32 United States TheEconomistNovember13th 2021
the border it becomes harder to manage
them in a consistent way.
Until recently it was overwhelmingly
Mexicans and people from the Northern
Triangle—El Salvador, Guatemala and
Honduras—who showed up at America’s
southern border. But in March arrivals
from elsewhere began to spike (see chart).
Brazilians, Ecuadoreans, Cubans, Haitians,
Nicaraguans and Venezuelans are arriving
in large numbers. In the 2021 fiscal year
47,000 Haitians arrived at the southern
border, 23 times more than in 2019.
“The biggest story of 2021 is not the
numbers but the diversity of origins of
people,” says Andrew Selee, president of
Migration Policy Institute, a thinktank.
Word has spread widely that people should
try their luck. Some 4,000 Russians were
encountered at the southern border by cbp
this fiscal year, compared with 21 in 2019.
The variety of nationalities makes the
border even harder to manage, says Mr Se
lee. America can return people to Mexico
swiftly, but it is more complicated to re
turn Haitians, Cubans and Venezuelans. In
addition, around 28% of those encoun
tered by cbpin fiscal 2021 were family un
its. As more families with children arrive,
operations on the border are getting harder
to manage, at a time when tolerance for
long holding periods and detention space
are in short supply. Unaccompanied chil
dren are universally being allowed into
America, so some parents are making the
difficult decision to send them ahead
alone, stretching the ability of American
facilities to process them.
Mr Biden’s administration is therefore
under renewed pressure to show it can
control immigration. Yet like the adminis
tration he served in as vicepresident, he
also faces pressure from immigration ad
vocates, who question how different Mr Bi
den’s policies are from Mr Trump’s. The Bi
den administration has continued to rely
on a publichealth rule called “Title 42”,
which was first adopted by Mr Trump in
March 2020. This enables America to
quickly expel most migrants—even those
trying to seek asylum—to Mexico or their
home countries on publichealth grounds.
They are not formally processed or charged
for illegal entry, which makes the process
much faster. It also explains why border
crossers are making repeated attempts if
they are apprehended the first time.
Immigrant advocates recently staged a
walkout during their virtual meeting with
White House officials on border policy,
due to their frustration with the continued
use of Title 42 and the reimposition of the
“Migrant Protection Protocols” (mpp) pro
gramme, says Gia Del Pino of the Kino Bor
der Initiative, a nonprofit. Mr Biden tried
to end mpp, which was designed by Mr
Trump as a deterrent and keeps asylum
seekers in squalid refugee camps in Mexico while their asylum claims are pro
cessed. However, a court order recently re
quired it to be reinstated. “There is very lit
tle practical difference between Trump and
Biden at the border,” says Lee Gelernt of the
American Civil Liberties Union, which is
suing the Biden administration to end Title
42 for asylumseeking families.
Lifting Title 42 would make it harder to
deport people who cross the border illegal
ly. But it is hard to justify keeping it on pub
lichealth grounds. On November 8th
America reopened its borders to foreign,
vaccinated travellers. “Someone can come
to the border and say, ‘I’m here, I’m Mexi
can, I’m vaccinated, and I’m here to go
shopping at Walmart’ and they’ll be able to
come in,” says Aaron ReichlinMelnick of
the American Immigration Council, a
thinktank. “But someone can show up and
say ‘Hi, I’m Mexican, I’m vaccinated, and I
am here to claim asylum because I could be
assassinated in the next 24 hours,’ and
they’ll be turned away.” This different
treatment is “nonsensical”, he says.
Migrants are experiencing widely dif
fering treatment depending on where they
come from, who they are and where theytrytocrosstheborder.InJanuarythisyear
88%ofborderapprehensionsresultedin
expulsions,2%ina releaseintoAmerica
and5%indetention.InAugust49%result
edinexpulsions,22%inreleaseand20%
indetention.Themainfactorinthede
clineintheshareofexpulsionsistheMex
ican government’s decisions about who
theywilltakeback,saysMrReichlinMel
nickoftheImmigrationCouncil.
Forexample,Mexicosaiditwouldnot
acceptEcuadoreanswhowereexpelledun
derTitle42,butsingleEcuadoreanswho
passintotheElPasosectorare,infact,be
ingsenttoMexico,whichseemstobethe
resultofdecisionsbylocalofficialsinthe
MexicanstateofChihuahua,saysMrRei
chlinMelnick.Tamaulipas,anotherMexi
canstate,decidednottotakebackfamilies
with children under the age of seven,
which has resulted in America releasing
them into the United States. As a result,
more migrants go to South Texas near Ta
maulipas, anticipating easier entry.
In fiscal 2021 284,000 people were re
leased from Border Patrol custody into
America according to Henry Cuellar, a
Democratic congressman who represents
southwest Texas. He thinks Mr Biden is
surrounding himself with the “wrong ad
visers”. “The administration is paying too
much attention to the immigration activ
ists, and I don’t think they’re paying
enough attention to the border communi
ties and Border Patrol folks, who are on the
frontlines of all this,” Mr Cuellar says.
People working on the American side of
the border, from nonprofit employees to
Border Patrol agents, struggle to explain
why some people are being allowed in
while others are sent away. “I wish I could
say I see 100% consistency, but we do not,”
says Teresa Cavendish of Casa Alitas, a
nonprofit organisation that runs migrant
shelters. “It could be a factor of volume or
training, or just something that happened
that day that made allowances for some
one to pass who would have otherwise not
had entry. The outcome for asylumseek
ers crossing the border can vary wildly and
depends more on their nationality and
family status than on any policies or laws
inside of the United States,” she adds.
Things are getting bad when Mr Biden,
the most devout Catholic president the
country has ever had, is being criticised by
nuns. “The lack of clarity about what the
United States is doing gives people the
wrong message,” says Sister Norma Pimen
tel, who runs Catholic Charities of the Rio
Grande Valley. “The more the usputs effort
into clarifying what the immigration pro
cess is, it will help avoid great masses of
people coming thinking they have a
chance to enter when they don’t.” She adds
that if theBidenadministration has fig
ured out itsborder policy, “they haven’t
voiced it yet”.nThe unusual suspects
United States, migrant apprehensions
at the south-western border, ’
Excludes Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and HondurasSource:USCustomsandBorderProtection806040200
ODN JFMAMJJAS20202021201Fiscal years ending SeptemberFreedom’s bank