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Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.
The Biden administration is seeking to end the use of Title 42. That's the Trump-era policy that allowed US Border Patrol to turn away hundreds of thousands of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers attempting to enter the US at the US-Mexico border, presumably to limit the spread of COVID.
Now, in November, 19 Republican-led states asked the US Court of Appeals for a delay in lifting Title 42, but that federal judge denied the request. Title 42 was set to end today, but on Monday, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts put a temporary hold on the lower court ruling, leaving Title 42 in place for now. Let's talk with Washington Post Immigration reporter Maria Sacchetti. Maria, welcome to The Takeaway.
Maria Sacchetti: Thanks for having me.
Melissa Harris-Perry: We've talked about Title 42 a fair bit on this show, but again, just help folks to understand what the policy is.
Maria Sacchetti: Title 42 is actually the public health law but has become shorthand for a Trump administration policy that effectively bars migrants from seeking asylum at the nation's land borders, primarily the southern border, which is where most people are attempting to cross.
Melissa Harris-Perry: I made the point that it was described as a public health policy as about limiting the spread of COVID, but certainly, at the time that the Trump administration put the policy in place, there was a lot of concern that that wasn't the real purpose of the policy.
Maria Sacchetti: Right. Advocates for immigrants said it was a pretext. The Trump administration imposed Title 42 ostensibly to prevent the spread of COVID in the early days of the pandemic, but the administration also downplayed COVID away from the borders. Many advocates saw it as a way to finally achieve Trump's goals of restricting asylum and controlling mass migration.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Initially, what was the effect or impact of this policy at the borders? What did we see immediately upon its implementation?
Maria Sacchetti: This is partly because of COVID, so it's difficult to tease that out, but during 2020, travel was severely restricted because of COVID. We definitely saw significant declines in migration, but that began to change well before the pandemic was under control. People started to move again.
Melissa Harris-Perry: There's a group of Republican attorneys general from 19 different states trying to extend Title 42. Their argument is that lifting it will lead to an even greater surge at the southern border of people seeking refuge. What is your understanding of where the courts are, the Supreme Court in particular, on this claim?
Maria Sacchetti: The Republican states have tried to get involved in a lawsuit filed on behalf of migrant families to stop the Biden administration from ending Title 42. Right now, their request is pending before the Supreme Court. A decision could come in a matter of days or it could take longer. We really don't know what's going to happen.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Is it your sense that the Biden administration truly is interested in ending Title 42, or is there some political value for it remaining in place?
Maria Sacchetti: That's an interesting question because the Biden administration said it would end Title 42. They've said repeatedly in court records that they don't believe it's necessary anymore. They want to preserve the power to do this again in the future if there is a pandemic and they need to stop travel to prevent a communicable disease. It's a complicated situation, I think, to explain what the Biden administration has done because the president campaigned promising to restore access to asylum seekers, but he also said later that he didn't want two million people on the border.
Now, of course, it's more than two million apprehensions a year, which has been a record, and his administration has been deeply ambivalent. You'll often hear them saying, "This is court-ordered action," but it's an action that the Biden administration has taken. They are the ones who decided to end Title 42. Republicans have gone to courts to try to stop them from doing it, but it was their decision. Long before the Biden administration reached that decision, they kept Title 42 in place and had to be pushed by advocates to finally agree to end Title 42. This has been a complicated journey for the Biden administration. When they finally agree to end Title 42, Republicans have tried to stop them.
Melissa Harris-Perry: We're going to take a quick pause right here, Maria. We'll be right back with more on Title 42.
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Melissa Harris-Perry: It's The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry. More now of my conversation with Maria Sacchetti, Immigration Reporter for the Washington Post. Maria, is it your sense that the Biden administration truly is interested in ending Title 42, or is there some political value for it remaining in place?
Maria Sacchetti: That's an interesting question because the Biden administration said it would end Title 42. They've said repeatedly in court records that they don't believe it's necessary anymore. They want to preserve the power to do this again in the future if there is a pandemic and they need to stop travel to prevent a communicable disease. It's a complicated situation, I think, to explain what the Biden administration has done because the president campaigned promising to restore access to asylum seekers, but he also said later that he didn't want two million people on the border.
Now, of course, it's more than two million apprehensions a year, which has been a record, and his administration has been deeply ambivalent. You'll often hear them saying, "This is court-ordered action," but it's an action that the Biden administration has taken. They are the ones who decided to end Title 42. Republicans have gone to courts to try to stop them from doing it, but it was their decision. Long before the Biden administration reached that decision, they kept Title 42 in place and had to be pushed by advocates to finally agree to end Title 42. This has been a complicated journey for the Biden administration. When they finally agreed to end Title 42, Republicans have tried to stop them.
Melissa Harris-Perry: This is a battle, not only happening in court but there is political posturing that has real effects for real people occurring as some Republican governors are actually busing asylum seekers and migrants to other states. Can you talk to me a bit about what is happening for the folks who are showing up on a bus in San Francisco, in Massachusetts, in New York?
Maria Sacchetti: One of the issues is that Republicans on the border say they have been bearing the burden of people showing up unannounced, unexpectedly, and having their cities and towns take care of them. Some have set up really efficient systems to deal with it, including testing and coordination so that migrants who are arriving can reunite with their families in the United States because many are migrants, especially from Central America and Mexico, of course, have family or connections or people who are already able to help them, receive them, reunite with them here in this country.
We're seeing growing numbers of people who don't have a connection in this country already, people who can help them, people from Venezuela or Nicaragua or Cuba, and they need shelter. What the state of Texas, in particular, has been doing is putting people on buses voluntarily. They're giving them a ride, but they're dropping them off in cities and towns like DC and New York, thousands of them, without warning local governments. That was in the beginning, and that really destabilized things. Republicans felt like, "Well, this is what we're experiencing in the border. People are showing up unannounced. We're having to shelter them and take care of them."
Really, by the numbers, the northern cities are being asked to shelter a comparatively small number of people who are arriving at the border. It's also a sign of the cities capacity to receive newcomers and to shelter people who don't have homes. It's an interesting look at their reaction. New York has said it's received, I think, 31,000 migrants and has set up dozens of shelters and enrolled thousands of children in schools, and spent a lot of money. You're hearing frustration about the border from city officials, state officials, who are Democrats as well as Republicans on the border.
You have a situation where people are fleeing, not just here but around the world, and the question is, how are countries going to deal with that? You have this irony of President Biden campaigning on this promise to restore asylum on the border and then actually embracing for more than a year this Title 42 policy, which expels asylum seekers without giving them a chance to plead their case to fiddle officials. Some of them have been expelled to very dangerous countries where there's repression or also significant violence, some have been killed, and so for the Biden administration to leave this policy in place and to--
Biden has granted a lot of exceptions to people, including families from places he's been criticized for treating badly, from Haiti, from Nicaragua, Venezuela, but he also expelled more people than Trump did because just a higher number have been arriving. I think what you've seen is the United States has this long history of immigration laws, where the main print of asylum laws, in particular, where the main principle is that this country does not deport people to places they would face harm, as we saw during the Holocaust where Jews sought refuge here and other countries and were rejected, and some were returned to their deaths.
That is something this country is really not supposed to do, but it also has this conundrum on the border where there are hundreds of thousands of people arriving, seeking to get in, but not everyone qualifies for asylum. If you're coming to the United States because you're poor and you need to make money and there's jobs here, that is not grounds for asylum. There's supposed to be a way for you to come here legally. The problem is, there are just two advocates. From the advocates' perspective and some Republicans' perspective as well, there just aren't enough visas to fill the jobs that are available, particularly in farming, and in healthcare, and other industries.
Melissa Harris-Perry: Maria Sacchetti is an Immigration reporter for The Washington Post. Maria, thanks for taking the time with us today.
Maria Sacchetti: Thanks for having me.
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