Why thousands of migrants are allowed into US while Title 42 is in place
While many Republicans cheered a decision last week by a federal judge to keep Title 42 in place, limiting how many immigrants are allowed to enter the US to seek asylum, others warn the Biden administration can and is already scheming to get around the order and allow more migrants into the country.
“They can make carve-outs for certain countries, and then it doesn’t matter if Title 42 is in place or not,” Brandon Judd, the president of the National Border Patrol Council, told The Post.
Currently, between 60% and 65% of immigrants crossing the US-Mexico frontier are automatically thrown out under Title 42 without being able to ask for asylum. The federal health policy was put in place by former President Donald Trump at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, just shy of 2 million immigrants have been kept out of the country over health concerns.
The other 35% to 40% who are allowed in can begin the process of asking for asylum. The biggest factor is the immigrant’s country of origin.
In El Paso, Texas, shelters are filled with border-crossers whose nationalities have given them the green light to enter, according to Ruben Garcia, director of a network of shelters in the city.
“Most of the nationalities that we are seeing are individuals and families from Cuba, from Haiti, from Venezuela, from Nicaragua, from Turkey, some from Russia … and they’re not being expelled,” he said.
Garcia added that the asylum process is further complicated by a patchwork of exemptions for different groups.
“If you’re a Haitian family, there’s a very good possibility you will not get expelled,” he said. “If you are a Haitian single adult, there’s a very high possibility that you will get expelled– that after you are detained, you are sent to Laredo, Texas and flown back to Haiti.
“The number of these nationalities has been increasing and this has placed a burden on the capacity, the holding capacity of the Border Patrol.”
“There’s no standing order” detailing who is eligible for asylum, said Judd. “People start coming in from the field and then decisions are made by (Border Patrol) supervisors and ICE. But what we do know is people from Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Nicaragua– they’re not going to be expelled.”
Asylum-seekers will often enter the country illegally, paying smugglers to get them across the border, according to a Border Patrol agent who spoke to The Post on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.
Once in the US, the agent added, they usually walk up to a law enforcement officer and ask for asylum.
“They’re not running from us,” the agent explained. “They’re looking for us to turn themselves in. Then they tell us they want asylum and we start asking asking them questions. The first question is, ‘Where are you from?'”
Immigrants from the countries that make up the so-called Northern Triangle — Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras — are mostly not eligible for asylum and are mostly turned away under Title 42, said Judd. So are immigrants from Mexico, which has been designated by the US as a safe third country for asylum-seekers to wait for their cases to be heard.
According to Judd, it’s harder for those immigrants to establish they have a credible fear of torture or murder.
“They know that they need to claim a fear,” he said. “They are coached on that [by smugglers].”
Immigrants who meet the initial threshold to seek asylum at the border will then be granted permission to stay in the US until their cases can be heard by a judge. It’s a process that often takes 2 to 3 years. About 63% of those who asked for asylum were denied in 2021, according to information compiled by Syracuse University.
“There are reasons [for denials],” said Garcia, whose shelters continue to welcome people into the US, “and I’m sure it’s political, but it is what it is.”
