The new border crisis

Was the law of the land on the US Mexico border? Was the pandemic era? Started during the Trump administration in March twenty twenty. Tonight again at midnight we will execute the CDC order by immediately returning individuals arriving without documentation to Canada, Mexico. Title Forty Two was Device Immigration advocates. To circumvent US asylum policies loved it. rule. It was never gonna last forever. and it expired on Thursday. So what now? Coming up on today explained.

Support for the show today comes from The Guardian! If you listen to our show, my guess is that you value independent voices and perspectives on the news. You want real reporting on real stories, and you don't want to wonder if the news you're getting is being skewed by an unseen hand. The Guardian says they're fiercely independent too.

They aspire to report the whole picture, and their coverage goes beyond the news. They have new perspectives on culture, wellness, sports, and more. For US and World News Without Compromise or Paywall Read, watch and listen today at theguardian.com. Hej, det är jag från riksbyggen här. Ursäkta att jag avbryter mitt i din egen tid med podd och allt. Jag ville bara säga att vi har massor av bostäder som passar alla olika sätt att leva.

Det betyder att du kan få ditt drömboende precis som du vill ha det. Men jag gissar att det du helst vill just nu är att fortsätta lyssna på din podd. Sen kan du gå in. That's it. Estar escuchando a Hoy Explicado. Today Explained. Lauren Viagran has been reporting on the US-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 Forty Two 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 VII. 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 eight 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. uh 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.

Through Obama And then skyrocketed again under Trump. we ended up with family separation. And that was something that we know the American 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 Mallorcas of Homeland Security. Гассе іфані арвис арсом борде африна.

They will be presumed ineligible for asylum and subject to steeper consequences for unlawful entry, including a minimum five-year ban on re-entry 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 Forty Two expiring last week? Yeah, I mean it was thousands. I can tell you that here in El Paso at one point we had thirty three hundred 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

Couldn't access the CBP1 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 fifteen hundred miles away.

And they basically got impatient and they crossed illegally, you know, through holes in the border wall, over the border wall, and 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 in 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 know, Ciudad Juarez and other Mexican border cities are not easy places for migrants. I love Ciudad Juarez, you know, I crossed the border. But one thing is to be a local or a resident or a US 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, um, 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 arrived, 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 US. 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 US 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 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, Yaskari, and their four year old son Jason from Venezuela. They tell us they've been here for eight days. Back 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 is a long standing policy of not arresting or apprehending people. in the close vicinity of of sanctuaries like a church or a school, for example. Can I ask you how this current crisis And

sorta chaotic situation compares to the ones you've seen in your two decades of reporting? Oh my god, that's a big question, Sean. Um what what's changed so much is the rhetoric in Washington. Where I think twenty 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 bait. And I 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 nineteen ninety six, and that was a fairly small reform. The real big one goes back to nineteen eighty six.

you know, when I was a kid. So you know, when we didn't have internet. So it's uh I do think that that the level of humanitarian crisis is something that we didn't see twenty years ago because it was mostly adult males trying to cross the border seeking work.

And since twenty fourteen when we first started seeing unaccompanied children come to the border, and then twenty sixteen and twenty eighteen, 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 gonna come down to the details. How does you know 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 gonna take a few days or weeks to shake out. More with Lauren when we're back on today's.

for today's explain comes from growth therapy. Every chapter of life brings new challenges, and growth therapy can connect you with someone who's equipped to help you Them. Whether it's your first time in therapy or your fiftieth, Gro says that they make it easier to find someone. From a network of thousands of independent licensed therapists across the country. You can search by what matters. Specialty, identity, or availability.

As little as two days. You can cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Grow says that there are no subscriptions. No long term commitments, and you just pay per se. Whatever challenges you're facing, growth therapy can. Grow accepts over a hundred Sessions average about twenty one dollars with insurance, and some pay as little as zero dollars, depending on their plan. You can go to Growth. Yeah. Growth Air. Availability and coverage. Vary by state and insurance.

Support for today's plain comes from Vanguard. We've stepped into a new year, says Vanguard, and Vanguard says it's a perfect time for all the advisors listening to think about how to set your clients up for success. One way to do that is Is to level up your fixed income strategy, but bonds can be tricky. The market is huge, rates shift, and risks hide in plain sight. That's why having a partner with Scale and

Expertise matters, and Vanguard says they bring both. According to Vanguard, Vanguard bonds are institutional quality. Institutional quality is not a tagline, it's commitment to your clients. It means top-grade products across the board with a lineup including over 80 bond funds that Vanguard says are actively managed by a 200-person global squad of sector specialists, analysts, and traders. Vanguard says Vanguard takes a steady approach to investing rather than going all in on risky bets.

They focus on reliability and consistency. It's not always flashy, but it sets the standard For what dependable investing should look like. So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out, you can go see the record for yourself at vanguard.com/slash audio. That's vanguard.com/slash audio. All investing is subject. To risk Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor.

Lauren, I think you've given us a vivid impression of what this crisis looks like at the US-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.

Well, let's talk about New York City for a moment here because you brought it up. New York City has these very distinct right to shelter laws. If you're a migrant there who needs shelter, you're gonna 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 four fifteen in the morning. 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. 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 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 two million Venezuelans. Peru took in I think something like one point five 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 gonna look like. Of course, you know, we've seen border cities getting a lot of extra attention in light of the end of Title Forty Two. How are cities far from the border, be it New York, Chicago, Denver feeling about the end of Title forty two. Is it something that's gonna affect them as well?

I don't think cities in the interior need to be worried about the end of Title Forty Two in part because, you know, the influx that we saw in the lead up to the end of Title Forty Two 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's immigration process and what that ought to look like. And, you know, listeners, voters, Americans, those of us who care 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 thirty 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 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 DC about what it's like at the border, or did it just Spread the crisis out and it 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 presidents.

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 uh I'm not gonna answer that, you know, that's up to people's politics, I guess. But I'll answer. It seems like no. I I think that a lot of uh certainly immigrant advocates thought that that was um

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 like 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 forty two, 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 gonna 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 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 two thousand four hundred border patrol agents patrolling an area that two hundred sixty four 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 thirty-foot border wall, ending up paralyzed, dying, or losing a limb, or breaking hips and 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.

illegal pathway into the country. You know, will it work? Will it bring people to that port infrastructure instead of desert, crossing over a thirty foot wall, you know, I think we have to we have to give it a chance, right? We have What's gonna happen? Lauren Viagran is an El Paso based reporter with the El Paso Times. The USA Today network, find her work at El Paso Time. dot com Victoria Chamberlain produced our show.

She had help from Matthew Collette, Laura Bullard, Amanda Lwellen, and Patrick Boyd. Explained.