It’s been more than a month since the Biden administration ended the Trump-era Title 42 public health order, and rather than a massive surge of migrants, the southern border has seen a reduction in crossings.
But privately, Biden officials worry that things could get bad again and soon.
“There was absolutely a feeling of, we can exhale now,” said a former Biden administration official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the mood among current administration officials. “But there’s also enough experience that nobody is going to roll out a band, or say it’s mission accomplished. It’s too fluid.”
For the White House, the southern border has long resembled something akin to political quicksand, creating major headaches for President Joe Biden. For a period of time, he deputized Vice President Kamala Harris to address the steadily increasing number of migrants coming to the country through Mexico. But the criticism has endured and has loomed over his reelection bid as 2024 GOP contenders latch onto the issue.
The administration’s hesitancy to declare victory now that border crossings have plummeted speaks to how vexing the issue remains for Biden and how politically scared his team has been by the matter. But it also reflects a belief inside the Biden administration that without a rewrite of immigration laws in Congress, its efforts to tackle the fundamental forces behind migration to the southern border won’t produce straight-line progress.
In anticipation of the end of Title 42, which allowed border agents to immediately expel millions of migrants on Covid prevention grounds for more than three years, the Biden administration took a carrot-stick approach, combining tough consequences for unlawful border crossers and an expansion of lawful pathways and processes for those coming to the country legally.
Administration officials credit those steps with the success they have witnessed over the past month. But they also believe it is a Band-aid approach, one that can’t fix a broken immigration system or guarantee the prevention of another surge. In the coming months, a number of legal challenges to its humanitarian parole program and asylum ban threaten to undo the very crux of the Biden administration’s post-Title 42 policy response.
And so, they’ve remained subdued, as they continue to implement additional patchwork fixes.
While the new asylum restrictions kicked in on May 12, the administration is still working to launch centers throughout Latin America to process migrants. On Monday, the U.S. and Guatemala began a six-month pilot phase in the Central American country, and officials on Sunday announced a trial run for centers in Colombia will start on June 19.
“They are swimming in numbers. They are swimming in capacity. The scale of the operation here has been significant,” said an immigration policy expert who asked to remain anonymous to discuss private conversations with administration officials. “When I say swimming, I don’t mean to suggest that they didn’t plan well. But they planned as much as they possibly could with the resources they have. They are trying every day to make sure all the systems they’re trying to set up are functional, but it is building train tracks while the train is moving out of the station.”
The administration did issue a press release last week, linking their new immigration policies to a 70 percent drop in illegal border crossings. Their plan is “working as intended,” the Department of Homeland Security said in the press release.
But more detailed explanations for the drop in the number of border crossings may be things that the White House finds politically uncomfortable to discuss. Immigration experts, former administration officials, and lawyers working with migrants on the ground, note that the Biden administration’s policies are more punitive than Title 42.
Its new asylum ban, which many in the immigration advocacy space have likened to the Trump-era transit ban, bars some migrants from applying for asylum if they cross the border illegally or fail to first apply for safe harbor while crossing through another country on the way to the U.S. Last month, the Biden administration also returned to expedited removal processes under a decades-old provision of the U.S. Code (Title 8), which allows the government to remove from the country anyone unable to establish a legal basis.
While expulsions under Title 42 often led to repeat crossings, removal under Title 8 bans those migrants from the country for five years. The administration is also deporting some non-Mexican migrants to southern Mexico, enhancing the deterrent effect.
This is likely why encounters between ports of entry skyrocketed to more than 10,000 in the days leading up to May 11, said Dylan Corbett, founding executive director of the nonprofit Hope Border Institute. Migrants were trying one last time before punishments grew harsher.
From May 12 to June 2, DHS said it sent 38,400 migrants, including single adults and families, back to more than 80 countries. Unscheduled encounters plummeted to roughly 3,700 a day.
Other policy experts point to the Biden administration’s aggressive messaging campaign in the lead-up to May 11 as a reason for the number of crossings going down after Title 42 ended. DHS secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, among other administration officials, hit the airwaves multiple times that week, warning that the borders aren’t open.
“It may be one of the few instances in which a government communications campaign that was very strongly emphasized to say ‘no, the border won’t be opened and we have these new rules in place that will make sure not only that if you don’t do it the right way, you can’t get asylum but it would prevent you from ever asking’ caused people to take notice,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, senior adviser for immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
On a technical level, experts also tie the declining numbers to the decision to shift the main gateway for American asylum to the CBP One app, a mobile application that allows migrants to request an appointment to appear at a port of entry. DHS said it would now admit 1,250 asylum seekers through the application at official border crossings each day.
But, as with the case with the other administration policies, the increased use of the CBP One app may not be a panacea. While advocates have praised the increase in appointments, Zoe Martens, advocacy coordinator at Kino Border Initiative, said many migrants still can’t get a sought-after slot. Some people have decided to stay put on the Mexican side of the border while they try to secure an appointment, but others have told Martens they’re not sure they can continue to wait in often dangerous conditions and will take their chances without one.
“It’s kind of this impossible decision,” Martens said.
Ultimately, administration officials concede that one month is too early to know the long-term impact of Title 42 ending. There is broad uncertainty as to whether these patterns will hold and how migrants will decide to proceed in the coming weeks and months as desperation levels continue to rise.
Legal challenges from both sides of the political spectrum are also lurking in the background.
If a court manages to strike down the asylum ban, the Biden administration would lose its strictest deterrence measure to date. And without its humanitarian parole program, which accepts 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Haiti a month, the administration would no longer be able to hold up its end of the deal with Mexico, which has agreed to continue accepting some migrants from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti if they don’t pursue available legal pathways.
The Biden administration, immigration policy experts warn, is simply in a holding pattern.
“We don’t know because we’re in such new territory. This administration is really developing and using new tools together that have never been used before,” the former Biden official said. “Are the measures big enough that they can diminish the urge to come between ports of entry and illegally? Nobody knows. And if they tell you they know, then they’re bullshitting.”
