Biden expands Title 42 migrant expulsions to more countries

US to rely on Title 42 to remove migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who cross illegally, while opening a new legal path to entry.

Joe Biden, with Vice-President Kamala Harris, announces his two-track border policy at the White House on Thursday. Picture: AFP

US President Joe Biden announced his administration’s broadest effort yet to deter migrants seeking asylum at the southern border, expanding its use of several Trump-era border control measures the president had previously decried.

Beginning on Thursday, the administration will use a pandemic-era border measure known as Title 42 to rapidly expel migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, the countries that have posed the greatest challenge to the administration in the past year.

The administration is taking the step even as the Supreme Court prepares to hear oral arguments in the case and the administration has argued that the measure is no longer justified on public-health grounds and must end.

In the coming weeks, the administration also plans to adopt an updated version of a different Trump-era policy known as the transit ban, which would make migrants at the border ineligible for asylum if they didn’t first ask for protection in another country on their way, such as Mexico, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a news conference.

The coordinated policy announcements show the administration’s scramble in the face of about 2.2 million illegal border crossings last year, as it turns to tools other Democrats and immigration advocates have called illegal and inhumane, and which Mr Biden himself campaigned against during the 2020 election.

But Mr Biden’s policy differs from former president Donald Trump’s in one key respect: Whereas Mr Trump’s administration only sought to deter illegal border crossings, Mr Biden’s administration is attempting to create new legal pathways that migrants can take advantage of instead.

“It really has no resemblance to the prior iteration of the transit ban that the Trump administration employed,” Mr Mayorkas said. “We are expanding the lawful pathways by which people can seek humanitarian relief as I’ve outlined today.”

The administration announced a new program for up to 30,000 migrants from the four countries to enter the US legally per month. That program will require migrants hoping to seek asylum in the US to be paired with financial sponsors and would give applicants two years of humanitarian protections, under which they can work legally and apply for asylum.

It will also, for the first time in three years, reopen legal ports of entry at the southern border to asylum-seekers, who will be required to make appointments in advance on a mobile app called CBP One to claim asylum at a legal border crossing.

Mr Biden acknowledged the legal uncertainty around the new measures in a speech Thursday, saying that he still supported ending Title 42 but that his administration would continue to use the tools available to it in the meantime.

“These actions alone that I’m going to announce today aren’t going to fix our entire immigration system, but they can help us a good deal in better managing what is a difficult challenge,” Mr Biden said.

The president also laid out his message to asylum-seekers from those four countries: “Do not just show up at the border. Stay where you are and apply legally from there.”

The announcements came days before Mr. Biden heads to Mexico City to meet Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in Mexico City for the North American Leaders’ Summit.

Mr Biden is also expected to make a visit to El Paso, Texas, on Sunday to address border enforcement and meet with local officials, marking his first trip to the southern border as president. Republicans have been calling on Mr Biden to travel to the region for two years, saying he wasn’t focused enough on the issue.

Republicans and advocates who favour restricting immigration, meanwhile, are likely to oppose the policy because it represents an expansion of an immigration power known as humanitarian parole, which allows the government to let in people without visas, circumventing existing visa limits.

Senator John Cornyn (Republican Texas) said on Thursday that Mr Biden needed to make his trip to the border a meaningful one that “seeks tough solutions to the unmitigated disaster his policies have created.”

Mr Biden criticised some Republicans for what he described as inflammatory rhetoric on immigration and called for bipartisan legislation to tackle the issue.

“If the most extreme Republicans continue to demagogue this issue, and reject solutions, I’m left with only one choice: To act on my own, do as much as I can on my own,” he said.

Immigration advocates and some Democrats decried the new policy, saying it shirks the nation’s asylum obligations for all but a sliver of preselected migrants. Senator Robert Menendez (Democrat, New Jersey) complained that instead of working with congress to fix the issue, “the administration is circumventing immigration law which will exacerbate chaos and confusion at the Southern border.”

Over the past year, migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have made up a majority of those allowed to remain in the U.S. to seek asylum. They have posed a particular challenge for the US government because the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela have largely refused to take back their own citizens, as has Mexico until now.

The three countries — Latin America’s three dictatorships — have all seen their citizens leaving in droves amid worsening political oppression and dire economic conditions. Though the US can legally deport people to Haiti, the lack of a functioning government in the Caribbean nation, along with rampant gang violence, a fuel shortage and a cholera outbreak have made the administration hesitant to deport large numbers of Haitians.

The new legal program will build on a policy, announced last October, where some Venezuelan migrants could apply to enter the US legally, provided they had a financial sponsor, and Venezuelans caught at the border were rapidly expelled under Title 42. After the policy was instituted, illegal border crossings by Venezuelans fell to about 250 a day from about 1,100 right before, Mr Biden said.

It isn’t clear that the program will work on a large scale. Approximately 70,000 migrants from the four countries have crossed the border each month this fall, according to data from US Customs and Border Protection, meaning demand is likely to exceed the 30,000 monthly cap for legal entry.

In exchange for the expanded new legal program, Mexico has agreed to take up to 30,000 migrants from the four countries under Title 42. But if the number of migrants crossing illegally exceeds that monthly cap, they will be allowed to remain in the US to pursue asylum cases. As of Thursday, any migrants who cross the borders of the US, Mexico or Panama illegally will be ineligible for the humanitarian program.

Though the current carrot-for-stick approach relies on the continuation of Title 42, administration officials said they have a backup plan should the policy end. Under normal immigration law, migrants found not to have a valid asylum claim can be formally deported to Mexico if their home countries won’t take them back. That will likely become the primary enforcement measure should Title 42 expire.

The Wall Street Journal