capacity to help migrants apply for protections in their home countries before they have to make the journey north. Finally, he also will be expected to reverse Title 42. People crossing the border illegally are being returned just hours after being taken into custody. It's part of a plan to prevent the spread of coronavirus from undocumented immigrants. Officials say the rule known as Title 42 is reducing crowds in processing centers across the southwest border during the pandemic. It has basically allowed the U.S. to turn away virtually all asylum seekers since

March when Trump implemented it. It's a policy that Biden has opted to keep in place, even though the public health rationale around it isn't so clear now that community transmission in the U.S. is so high. And once most people are vaccinated here, that rationale may somewhat disappear. So he will be under intensifying pressure to get rid of that policy. But in the meantime, he has been using it as a means of turning people away and at least trying to avoid the perception of a border crisis. Okay. And these four things, these can all really happen without an act of Congress. Yeah, it mostly can happen without an act of Congress. I'd say that reforms to the asylum system are definitely sorely needed. And I think there is a limit on to what extent the administration can unilaterally reinvent the processes by which asylum seekers

are accepted into the U.S. But there are still things that Biden can do unilaterally through the regulatory process or through executive action there. are still things that Biden can do unilaterally through the regulatory process or through executive action there. And we know that Biden also introduced a comprehensive immigration reform package last week, and that would require an act of Congress, but it's probably not going to make it past Republicans in the Senate. So are there pieces of immigration legislation that actually do have a chance of getting through Congress? Yeah, so as you said, the comprehensive immigration reform package at this point is effectively dead and water. Senator Durbin, who has been at the forefront of immigration issues in Congress for a long time, recently said that he doesn't see Republicans engaging in a conversation about creating a path to citizenship for the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S., especially now that there's sort

of this political rhetoric around the border. But there are definitely pieces of legislation that could be passed. I think people are still not hopeful for their prospects in the Senate, but the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would offer legal status to farm workers who are undocumented in the U.S., was brokered on a bipartisan basis in the House. So I do think that there is some likelihood that that could gain some traction in the Senate. Normally, Republicans are quite reluctant to back any kind of legalization effort, but the lawmakers who have engaged on the farm worker bill represent districts where agriculture is a major industry, so we might see more support from Republicans on that. The bill was praised by

the National Milk Producers Federation as well as the National Pork Producers Council, adding the U.S. pork industry is dependent on foreign-born workers. The Dream and Promise Act is basically a more expansive version of the original Dream Act, which would offer legal status to some 800,000 or more DACA recipients, as well as other people who came to the U.S. when they were children as undocumented immigrants. And it would also offer protection to TPS recipients, temporary protected status recipients, who are offered temporary protection from deportation because they come from countries that have experienced things like civil conflict or natural disasters that have made it untenable for them to remain there. So those are two issues that might garner some support from Republicans. Dreamers in particular

are a very sympathetic population, and Republicans have voiced support for giving them legal protection in the past. But there is a question as to whether they're going to want Democrats to pair that with some sort of border security provisions, especially in light of the current situation at the border. So is this how immigration legislation will work now? You can't get Republicans in Congress to buy in unless there's some border enforcement paired with it and the White House will just take unilateral regulatory steps. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't always that way. The last piece of comprehensive immigration reform legislation that we had was in 1986. So it is long overdue. And

there are many problems that you can't really fix without fixing other parts of the immigration system. So I think many Democrats would prefer a comprehensive approach to some of these issues. But as of now, I just don't think that there's the political will to do that. And it seems that there could be a stepping stone to broader reform with these more piecemeal bills tackling only certain issues that might be politically sympathetic among Republicans. But as of now, it seems like comprehensive immigration reform is really dead on the water. So what does all this mean for those migrant children who are crossing the border right now? Migrant children are going to be really reliant on what the Biden administration does to implement

a more humane system by which they can be processed at the border. But given the fact that legislation for immigration reform seems out of reach at this point, their hopes of longer-term protections might be dashed. Their future, at this point at least, is just as uncertain as it was four years ago. Nicole Nerea is Vox's immigration reporter. You can read her ongoing coverage of children crossing the border at Vox.com. I'm Halima Shah. It's Today Explained. A few weeks ago, Sean hosted a show about anti-Asian racism.

In light of the conversations around yesterday's shooting in Georgia, it's an episode that's well worth your time. Just go to our episode from March 5th. It's called The Surge of Anti-Asian Violence. And stay tuned for more coverage.