Border Crisis? Maybe Not.
If you’ve looked at the news lately, you’ve probably seen references to a “border crisis.” A recent surge of migrants attempting to enter the U.S.’ southern border has generated a firestorm of media and political narratives, and Republicans are accusing the Biden administration of creating a giant mess with their new policies.
However, what’s actually going on is (surprise!) more complicated than the headlines imply. To gain a better understanding of the new migration surge and convoluted discussion around it, I spoke with journalist Gaby Del Valle, who writes the immigration newsletter BORDER/LINES with journalist Felipe De La Hoz. Here’s what she had to say. (This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)
Many people are wondering what this “border crisis” is about. Can you briefly explain it?
Sure. First, there’s a couple of things that explain the “surge” of migrants coming to the U.S. Biden said he would be more humane on immigration than Trump, and some people definitely took that message to heart. However, there are factors in countries in Central America – like the pandemic, job shortages, natural disasters, etc. – that are going to make people migrate regardless of who's president.
Also, the Biden administration has been very slowly rolling back the Migrant Protection Protocols [Also known as MPP – a policy that made Central American migrants wait in Mexico during their asylum process]. Instead, it is now slowly paroling people into the U.S. [meaning, some people are being admitted into the country via a temporary humanitarian authorization].
Generally, if you go back and look at past years, numbers [of people attempting to cross the border] start going up in the spring and summer, and then go down in the winter. If you look at the CBP [Office of Customs and Border Protection] statistics, that happens pretty much without fail most years. Obviously, last year was a little bit different because of the pandemic. But it's not to say that people aren't coming, people are coming … what is different is what's happening when they come.
OK, what’s happening when they arrive?
So, there has been an increase in the number of people being apprehended at the border. But there are a lot of factors behind it.
In March of last year, President Trump had the CDC issue an order using Title 42 of the U.S. code to shut down entry for unauthorized migrants.
Normally, if somebody tries to cross the border without authorization, they'll be apprehended by immigration officials and taken into CBP custody and then given a deportation case. And if you're seeking asylum, this is where you begin a lengthy legal process.
What's happening now instead, though, is that rather than processing people for deportation, people are being “expelled,” which means that the entire due process aspect is being thrown out the window in most cases. When you’re expelled, you’re automatically ejected from the U.S., without any of the asylum process of a deportation.
A federal judge issued a ruling saying that the government can't expel minors who are unaccompanied, but an appeals court later ruled that it could. But then the Biden administration said they wouldn’t: “OK, we're not going to expel minors or expel all families.”
So that means that in some sectors of the border, families are not allowed to ask for asylum. In others, families are still being expelled.
So while there are a few different ways that people are “being let in,” almost all single adults are still being expelled, and in most sectors of the border aside from the Rio Grande Valley and two other areas, families are being expelled.
They're not getting an opportunity to ask for asylum when they're expelled … instead [the Biden administration] is allowing some people to make asylum claims, which is very different from giving them asylum.
And at the same time, the administration is doing a media blitz, telling people, “Don't come, don't come, don't come, we're going to deport you.” And they’re establishing agreements with countries in Central America to have them mobilize their security forces to militarize their borders, to prevent people from even leaving.
How do these things connect?
Before Title 42, you could come and have an asylum claim. It could be processed. But Republicans are claiming right now that Joe Biden has somehow created this open borders frenzy, that at the same time somehow enables drug cartels and smugglers. Which doesn't make any sense, because if the borders were open, people wouldn't need to be smuggled in.
The reason that people are paying to be smuggled in is because you can't go to a port of entry and say, “Hello, I would like asylum,” and know that that is going to be honored. You could be allowed to come in and make an asylum claim, or you could be expelled. That, I think, is the key thing.
Biden's policies are enabling cartels and smugglers, but that's not because he has opened the border — it's because he's allowed the continuation of the shutdown of the border that started under Trump.
What do you think about how the media has been covering this? It seems that there’s no consensus other than “there’s a crisis, but it’s kind of complicated,” and it comes off to me as validating fears and concerns over the border.
For as much as people cared or claimed to care about immigration under Trump, it was still pretty niche, you know? Generally, immigration beat reporters are really good at explaining what's going on. The problem arises whenever this reaches the level of national interest. [When news stations have] a roundtable of, like, pundits about the border, or when you have generalists or people who cover politics on the Hill covering [immigration]. That's kind of when you start to lose the plot.
I think even if you're explaining why the crisis isn't a crisis — this is kind of just a problem with the way the news media functions in general — people lose interest very quickly. And people don't like it when things are complicated. So you have to find an accessible and quick way to explain what's happening. And if you try to put in too much context, it’s going to get cut.
I hate to blame things on social media and echo chambers because I feel like such an old person. But if you take somebody who's already anti-immigration and you tell them: There's all of these families at the border, they're paying people to smuggle them across, [and] Joe Biden is president now, they're gonna take that and say, “Joe Biden is enabling … [the situation].”
Even if all of those things are independently true, you can take the actual facts and craft any narrative out of it that you want. It's just so easy to confirm people's biases. It’s so easy.
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