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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good Thursday morning, everyone. You've probably been seeing these headline news reports and videos from El Paso, Texas showing a steady stream of migrants crossing the border, and you've probably been hearing stats like border patrol agents are stopping record numbers of unauthorized border crossers, thousands every day at this point. This is on top of the surge everybody talked about all summer.

Remember that, with all that bussing of asylum seekers from Venezuela to New York by the Governor of Texas and the Mayor of El Paso, and even flying some to Martha's Vineyard by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Some migrants, in case you missed this, recently filed a lawsuit against DeSantis alleging they were fraudulently lured onto those planes with false promises of expedited work visas and that Boston would be their destination.

New York City is now estimating 30,000 such migrants have been bussed this year, so many without a place to stay that it's overwhelming the city shelter system. By the way, how quickly those stories and the bussing by the governors seem to have stopped after election day passed, and they, DeSantis and Texas Governor Abbott were reelected last month. Now there is apparently another surge at the southern border tied in part to a coming policy change that will likely make it harder to cross and stay very soon.

Here's a little big-picture context courtesy of The Washington Post editorial board, which wrote in September and some of this may surprise you. It says, "Border patrol agents are stopping unauthorized migrants coming from Mexico at record levels. Little wonder more than half of Americans now say an invasion is underway at the southern border, according to a recent NPR/Ipsos poll," writes The Post.

Then they write this addressing the perception that the US is being overrun. It says, "At the same time, net immigration to the United States has been on a downward slope for five years. Migrants added just 247,000 people to the US population in the year that ended in July 2021, the smallest increase in three decades, and an amount equal to less than 1/10 of 1% of the country's population." Then it says, "The Trump administration, having launched an assault on legal as well as illegal immigration, drove down the number of entries through red tape even before COVID-19's arrival."

The Post editorial board concludes that our problem is actually too little immigration, not too much. It says, "Without a more forward-looking immigration policy, one more closely aligned with labor force demands in an economy starved for workers, the nation's long-term economic growth prospects will be stunted." That's one take, Washington Post editorial board, and some contexts we haven't been hearing much of. Yet, there is a border crisis at the same time. An article in The Texas Tribune yesterday was headlined In El Paso Migrants Are Sleeping on the Streets After Thousands Crossed the Border Last Weekend.

With us now from El Paso is the journalist who reported that story Uriel García, immigration reporter for The Texas Tribune based in El Paso. Also with us on the national policy aspects of this Maria Sacchetti, immigration reporter for The Washington Post. Maria and Uriel, we really appreciate your time today as you have so much to cover with his story right now. Welcome to WNYC.

Uriel: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Uriel, your headline In El Paso Migrants Are Sleeping on the Streets After Thousands Crossed the Border Last Weekend. Is something new and different happening in El Paso now from the surge we all talked about in the summer?

Uriel: Yes and no. I think one of the differences is that unlike the summer or even just September when there was an increase of migrants coming into El Paso, at this time we're talking about mostly people from Nicaragua coming into El Paso.

Brian Lehrer: In the summer we were hearing about all these people fleeing the left-wing dictatorship and economic collapse in Venezuela. Now according to your story more than a 1,000 people in just a four-hour period on Sunday crossed into El Paso or other points along about a 250-mile stretch of border there. Many arrived from Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic. How much have the source countries changed that dramatically in recent weeks and why?

Uriel: Well, it's been different reasons why people are leaving, but particularly with Nicaragua, the US has put sanctions on them and has described their government there as authoritative. There's been a lot of political and social turmoil in Nicaragua. Then the other countries, some other reasons why migrants have been telling me why they're coming is because of a lack of jobs. They don't necessarily use the technical terms, but as an example, some of the migrants I've talked to is their farming jobs have ended or natural disasters have destroyed their homes. When you add all that up, when you have political turmoil and the effects of climate change, it's added a crisis to their home countries, forcing them to seek jobs elsewhere, outside of their home countries.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we invite your calls. If you are a recent migrant from south of the border or know anyone who is or feel personally affected in any way, 212-433-WNYC. Other calls with comments and questions welcome as well at 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or tweet @BrianLehrer. We'll watch our Twitter feed go by as we continue with Uriel García, immigration reporter for The Texas Tribune based in El Paso, and Maria Sacchetti, immigration reporter for The Washington Post.

Maria, you're reporting on a possible bipartisan end-of-year immigration deal, I see, before Republicans take control of the House in January. This is being worked on by Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, you report. What's on the table?

Maria: That is actually the Sinema-Tillis measure. Sinema of Arizona, of course. I heard late last night that that has fizzled out for the lame duck. It's possible, yes. It looks like they're going to run out of time. That is something that would have protected Dreamers and also invested in border enforcement, and processing for the migrants who are arriving. I'm also hearing from Senate Aides that this is something that could be reintroduced in the new year, but Republicans are going to take over the House, so that makes its chances even more difficult.

Brian Lehrer: I stand corrected. I said, Kirsten Gillibrand. I got my Kirsten's mixed up. The Kirsten Caucus of two in the United States Senate. The other one, obviously, more directly related to border issues would be a senator from Arizona, so that was Kyrsten Sinema. Can you remind everyone in a little more detail what Title 42 is and why it's a factor now in the current surge?

Maria: Title 42 is actually the public health code and it's become shorthand for the policy that authorized the Trump administration to basically shut down the borders to asylum seekers. Our laws say that if someone sets foot on US soil, it should be allowed to seek asylum. Other countries have promised not to send people to countries where they could be killed or persecuted. That's something that was shaped after World War II when victims of the Holocaust were turned away and sent to their deaths, and codified in the 1980 Refugee Act.

These are long-standing principles in the United States, and the Trump administration during the pandemic effectively shut that down. Now, Biden has kept Title 42, but he has also continued to expel migrants under it because it made border processing so easy, and there was concerns about the spread of COVID. The fact is that the Trump administration downplayed COVID away from the border even as it killed thousands and thousands of people. Federal judges have found very little evidence that Title 42 ever helped prevent the spread of COVID. Advocates have said it was a pretext for shutting the border.

Brian Lehrer: A pretext for shutting the border. There would be a bit of hypocrisy there. Republicans have been fighting against all kinds of COVID prevention measures like mask and vaccine mandates and early on closing public indoor spaces, but since they oppose immigration so much, they've been for using COVID as an excuse to reduce border crossings. Is that a fair analysis?

Maria: That was the argument and that has been the argument under Title 42, and advocates also argued that, in fact, Title 42 endangered people, more people, because it would send them to places where they risked being raped, kidnapped, even killed, and that's something that kept going. We wrote stories about the Department of Homeland Security because the Trump administration did pursue the vaccines and they did through FEMA.

They did warn people about provide protective masks and things like that and warn people about the virus, but the [unintelligible 00:11:05] officials of the Department of Homeland Security and certainly the president himself just did not warn people. We wrote a story showing that the acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf didn't so much as tweet wear a mask, and that is a major departure from past administrations who had warned people about public health and safety including at Homeland Security. In that context Title 42 was a departure.

Brian Lehrer: Actually I'm a little confused and I'll bet a lot of listeners are as to the status of Title 42 and what's about to happen with it. I know there's been this big back and forth in the courts over whether it has to stay, whether it has to go. How much Biden is allowed to choose? Is it about to get easier to cross the border or is it about to get harder to cross the border because of whatever's going to happen with Title 42?

Maria: Well, Uriel, please feel free to jump in, but in a way both because expulsions don't carry any legal penalties. For some groups that are difficult to deport because their countries won't accept deportation flights from the United States, or for other reasons, they could come into the United States and pursue their asylum claims. Some could be detained, but ending Title 42 means that the regular system of enforcement will kick in, and that means that anyone who is not eligible for humanitarian protection, such as asylum could get into an expedited removal proceeding.

They could be criminally prosecuted for illegally crossing the border and repeat offenders could have real prison time and then they could be deported, and that carries formal penalties like at least a five-year ban on returning legally. Yes, it's challenging.

Brian Lehrer: Uriel, what is your perception as a reporter there in El Paso about how much the impending expiration of Title 42 if that, in fact, comes about, is affecting the actual flow of people? Are people hearing, "Oh, Title 42, it's going to the Supreme Court," in Nicaragua and Honduras? Is this affecting what we're seeing in terms of the current search?

Uriel: It could. To add to what Maria was saying is we have to keep in mind that Title 42 is not an immigration law, it's a health law being used as an immigration law, and it's only been in place for nearly three years. Our immigration law-- There were already immigration laws in the book before Title 42 that handled these type of increases in migration. We could expect after Title 42 expires as scheduled right now, next week, is we could see a large number of immigrants crossing, and part of the reason for that, as advocates, and experts have told me, is because Title 42 created a backlog.

As Maria said, Title 42 doesn't deport people. It expels people and expelling people doesn't carry any consequences. Meaning, let's say I crossed the Rio Grande one day and Border Patrol tells me, "Okay, you have to go back to Mexico." That's it. I come back the next day and I keep continue doing that until as much as I can. There's no consequences, and once Title 42 ends Border Patrol exclusively is going back to Title 8, which is an actual immigration law. basically what that happens is I crossed the Rio Grande post Title 42 and what happens? I get arrested. I may or may not get prosecuted and get deported and being deported could harm any potential chances of any immigration benefits I could have earned in the future.

Brian Lehrer: Uriel, could you describe to listeners elsewhere in the country what El Paso is like generally? On the map for people who don't know, if you go way west in Texas, you get to El Paso at a point that's really below central New Mexico and at the Mexican border. It's a place where Texas, New Mexico, and Mexico all come together at the Rio Grande. Describe what it's like generally. How many permanent residents are there? What's the economy based on, and how much does unauthorized immigration in large numbers define what the city is about, or the city government and what its job is day to day?

Uriel: Yes, one of the biggest employers in town is law enforcement. There's a lot of law enforcement here. We're talking about from local police sheriff's office, state police, there's a lot of Border Patrol agents, ICE agents, and of course, there's a military base. Apart from that, it's a pretty busy city. As you mentioned, it's on the border with Mexico and New Mexico, and it's also isolated. The nearest, Texas City, is nine hours away. I believe we're closer to Phoenix than we are to its own capital. It's generally a quiet city in the sense that there's not a lot of crime happening.

It's a pretty safe city, and something that I want listeners to picture is that even though there is a crisis going on, it's not disrupting El Paso's daily lives. People get up, go to work, pick up their children from school. Generally speaking, the majority of the people are not affected by what's going on at the bridge right now. That's not to say that there isn't a crisis there. Of course, as I reported, there are migrants sleeping on the streets. Border Patrol is really busy. They're having to allocate resources from one of the port of entries to another, but in a way, it's a contained crisis, if you will. Other than that, like I said, people are still going about their lives.

Brian Lehrer: Do you watch the national media? Do you watch the networks? Do you think this is being over-reported as a crisis in El Paso?

Uriel: It's an issue that needs to be reported. No doubt about that, but I think what viewers and listeners, and sometimes readers may miss, is that they may not be getting the whole context as to how people live here. It's a middle-class city. Like I said, things are normal right now for the majority of the city. I think that what may be missing is that context, is that national reporters come down here and- It's an important issue to cover, but it's not the daily lives of the rest of El Paso residents.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, our guests are Uriel Garcia, who is just speaking immigration reporter for The Texas Tribune based in El Paso, and Maria Sacchetti, immigration reporter for The Washington Post, as we talk about what's happening on the ground in El Paso, with all the reporting you've probably been seeing even in New York or wherever you may be about such a surge at a record pace very recently. We always hear record number, people coming from across the Mexican border.

Well, we're hearing it again, and we're getting the boots-on-the-ground view from Uriel and the DC National Policy perspective from Maria Sacchetti from The Washington Post. We invite your phone calls, 212-433-WNYC, or your tweets @BrianLehrer. Here's a clip of the mayor of El Paso, Oscar Leeser on ABC in September after it was reported that he was arranging buses for many new arrivals to go to New York and elsewhere.

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Mayor Oscar Leeser: The people are not coming to El Paso, they're coming to America and that's something that's really important, and we look at them and we talk to them and we say, "Where do you want to go? What's your destination?" Then we will take them and help them get to their destination. The big difference that's happened today that really was not normally was that about 95% of everyone coming had a sponsor.

A sponsor is someone where it's a family member or friend, where they've arranged and they have transportation, they go to their destination. As we see now from Venezuela, they don't have sponsors. We have about 50% of the people today that do not have a sponsor. They don't have money, so we're helping in working to get them to where they want to go, so that's been really important that we don't send anyone where they don't want to go. We make sure we help them, and we put human beings, and we put them on buses with food and make sure they get to their destination and make sure that we always continue to treat people like human beings.

Brian Lehrer: The Bayer El Paso on ABC in September, Uriel, let me stay with you on this for a minute. How much does his statement reflect the reality of both of the major points that he was making? One that people are coming to America, not to El Paso per se, so it becomes El Paso's burden to the extent that they see it as a burden, but he's trying to treat human beings as human beings, and that his busing to New York and elsewhere has been different than Governor Abbott's. That the mayor's doing it in consultation with Mayor Adams in New York and others in other cities, not just sending them unannounced to land on your doorstep to make a political point. Would that be accurate?

Uriel: To an extent, yes. It is a little bit different, and I think the big difference is the rhetoric around the programs. As the mayor said that they're treating them like humans. There's no indication that migrants who are taking buses on the Abbott program are being necessarily mistreated. I think it's the rhetoric and the intention of why the governor is doing as opposed to why the city of El Paso is doing it. I know that in some cases people have said that it's a bit of hypocrisy for El Paso to be doing the same when so many advocates have been saying that it's inhumane and what Abbott is doing.

When I've talked to people who run shelters and the local people here, the issue isn't necessarily who's doing it and why they're doing it. The point is that what they're seeing is people in need of help, and they're trying to get from point A to point B. As Americans, we have to question ourselves, is that what we want to do? Do we want to help migrants people in need get from point A to point B? Regardless of politics, what advocates have told or shelter workers have told me is that's something that we really need to question ourselves about. This isn't a burden, it's a social issue that needs to be taken care of, and ignoring that is not going to make anything better.

Brian Lehrer: Dan in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Dan.

Dan: Hi, there was a PBS program about a young Guatemalan, and apparently, this was as a prototype more than as the specific case. One of the issues was that he has an $18,000 debt with an interest rate unknown to the cohort that took him in. The only job he had was as a bicycle delivery board and his family, and many of these families came here, made some money, and had big plans for what they were going to do with that money back home but they really come here to make money, not to become permanent residents.

These two issues, flow in and then flow out after they've made some money. The other one, this incredible debt to the cohorts that apparently are driving a lot of these kids into crime given the interest rate and all this so, I wonder how much consideration you give to these two issues.

Brian Lehrer: Dan, thank you. Maria, I don't know if you saw the particular PBS segment that he's talking about, but what about the issues and the description of what a lot of the migrants are really coming forward, which makes it sound like not really as political refugees as far as you could tell as a national immigration reporter?

Maria: We don't know how many migrants have been asking for asylum partly because they've been expelled so quickly but that's it. Going to be a huge question here if people are fleeing poverty or generalized violence, like something that does not directly threaten them, then they're not going to qualify for asylum. That means they're not going to be eligible for legal residency in the United States.

One big concern is are they going to be added to the already historically high list of 11 million undocumented immigrants in this country who can't easily leave to go visit their families, who are separated from them for decades now and are at the mercy of a Congress that seems increasingly has always been unwilling to pass some reform. It's happened rarely and in the past, according to experts who've practiced, but we'll have to see how this unfolds.

Brian Lehrer: Well, Uriel, if there's a way to say, what percentage of the people crossing voluntarily turn themselves over to officials and say, I am here to apply for political asylum status, and so I am registering with you, as opposed to what a lot of people's image may be, just trying to disappear into the country and start to work.

Uriel: Everything that you've been seeing on the news, the images of migrants at the Bridge at the cross or crossing the Rio Grande, those are people turning themselves in. They wouldn't be coming in mass and they wouldn't be coming to such a populated area if they weren't turning themselves in. Something to keep in mind is that when someone crosses the river or the border through the land illegally, they don't necessarily get granted asylum immediately. They have up to a year to request asylum, and it's not necessarily done right at the bridge or right at the border.

Usually what happens is, they come in, and depending on how busy border patrol is they may or may not request asylum right then and there, but what they have processed and border patrol will background check them and see if they're eligible to be paroled in basically giving permission to stay in the United States as they seek some immigration benefit. A lot of them have told me there are seeking asylum. Some of them say, "Well, I just came for economic reasons." There are reasonings for coming and what benefits they want to apply differ but for the majority of the people that I've talked to who recently crossed have told me they're seeking asylum because they're lean some violence or some persecution from the governments.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute we'll play a clip of something that President Biden said this year about immigration. We'll look at how much he's actually changed from Trump administration policies. There are immigration advocates who are protesting Biden saying he's basically kept a lot of these Trump policies in place but on the other hand, it looks like the new Republican Congress, once the house is seated in January, is going to aim for impeaching the Homeland Security Secretary over this. We'll continue on those aspects and take a few more of your phone calls right after this.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC, we're talking about the current southern border surge, but a 5-year net decline in immigration with Uriel García, immigration reporter for The Texas Tribune based in El Paso, and Maria Sacchetti, immigration reporter for The Washington Post in DC. Here's President Biden from his State of the Union address back in March on what he said at that time that he's been doing already on immigration.

President Biden: At our border, we've installed new technology like cutting-edge scanners to better detect drug smuggling. We've set up joint patrols in Mexico and Guatemala to catch more human traffickers. We're putting in place dedicated immigration judges and a significantly larger number, so families fleeing the persecution of violence can have their cases heard faster, and those who don't legitimately here can be sent back.

We're screening, we're securing commitments, and supporting partners in South and Central America to host more refugees and secure their own borders. We can do all this while keeping lit the torch of liberty that has led the generation of immigrants to this land. My 4 bears and many of yours.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden there from the State of the Union address in March, even before the surge of Venezuelans and all that political busing in the summer and the surge taking place now. Let's look at some of those things that he mentioned specifically, but Maria, considering that the surge is taking place at what's being called record levels of thousands of people per day, doesn't sound like a lot of that is working.

Maria: Well, you're seeing the migration diversify, you're seeing last in October, I think CBP reported that people from Mexico, Venezuela, I'm sorry, people from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua outnumber the more traditional arrivals from countries like Mexico and the Northern Triangle and Central America. Immigration is so driven by need, but also technology, and that's part of the reason you're seeing so many nationalities show up at specific points on the border at once, they're sharing information and migration can change really quickly with policies and new information.

Brian Lehrer: One of the Trump policies that President Biden reversed, I think was the remain in Mexico policy where you have to apply from there, but also a related one that required that nobody be admitted and tell me if I'm describing this incorrectly, that nobody be admitted to the United States if they passed through other countries on their way here.

That they have to have sought asylum there first under the premise that if you're really just seeking asylum to leave your country, because it's not safe for you there, then the first country you come to, that's where you should be trying to stay. Otherwise, you're just trying to get to the United States for other reasons. That's the argument there. Was that policy effective from Trump's point of view and did Biden undo it?

Maria: Remain in Mexico required migrants to wait for their asylum hearings from Mexico. Advocates said that it endangered a lot of migrants waiting in Mexico and violated asylum laws. What it did do and this is something the Biden administration wants more of, is create a process where people would come to a port of entry into the United States as opposed to crossing in remote areas and waiting for the border patrol to pick them up.

Even if that happened now, you would see more and more migrants and children in danger. One thing I think that is really overlooked is how many of the migrants are children. That is a major change from a couple of decades ago when most migrants were single men, and it's much more what we have been seeing in Europe and in other places with migrants fleeing. Then that is a really important change. Now, those apprehensions CBP talk about they include large numbers of teenagers and children.

Brian Lehrer: A lot of unaccompanied minors right now, Uriel.

Uriel: There's still been a steady stream of unaccompanied minors coming in. Most recently what I've seen right now is-- I only have access on the streets to be able to see the migrants who are being released. What I've saw was a lot of men this time around unaccompanied children, of course, get taken into custody and looked for a sponsor or relative already in the US. To answer your initial question about remain in Mexico, it is a policy that the Biden administration overturned.

One of the things that as Maria had mentioned is advocates had been saying that this program had put migrants in danger and one of the stories I wrote last year was about a Cuban woman who was placed in remain in Mexico.

Basically, she was stuck in [unintelligible 00:33:25] for up to a year before. During that year, she was put in a very vulnerable situation. She was living from different homes trying to wait for her court date and the final decision if she was going to be able to get asylum.

During that year, a police officer noticed her and ended up violently raping her while she was in remain in Mexico. While she was in the hospital recovering, she missed one of her court dates. The immigration judge shut down her case and said she couldn't qualify for asylum because she missed her court date. She was able to get a lawyer on the American side who helped her reopen the case after she was able to prove that she was violently raped by a local police officer in [unintelligible 00:34:16].

There are cases like that in which people who save programs that force asylum seekers to wait in Mexico or forced to stay there are put in a vulnerable position because they stand out either because they're not Mexican or because they're living out of a shelter or moving from home to home and criminals who looking to make easy money from them are targeting them.

Brian Lehrer: Other countries in the region, meaning in the Americas, also seeing this influx of migrants from those countries that are primarily sending them, because one of the premises of that Trump policy that I was describing and what a lot of Republicans and some other Americans would say is, "If you as a reporter in El Paso were to ask people coming from Nicaragua, did you consider Costa Rica, which borders Nicaragua on the South or Panama, which is the next country down there, or people coming from Guatemala, did you consider Belize, which also borders Guatemala or consider Mexico?

The trek is so hard to come all the way through that long way of Mexico to get to the United States. Why not Mexico? Why not Belize? Why not Costa Rica? What would people say, or are those countries experiencing the same thing that we're talking about in terms of a surge of desperate people seeking to leave but we don't hear about it in this country?

Uriel: In fact during September when the increase of Venezuelans coming in, I spoke to a father and a mother who left. They're originally from Venezuela, but before they left they were actually living in Chile. They had a work permit. They were there legally, they were working, but then the pandemic happened and as we all know, the pandemic caused a lot of disruption in the job market. Inflation happened, and it just wasn't enough at the time.

Just like a lot of governments around the world, the Chile government reacted and the political base there also started blaming asylum seekers for the lack of jobs or the inflation, or other social issues. They felt that as a family and they said, "Okay, well we already tried Chile, where do we go now?" A lot of people around the world, they turned to the US and they said, "Well, let's try the US this time." I have interviewed and I've talked to migrants who've told me that they've tried other places and it also got hard there too, economically and socially.

Brian Lehrer: Esteban in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Esteban. Esteban--

Esteban: Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Oh, there we go. Now we have you. Hi there.

Esteban: Great. Hi. That was a great segue. Thanks for taking my call, Brian. I actually have called before about the Chilean Rise of Socialism because my family is from Chile and I just happened to come back from Chile and [unintelligible 00:37:27] where I was two weeks ago. I want to reiterate that what was just communicated is accurate there has been and every Chilean has actually in some way, shape, or form that I met either blamed or said that the problems were contributed by the immigration.

There is a lot more immigration and foreign nationals in Chile than I have ever seen. Same thing in Argentina, less so, but there also are more. This does point and I come back home and of course, this is the topic at hand immigration. To me, it seems like aside from sustainability, this is truly a global issue. I'm looking now at US population growth or apparently decline. We're the slowest growth. I'm thinking of Lazarus's poem on the Statue of Liberty. We all know bring us you are tired. I'm thinking why is it that we have two separate or three separate, perhaps types of immigrants? Those we want, those we tolerate, and those we don't.

Of course, since my family came in the '70s during the brain drain, there was scholarships. They imported from some people and now we're exporting others. It seems like a very non-uniform way to judge because immigrants don't all have access to Excel at home, so why not give them obviously that ability here? I'm sure Spain doesn't complain about Lionel Messi's arrival as a child.

Another example, but in synopsis what I'm trying to say is, if the federal government did create more incentives, and I recognize from first person, I'm an architect, so I know how much effort the city is doing to house all the individuals that are coming to New York City and my mother who's a public school teacher also discusses the strain on these education system, the class sizes, ballooning and having to absorb children. Her being a bilingual teacher in particular, this is a topic at hand in my household. Nonetheless, I think we just need support. I think the states would perhaps stop trying to push the problem from one state to another and maybe the federal government would step in and create incentives to absorb more individuals like this.

Brian Lehrer: That's Esteban, thank you very much. We're going to wrap up with two quick questions. One to each of you. Uriel, following up on Esteban's last thought there. Do the mayors of El Paso and other Texas cities, does Governor Abbott as well turn to the federal government and say, "Yes, they are coming to America. They're not coming to El Paso per se. We need more federal funding. We've certainly seen Mayor Adams in New York do that." Say, "Look, if we're getting tens of thousands of Venezuelan asylum seekers being bused here from Texas, and we don't have any say in that, this is a federal problem. This is not a Texas problem or a New York problem." Does Texas say that to the federal government and are they doing it?

Uriel: Yes, El Paso, and to an extent, governor Abbott have asked the federal government to step in. Of course, they have different intentions of what they want the federal government to do. Ultimately we do like I've been seeing this past week and even just last month or a couple months ago, was people are sleeping in the street, and these are people who've been processed background check and are here and have permission to stay in the US.

Now it's up to the federal government to say, if they want to take, as they've always said in, or have argued in court, immigration is a federal issue. The resource resources aren't there. They're not coming in at fast enough. What advocates and shelter workers here have been saying is, we need more space. We need shelter space. We just need them. We just needed temporary space as they're making their way through. The federal government has responded a bit but it's been slow. As an example-- [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Maybe there's an opportunity for some bipartisan unity [laughs] asking the federal government to take over the funding of this federal responsibility. To that point, as a final question, Maria, from The Washington Post we have immigration advocates angry at Biden because he's kept too much of the Trump policy in place. On the other side, we have your story in The Washington Post from recently, Kevin McCarthy, the House minority leader, calls for Mayorkas, Biden's Homeland Security Secretary to quit.

Saying in that same story that it looks like there's going to be an investigation and possibly an impeachment of the Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, once the Republicans take control of the house. What is this pressure on Mayorkas about.

Maria: That's a very interesting question because the pressure is actually broader than Mayorkas. I think it's on Congress as a whole. Congress is the one that could change immigration. Republicans are attacking the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Homeland Security is urging them to do something. Democrats and Republicans, to pass laws that would reform the asylum system that would prevent people from exploiting it.

Also allowing those who deserve safety to get at least that under our asylum laws to get it more quickly. Those are the big issues. Instead what you're seeing is Democrats and Republicans fighting and not coming up with a solution. Republicans are increasingly including Governor Greg Abbott using inflammatory language such as invasion, which is not happening. Most migrants are surrendering, which is a big change in the past. It used to be that border patrol numbers were much smaller. They didn't detained as many migrants as they do now, because people basically are lining up, as you can see in the photos, they're bringing children. That is a big change. It has been unaddressed in Congress.

El Paso is a great example of that because just a few days ago the Department of Homeland Security issued a terrible in saying that inflammatory language and rhetoric around border policies and more migration could lead to violence. El Paso in 2019, of course, you have authorities saying that a white man went down and sprayed a Walmart in El Paso killing ultimately 23 people over this inflammatory language. There's real consequences to this debate in addition to the situations that's happening on the border, and that affects people on both sides of it.

Brian Lehrer: Maria Sacchetti, immigration reporter for The Washington Post and Uriel García, immigration reporter for The Texas Tribune based in El Paso. Thank you both so much for some time today. As I said at the beginning, I know this story is developing quickly around both of you on your beats, and you gave us a lot of time. Thank you very, very much.

Uriel: Thank you.

Maria: Thank you.

 

 

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