Ending Title 42, and making asylum even easier to obtain, will create an unprecedented border crisis this summer.
Ending Title 42, and making asylum even easier to obtain, will create an unprecedented border crisis this summer.
U .S. Border Patrol encountered a record 239,000 migrants at our nation’s southern border in May. That surpassed previous highs set in March and April. More than four in ten were deported under Title 42, a Trump-era measure that enables federal law enforcement to quickly eject illegal border crossers.
Rather than address this surge, President Biden is hamstringing his own officers — and courting even more illegal crossers — by trying to repeal Title 42.
Last month, a federal judge used a procedural technicality to temporarily block the Biden administration’s attempt to repeal Title 42. But if the administration wants to end Title 42, there’s little doubt it will find a way. That would make an already awful situation at the border even worse.
Border Patrol currently apprehends about 7,800 migrants per day. If Title 42 is gone, the administration predicts that apprehensions may more than double, to 18,000 per day. That would overwhelm law enforcement, shelters, and social services.
This impending disaster — which is completely preventable — stems from the ongoing sabotage of our asylum system.
Throughout the 20th century and into the early years of the 21st, people from around the world sought to illegally immigrate to America. For most of that period, they typically sought to evade capture, since they’d quickly be deported if caught by Border Patrol agents.
But starting in the Obama administration, immigrants found a loophole. The administration began accepting immigrants’ asylum petitions if they claimed a “credible fear” of gang or sexual violence in their home countries. Previously, asylum was mostly restricted to victims of organized persecution, such as religious minorities or political dissidents.
Suddenly, immigrants — especially from the impoverished Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador — realized they could turn themselves in to law enforcement and petition for asylum based on a purported fear of gang violence. Federal officials would give these petitioners temporary work permits and court dates for asylum hearings.
Lured by this de facto legal status, droves of immigrants began pouring over the border. Most were fleeing poverty, not violence.
Courts ultimately denied the majority of petitioners’ asylum claims after examining the facts of their cases. Of the roughly 20,000 individuals from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador who passed an initial “credible fear” screening in fiscal 2018, only 9 percent were granted asylum by an immigration judge. A broader analysis shows only 20.51 percent of all asylum claims were granted in the same period.
But so many people started petitioning for asylum that the courts backed up. That enabled illegal immigrants to stay and work in the United States for years. Annual asylum petitions soared from fewer than 33,000 in fiscal 2010 to 195,000 in fiscal 2020.
The Trump administration tried to put a stop to this increasingly brazen fraud through two highly successful measures.
The “Remain in Mexico” policy, implemented in January 2019, required asylum petitioners to wait south of the border for their court dates — and thus eliminated the allure of work permits that had attracted most migrant workers.
Title 42, implemented at the height of the Covid-19 lockdowns in spring 2020, allowed law enforcement to immediately repatriate border-crossers. To slow the spread of the coronavirus, the government had largely cut off tourism and legal migration. It’d have been folly to wave people across the border, unvetted and untested.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration ended the Remain in Mexico policy. And it’s now, of course, trying to end Title 42. In late May, the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice announced they’d allow U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers, not immigration judges, to adjudicate asylum claims.
The lower level of scrutiny will result in far more grants of asylum — and thus make asylum fraud an even more viable, attractive option for immigrants.
Some liberal critics argue that Title 42 actually worsens the border surge, as asylum-seekers deported to Mexico simply attempt more illegal crossings in the hopes of evading law enforcement. But this misses an obvious truth. Biden’s inconsistent enforcement of Title 42 incentivizes repeat illegal crossings. If the law were consistently enforced, immigrants would be less likely to try their luck.
Destroying the integrity of the asylum system — which is supposed to be reserved for the truly persecuted, not the merely impoverished — has deadly consequences. Hundreds of people die every year on the dangerous journey north. This week alone, at least 50 immigrants died in a boiling-hot trailer as smugglers tried to spirit them through San Antonio.
Ending Title 42, and making asylum even easier to obtain, will create an unprecedented border crisis this summer. Administration officials acknowledge this reality. Yet they seem to have no plan to stop it.