A conversation about the border crisis
đź’¬ Did you see that Texas and 15 other states are picking a fight with the US Government over immigration policy?
🗨 Yeah I did. I don’t blame them. The federal government has totally dropped the ball on the immigration issue.
đź’¬ Oh I completely agree. The US immigration system is a giant mess. A Gordian knot tightened over decades of inaction and dumb action.
đź—¨ Well cool, I guess we agree. Onward Texas in your righteous battle vs. President Biden!
💬 We agree that it’s a mess, but I’m not sure I agree that we can place all the blame on the current administration, can we?
🗨 I mean, the border isn’t secure, and President Biden is, well, president. Who else is to blame?
💬 I guess I’m not sold that the border “isn’t secure.” Tell me more about what you mean.
đź—¨ Sure, okay. Well, illegal immigration has spiked in the past few years. Check out this chart, for example, which shows a pretty sudden jump right about when Biden enters office:
💬 So, if I’m reading this chart correctly, it’s showing “apprehensions and expulsions,” or as they’re currently called, “encounters.” In other words, this is how many times the US border patrol caught people trying to cross the US/Mexico border without some form of pre-approval like a visa.
🗨 Look at those spikes in 2021 and 2022! That’s what I’m talking about. The border isn’t secure.
💬 But hold on here. The spike shows the number of times people were caught. So can we really say the border isn’t secure? Based on the number of times the border patrol has successfully apprehended people at the border, couldn’t we say the border is more secure than ever? In fact, immigration officials estimate that more undocumented immigrants evaded capture in 2000 than in 2021.
đź—¨ More secure than ever? No! People are crossing the border at higher numbers than ever!
💬 Right, but they’re being caught as soon as they cross it. Why does that not count as securing the border?
🗨 I guess I’d rather that people can’t cross the border to begin with.
💬 Yeah, I see what you’re saying. No form of border security is going to be perfect, though. People dig tunnels under walls. Rope ladders are really easy to make. So we’re never going to have an impenetrable border. Physical barriers might help in the short term, though at best they slow people down rather than stopping them permanently.
🗨 Okay, I guess I see what you’re saying. As a supporter of law enforcement, I guess I do feel weird using “encounters” to prove that the border isn’t secure, because those numbers show that the law enforcement officers at the border are actually doing their job well and apprehending people.
💬 But I can tell you’re still thinking the border isn’t secure?
🗨 Yeah, I would still say the border isn’t secure. When the border patrol capture people, they often just let them go in the US while they wait for their asylum claims to be heard in court. So while they are technically caught, they are then just let go to go wherever they want, and sometimes law enforcement can’t even find them again when their court date comes.
💬 Yeah, I can see what you’re saying. So in that sense, it’s not so much that we’re not doing a good enough job physically securing the border, it’s that we’re letting too many people stay after we’ve caught them?
🗨 Yes, exactly. This is why Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), aka his “Remain In Mexico” policy, was so effective. He made people wait on their asylum status in Mexico rather than just letting them go in America and hope they show up for their court date.
💬 Oh okay, yeah. I’ve heard of that. Here’s the timeline of that, as I understand it:
- 2019 — Trump enacts the Remain in Mexico policy, which is broadly decried as inhumane for a host of reasons.
- 2020 —as part of a response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, President Trump enforces something called Title 42, which essentially allows his administration to blanket deny all asylum claims.
- 2021 — On day one of his presidency, President Biden declares an end to the Remain in Mexico policy. This declaration is immediately challenged in court, suspending the actual “end” of the policy. The policy remains in effect as the challenges make their way through the courts in 2021 and 2022.
- 2022 — The Remain in Mexico policy finally ends in December, 2022.
- 2023 —May 2023, Title 42 expires and the Biden administration enacts something called the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways (CLP) rule, which forces people seeking asylum to do so from Mexico. There are a few exceptions for medical emergencies or extreme safety threats, but for the most part, this is very similar to the Remain in Mexico policy. This rule was immediately challenged in court. Those challenges haven’t made their way through the legal system yet, but the CLP rule is still in effect as of January 2024.
🗨 So what’s the point of that super boring timeline?
💬 Ha yeah, that’s fair. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. From what I can see, the policy of making people apply for asylum from Mexico has been the governing policy pretty much since 2019. There was a brief time in 2021 and at the beginning of 2023 where it wasn’t, but for the most part, that’s been in effect since 2019. Here’s the best source I’ve found for tracing that whole timeline.
🗨 So are you saying there really aren’t a whole lot of people crossing the southern border, appealing for asylum, and then disappearing into the US?
💬 Yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. First off, the CLP policy I described earlier, currently in force by the Biden administration, makes most asylum seekers wait in Mexico. Secondly, DHS data show that the vast majority of people who do end up waiting in the US for asylum hearings attend all of their court hearings. So they’re not just skipping town and disappearing.
Is there some other aspect of this I’m not considering that makes you still think the border isn’t secure?
🗨 Let me just make sure I understand. You’re saying that when people without prior approval for immigration into the US arrive at the southern border, they are either detained, expelled, or allowed to go free in the US to await trial for asylum. During Trump’s administration, a combination of COVID policy and his MPP lowered that last group to pretty much zero, and then between MPP and Biden’s new CLP policy, that number has remained close to zero as well, though definitely more since Biden’s policy has a exceptions for things like health emergencies.
💬 As far as I can tell, yes, that’s the case. Now, one thing that’s important to note is that people are not always detained, expelled, or allowed to go free (aka they’re not “processed”) right off the bat. Our immigration system hasn’t gotten the funding it needs from Congress to be able to quickly process people. So we do have migrants stuck waiting in border cities. These are the people that Republican governors have bussed to “blue” cities across the country.
🗨 Aha! So would you agree that’s a problem?
💬 Absolutely it’s a problem. And it is partly Biden’s fault, though it’s mostly Congress’s fault. They are the ones in charge of funding for things like this, and while they’ve tried multiple times over the past 20 years, they haven’t been able to actually pass anything meaningful on immigration.
But I wouldn’t say this is an issue of border security. It’s not like people are sneaking into the US and running around causing problems. For the most part, people are crossing the border and turning themselves in to law enforcement for processing.
🗨 Okay, I think I accept that. It is definitely a humanitarian problem — all those people huddled on the streets waiting to be processed — and a funding problem, but not necessarily a “lack of security” problem.
💬 That seems to be what the data show, yes. And these problems don’t seem close to being solved: we know former President Trump is actively pressuring his party’s majority in Congress to do nothing to address the border issues we’ve discussed.
đź—¨ Wait really?
💬 Yeah—Trump benefits when people believe the unfounded myths that the border is “open” and immigrants are just flooding in with drugs and weapons.
🗨 People like the idea of draconian policies when they feel their safety or livelihood are in danger. It’s understandable.
💬 I agree. That’s why these false fearmongering negative stereotypes about immigrants are so harmful. In reality, immigrants who settle in the US are law-abiding residents who benefit the communities they join in so many ways.
🗨 Well, we can both agree that fearmongering is bad. I’m glad we had this discussion, thank you.
đź’¬ Always a pleasure. Until next time.
