Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: This is The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

Last Thursday, Title 42 ended. The Trump-era immigration policy allowed the US to expel migrants seeking asylum at the border without having to consider their asylum requests. The policy was put in place during the height of the COVID pandemic and was justified by the administration at the time as a public health measure, but with the end of the National Emergency Declaration of COVID, so too came the end of Title 42. On Sunday, US Secretary of Homeland Security spoke with CNN.

Alejandro Mayorkas: We have communicated very clearly a vitally important message to the individuals who are thinking of arriving at our southern border. There is a lawful, safe, and orderly way to arrive in the United States, that is through the pathways that President Biden has expanded in an unprecedented way, and then there's a consequence if one does not use those lawful pathways.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Now, the Trump administration initiated Title 42, but President Biden has maintained it for more than two years. This is the President during a press conference last week.

President Biden: I spent close to an hour with the Mexican president today. We're doing all we can, but it remains to be seen. It's going to be chaotic for a while.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Joining us now is Faisal Al-Juburi, who is spokesman for RAICES, a non-profit group defending the rights of immigrants and refugees, and also with us, Camilo Montoya-Galvez, who is immigration reporter at CBS News. Faisal, Camilo, thank you both for being here today.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez: Thank you, Melissa.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Camilo, can I begin with you? Can you give me a sense of how the end of Title 42 is affecting those, right now, who are seeking entry into the US? We heard the President talk about chaos at the border. Is that what we're seeing?

Camilo Montoya-Galvez: Sure. Title 42 was this public health authority that allowed the US to expel hundreds of thousands of migrants to Mexico or their home countries, Melissa, without giving them a chance to seek asylum. That's normally a requirement under our asylum laws, that we allow people who say that they're fleeing for their lives, to at least have a chance to make their case in court or in front of an asylum officer with an interview. That was suspended by Title 42.

Now that Title 42 has expired, all migrants need to be processed under regular immigration laws, and if they ask for asylum, they need to be given, at the very least, an asylum screening with a US asylum officer. That's the biggest change that people who want to make an asylum claim can now do. However, the Biden administration is now making it more difficult, Melissa, for people to qualify for asylum in the first place, implementing a regulation that says if migrants crossed through a country like Mexico, on their way to the US, and did not seek asylum there, then they're not eligible to seek asylum inside of the us.

That's the big change right now. That also allows the administration to more quickly deport migrants. The administration was preparing for as many as 13,000 migrants to enter border custody per day after Title 42 was lifted. We did see the number of migrant apprehensions soar to 10,000 per day in the lead-up to Title 42 ending. Since then, Melissa, those numbers have plummeted to fewer than 5,000 daily migrant apprehension. The spike in migration that was anticipated after this policy was lifted has not materialized.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Faisal, I suppose I'm a little reticent to believe that a single day and a single policy change would make a dramatic difference, one direction or the other, simply given that what we seem to know about people who are migrating is that their reasons for coming are really rooted in conditions of spaces they're leaving, as well as, of course, a belief about the capacity to earn and to create a safe life in the US. I guess I'm wondering, how likely is it that migrants seeking refuge, seeking asylum, know that Title 42 ended?

Faisal Al-Juburi: What we're seeing right now is probably just a shift in patterns, based upon some heavy propaganda, really, at the end of the day, is how I view it, and how we view it at RAICES, where the US is really reinforcing a message that backtracks on its commitment to the human and legal right to asylum. That's something that has also been reinforced significantly by the media, of course, not by Camilo, whose work I very much respect, and who has been doing very diligent highlights of what the Biden administration is doing.

What it is doing, at the end of the day, is perpetuating a lot of the most harmful policies that the US has espoused. Definitely right now, what rolled out last week is of the most draconian of the border policies that the administration has released to date. What it is doing, it is further criminalizing the immigrant, the asylum-seeking population, and you're right, the majority are coming for fleeing persecution, fleeing on tenable circumstances in their countries of origin, that have many times been, again, perpetuated by the US' colonialist policies.

At the end of the day, immigration is going to continue. People are going to continue to seek asylum, because seeking asylum is seeking survival for themselves and for their families. What we are seeing now is something that I think surprised a lot of us, in the immigrant rights movement is, as part of the release and the rollout of new policies last week, was a program called Ferm, F-E-R-M. It's the Family Expedited Removal Management Program.

Essentially, that is putting families that are seeking asylum into expedited removal, along with everyone else. The difference here is that they're not going into a detention facility. They are being released with an ankle monitor and a curfew, and being put into immediate expedited removal program, which means that they will have limited to no access to legal representation, just by the nature of expedited removal.

The speed-up of the process, the efficiencies of the process that they're putting into place end up with really negative results for, again, families that are seeking the right to live.

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Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: We're going to take a quick pause right here. We'll have more on the end of Title 42 right after this. Back now with more on the ending of Title 42, and the situation at the US Southern border. Camilo, I want to come to you because, as Faisal was speaking, I keep going back in my head to that brief clip we heard from Secretary Mayorkas, where he said that President Biden has expanded legal pathways in an unprecedented way.

Then, as I'm listening to Faisal speak, I think, well, this doesn't sound like expanded pathways.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez: Well, I think, Melissa, the truth is somewhere in the middle, the administration is obviously implementing a very sweeping restriction on asylum that marks a major departure from what the president said on the campaign trail, when he was competing against former President Donald Trump, in 2020. He said he was going to restore access to asylum.

This rule obviously limits that access to people who are not from Mexico, because all people who are not from Mexico need to cross into Mexico first, before entering the US-Mexico border. The administration has, at the same time, expanded several programs for migrants to enter the country with the government's permission. For example, right now, migrants in Mexico have a chance to secure an appointment to be processed at a port of entry along the US-Mexico border, so they can get a court date there, and then they are released and are allowed to seek asylum.

The US is now distributing about 1,000 of those appointments per day in Mexico for migrants, and about more than 20,000 migrants are being processed through the CBP One app, each month. In addition, the administration is also allowing migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to fly to the US directly, if they have American sponsors. That program is allowing up to 30,000 of these arrivals on a monthly basis.

The administration is doing some of that legal immigration expansion that it is highlighting, but at the same time, it is restricting access to asylum, because their belief, Melissa, is that if you combine increased consequences, as they call, for migrants who enter in between points of entry without legal permission, with expanded legal migration channels then, you are gradually going to reduce those unlawful border crossings.

In the past few days, we have seen a drop in migration, but it's unclear how long that will continue, and it's also unclear what the direct catalyst for that drop is, because we also know that the governments of Mexico and Guatemala have deployed large numbers of law enforcement officials to their borders to stop migrants from coming to the US-Mexico border in the first place. That could be a major factor in this current drop, not necessarily the impact of new US border policies.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Faisal, I want to come back to you for a final take here, because you begin with this notion of media-based and administration-based campaign, like this discourse. I'm wondering-- Even as I'm listening to Camilo say, "Oh, these are the ways that we want to reduce migration and reduce border crossings," but I guess I'm wondering if there's another way to think about immigration and migration, rather than kind of a bad that we always want to limit, to get to its lowest point.

Faisal Al-Juburi: I would say none of the approaches that we are taking right now in the US are really rooted in a humanitarian approach, at the end of the day, and recognizing what the actual circumstances are that people are fleeing, and why people are seeking asylum. I think the larger conversation to have here though, is whether or not the US still wants to maintain that legal and human rights, its commitment in federal and in international law to asylum.

I think what we've been seeing is a systematic approach to dismantling asylum. That can be seen even just with the use of Title 42. Again, it is a public health measure from 1944, that was dusted off as an approach to, again, close the border. It's something that we were never in favor of, but at the end of the day, people who were expelled through Title 42-- It's very different than the Title 8, that's being used right now, which means that when you are deported, officially deported, under Title 8, if you try and cross back into the US, you will face criminal penalties.

When you are deported, you are not allowed to reseek asylum for five years.

Dr. Melissa Harris-Perry: Faisal Al-Juburi is vice president of development and a spokesperson for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services. Camilo Montoya-Galvez is immigration reporter at CBS News. Faisal, Camilo, thank you both for being here.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez: Thanks, Melissa.

Faisal Al-Juburi: Thank you.

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