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      Family of eight-year-old girl who died in US border patrol custody ‘want justice’

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      Shortly before the funeral on Saturday for an eight-year-old girl who died while she detained by the US border patrol in Texas and stricken with influenza, her relatives vowed to pursue justice in her case so “nobody has to go through this” again.“We will let our baby rest and hope that she rests in peace,” the family of Anadith Reyes Álvarez said in a statement, obtained by the Spanish-language news network Univision. “We want justice for her and that nobody has to go through this.”The statement from Anadith’s family came hours before her loved ones expected to bury her on Saturday at a cemetery in New Jersey. Anadith’s family and other loved ones had grieved her at a wake in her honor held on Friday in New York City.Anadith died on 17 May on what her mother, Mabel Álvarez Benedicks, has said was the family’s ninth day in border patrol custody at a detention facility in Harlingen, Texas.The girl had reportedly been diagnosed with influenza, had recurring fever that would spike as highly as 104.9F (40.5C), and was complaining about having difficulty breathing. She also had bone pain and could not walk, according to what Álvarez has said to the Associated Press as well as information released by authorities.Yet, Álvarez has said, personnel at the detention facility insisted that she did not need hospital care, and she only received saline fluids, fever medication and a shower. A nurse practitioner reported denying as many as four requests from Anadith’s mother to call an ambulance for the girl.Anadith eventually lost consciousness, went limp and was pronounced dead after being brought to a hospital without any detectable vital signs.Álvarez has acknowledged that Anadith had a history of heart problems and sickle cell anemia, yet her family has maintained that she was healthy when she arrived at the detention center. Meanwhile, Univision reported that a preliminary border patrol investigation found that medical staff who treated Anadith as her illness worsened failed to check health records documenting her conditions.The US Customs and Border Protection agency on Thursday transferred out its chief medical officer in response to Anadith’s death. David Tarantino is expected to begin temporary work next week at the federal Department of Homeland Security, which houses Customs and Border Protection.The non-profit organizations Texas Civil Rights Project and Haitian Bridge Alliance are advocating for Anadith’s family and assured that they have helped commission an independent autopsy to determine the girl’s cause of death.“What happened to Anadith was a tragedy based on negligence,” the Texas Civil Rights Project attorney Kassandra González said in a statement provided to Univision.The director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, Guerline Jozef, added that Anadith’s death “could have been prevented if her and her mother’s requests for medical attention would not have been ignored”.Anadith was a national of of Panama, and her parents are from Honduras. Her death came a week after Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza – a teenager from Honduras – died near Tampa, Florida, while detained at a US health department facility for unaccompanied children.Officials have said they believe Ángel died as a result of an epileptic seizure. Staff at the facility where Ángel was detained had records of his history of epilepsy but did not read them, officials have said, according to reporting from the Tampa Bay Times.Both Anadith and Ángel died amid a rush to the border before the expiration of Covid-19 asylum limits known as Title 42 brought extraordinary pressure on the outdated, underfunded US immigration system.An arguably tougher immigration policy replaced what was in place before the lifting of Title 42. More

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      Texas sheriff files criminal case over DeSantis flights to Martha’s Vineyard

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      A Texas sheriff’s office has recommended criminal charges over flights that the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, arranged to deport 49 South American migrants from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard, in Massachusetts, last year.In a statement on Monday, the Bexar county sheriff’s office said it had filed a criminal case with the local district attorney over the flight. The Bexar county sheriff, Javier Salazar, has previously said the migrants were “lured under false pretenses” into traveling to Martha’s Vineyard, a wealthy liberal town.The recommendation comes after the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, threatened DeSantis with kidnapping charges on Monday, after Florida flew a group of people seeking asylum to Sacramento. It was the second time in four days Florida had used taxpayer money to fly asylum seekers to California.“The charge filed is unlawful restraint and several accounts were filed, both misdemeanor and felony,” the Bexar county sheriff’s office said in a statement provided to KSAT News.“At this time, the case is being reviewed by the DA’s office. Once an update is available, it will be provided to the public.”DeSantis arranged for two planes to carry migrants, including women and children, to Martha’s Vineyard in September 2022.The groups were told they would have jobs and housing if they boarded the planes, but in reality officials in Martha’s Vineyard had been given no advance notice of the arrival of the 49 people, most of whom had traveled from Venezuela.DeSantis created an “urgent humanitarian situation” in deporting the migrants, officials said. The far-right Floridian, who announced he was running for president in May, was widely criticized for what was seen as a political stunt.On Monday, Newsom called DeSantis a “small, pathetic man” after Florida chartered a private jet and flew 16 South American people to Sacramento before abandoning them outside a church.California’s attorney general, Rob Bonta, said the people may have been duped into boarding flights to the state. On Twitter, Newsom suggested the Florida governor could be subject to “kidnapping charges”.DeSantis has made immigration one of the central issues of his political career.In May, he signed a heavily criticized law which invalidated out-of-state driver’s licenses issued to undocumented immigrants and required companies with more than 25 members of staff to check employees’ immigration status.The law also provides a specific fund to deport undocumented immigrants to other states.After the law was signed by DeSantis the League of United Latin American Citizens, a Latino advocacy group, issued a travel advisory urging people not to travel to Florida. More

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      Migrants flown from Texas to California and left outside church were ‘lied to’

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      A rights group has said 16 migrants had been “lied to” and deceived after being transported from Texas to California and dropped off outside a church in Sacramento.The migrants from Venezuela and Colombia entered the US through Texas, reported the Associated Press. They were flown to California from New Mexico via a private chartered plane, but it’s unclear who paid for the travel.The California department of justice and the California governor’s office is currently investigating who paid for the travel and “whether the individuals orchestrating this trip misled anyone with false promises or have violated any criminal laws, including kidnapping”.Eddie Carmona, campaign director at PICO California, a faith-based community organizing group that has been assisting the migrants, said they had been processed by US customs and provided court dates for asylum hearings when individuals claiming to represent a private contractor approached them outside a migrant center in El Paso, Texas, with the promise of offering jobs and assistance.“They were lied to and intentionally deceived,” Carmona told the AP, adding that the migrants had no idea where they were after being dropped off in Sacramento.Over the past year, the Republican governors of Texas and Florida have been bussing and flying immigrants without advance to cities controlled by Democratic party elected officials. The actions have been criticized as political stunts to criticize the Biden administration’s border policies. Florida governor Ron DeSantis established a $12m migrant relocation program in 2022 funded from interest accrued on federal Covid-19 relief funds. More

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      Texas’s use of ‘invasion’ clause against immigrants is racist and dangerous, rights groups say

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      Texas is challenging federal control of policy on the US-Mexico border by exploiting what it sees as a constitutional loophole around the definition of an “invasion” but that migrants rights activists see as dangerously ramping up fears with racist language.Immigration policy has long been under the purview of the US federal government – not individual states – since the US supreme court ruled so in a landmark United States v Arizona case in 2012.But in November of 2022, rightwing Republican governor Greg Abbott invoked the “invasion” clauses found in the Texas and US constitutions, likening migrants at the border to a public foreign enemy that therefore gave him the power to enact his own border policies.The Texas Civil Rights Project called the move a “political ploy”.“Calling immigrants an invasion is extremely dangerous,” said Roberto Lopez, senior advocacy manager for the organization’s “Beyond the Border” program.Lopez added: “We have seen so many shootings and more rise in hate crimes [against migrants.] This is all connected to this rhetoric of associating people who are trying to seek safety with being like a literal attack on the United States. That is just giving a lot of fire and energy to militia groups and people who are filled with hate.”Abbott is already seeking to take Texas border control into his own hands, as evidenced by the state’s recent announcement of a new “border force” that could allow its agents to “arrest, apprehend or detain persons crossing the Texas-Mexico border unlawfully”, if it gets past the state legislature. And with a conservative-majority in both the Texas state house and senate, that likelihood is high.Abbott has made his interpretation of the “invasion clauses” clear. At the time of announcing his border force, Abbott said: “I invoked the Invasion Clauses of the US and Texas Constitutions to fully authorize Texas to take unprecedented measures to defend our state against an invasion.”“I’m using that constitutional authority, and other authorization and Executive Orders to keep our state & country safe.”But the legal language Abbot is citing is not that simple, according to Barbara Hines, a law professor at the University of Texas and founder of its law school Immigration Clinic.Hines called the state’s justification for creating its own immigration laws “unprecedented and extreme”.“Federal immigration law is a federal issue. It’s not based on the Texas constitution,” Hines said.Article four of the Texas constitution states: “[The governor] shall be Commander-in-Chief of the military forces of the State, except when they are called into actual service of the United States. He shall have power to call forth the militia to execute the laws of the State, to suppress insurrections, and to repel invasions.”Abbott argues the increase of migrants at the border merits drastic actions such as establishing a state police force specifically to rein in immigration.Migrant rights groups say people crossing the border – many of whom are seeking to legally claim refugee status – does not constitute an invasion. Instead, they say such language is racist and inflammatory. In 2019 a white supremacist attacked a Walmart in El Paso, seeking to kill Latinos and fueled by anti-immigration rhetoric. The gunman killed 23 people.Many legal scholars believe rightwing arguments over the invasion clause in the Texas constitution are neutralised by the supremacy clause in the US constitution. That states that “the federal constitution, and federal law generally, take precedence over state laws, and even state constitutions,” according to Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.But in the US constitution, the word “invasion” is mentioned twice: once in article one, section 10 and again in article four, section four. That gives Abbott, and some rightwing activists, hope that their arguments might prevail on a conservative supreme court.In the first instance, the US constitution specifically limits the power of states to keep troops, like Operation Lone Star a border force, unless invaded..
      “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any Duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”
      When invasion is mentioned for the second time, the constitution more broadly says that the federal government is responsible for protecting its states against an invasion.
      “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”
      Hines explained that although the word “invasion” is mentioned twice in different contexts, “there’s this theory of law that the same term or word in the constitution, should mean the same thing [if repeated].” The key question is likely to be whether or not “invasion” in this context means solely by another state or armed force.Abbott’s policies, like his potential border force and the existing initiative Operation Lone Star, are already being questioned as illegal by civil rights groups others. They have faced legal challenges by civil rights advocacy groups and an investigation by the US Department of Justice.If such a case against Texas materializes and moves up through the courts – especially all the way up to the US supreme court – it’s possible the US will have to revisit the question of who gets to control the border.Some say that’s exactly what Texas lawmakers in favor of state control of the border want, especially as the current supreme court is dominated by hardline conservative judges.Texas’s far-right attorney general Ken Paxton said as much in a senate committee hearing on the subject:“We’re in unchartered territory as far as knowing what states can do because states have never had to wonder or really test this,” Paxton said. “So, I think part of this is going to be, we’re going to have to figure out where are the areas that we want to test. And that’s part of why I’ve been saying for two years, we should test U.S. v Arizona. We should test to see if the states can protect themselves, given the circumstances we’re in that we’ve never been in before.”Hines said: “This supreme court has not respected precedent in other situations, for example, in the abortion case. And this state legislature has been willing to pass unconstitutional laws to test them.”“I am hopeful that as conservative as the supreme court is that they’re going to respect precedent. It is unheard of that states could enforce federal law as to who is entering the United States without permission and who is not, and to create a state trespass law for people entering the United States that has been in sole federal power since the late 1800s.” More

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      ‘I feel safe here’: the people leaving everything behind to seek refuge in US

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      The US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, has a message for migrants that he has been repeating loudly and frequently: “Our border is not open … don’t risk your life and your life savings” to come to the US seeking refuge without invitation.But for millions, hunger, violence and fear ring out louder. Political dysfunction and economic calamity are pushing people from many nations in the western hemisphere in what Joe Biden has called the “largest migration in human history”, exacerbated in Latin America and beyond by the coronavirus pandemic.People with tenacity but few means make a hopeful journey mostly across land towards the US-Mexico border. If they beat the odds to reach American soil they may find harbor – or more heartbreak.Yesi Ortega choked up when talking to the Guardian at a shelter in El Paso, west Texas, earlier this month, as she recounted the odyssey she, her husband Raphael López and their five-year-old son, Matías, had spent six months making.The family had reached a tipping point in their native Venezuela and followed more than 7 million other citizens who have fled the country’s economic collapse and pervasive hunger when their choice came down to food or clothing, Ortega, 24, said.“We had no option. We needed to take the risk,” she said. Like almost a third of this exodus, they first tried nextdoor Colombia, itself unstable and contributing amid the post-pandemic hardship to the latest rise in migration towards the US.Ortega found work in a restaurant kitchen and López labored in a plastics factory in Medellín. But they were paid less, as migrants, the equivalent of $35 a week between them, when a staple such as milk was $3 a liter and the rent was crippling, she said.When they failed to get legal status and couldn’t access the healthcare system or school for Matías, like many others they left Colombia for the US.They survived the slog and danger of walking through the hellish Darién Gap jungle into Panama and trudged through Central America and Mexico, fraught with risk, especially for foreigners migrating on a shoestring.The family didn’t use human smugglers, Ortega said. She recounted how, along the way, they were mugged twice at gunpoint, slept under torrential rains and endured cold nights, leapt on to freight trains when they could, worked temporary jobs and begged for money to buy food, water and bus tickets to relieve the trek whenever possible.Eventually, they reached Ciudad Juárez, across the Mexican border from El Paso. After all that, Matías then broke his right arm while playing. But the family pressed on and went to Door 40 in the towering border barrier to turn themselves in to federal border patrol agents.At first they were separated. Ortega and Matías were taken and held in New Mexico while López, 27, was sent to a detention center 85 miles away in Tornillo, which became known in the Trump administration for holding unaccompanied migrant children in detention camps.They were released after about a week of what they described as cold, uncomfortable conditions and managed to reunite and find a shelter in El Paso. Last week the three traveled to Chicago, where they had a contact address, to await their interview with the immigration authorities in June to find out if they will be allowed to go through the full asylum system in the US – or be deported.The family entered the US before the Title 42 pandemic-related rule was lifted on 11 May, which had blocked many from requesting asylum while allowing some families with young children to do so. After that block ended, the Biden administration nevertheless brought in a “presumption of ineligibility” for asylum for people who simply turn themselves in at the border. This has enraged immigration advocates, who call the new restriction an asylum ban. No matter what, the dice are loaded against Ortega and her family if the authorities conclude they are economic migrants.Around the corner from the shelter, fellow Venezuelan José Ocando, 28, was sleeping on the ground in an alley on a thin mat with some blankets.He had also been living in Colombia, with his wife, but was tracked down by members of a gang who told him his impoverished mother back in Venezuela had a debt outstanding and said they would kill them both if they didn’t pay up.“We left everything from one day to another. There was no time to figure out why these people wanted me to pay a debt I didn’t even know about,” he told the Guardian.They fled and took buses to Monterrey in northern Mexico. There they were within geofencing range to access the US government’s app, CBP One on a smartphone, to request a US asylum appointment.They tried every day for a month but couldn’t get an appointment, Ocando said. So they went to Matamoros, where the Rio Grande infamously claims lives and on 11 May produced scenes of frightened young children, some roped together and with little inflatable rings to stop them from drowning, clinging to their parents on the muddy riverbank as others waited up to their necks in the river, all on the wrong side of razor wire with gun-toting US troops beyond.Ocando and his wife made it across safely, although he was detained and expelled back to Mexico, while his wife was allowed in. She traveled to Utah to join an uncle – as those claiming asylum must give an address to the authorities – and after Ocando traveled the length of the Texas-Mexico border, he was allowed into El Paso.Now he’s found a part-time job carrying blocks on a construction site and is saving for a bus ticket to join his wife as they also await an asylum interview.“It’s been difficult, but I feel safe here,” he told the Guardian.Meanwhile, Fabiola Cometán, 45, also felt protected on US soil after decades of physical abuse by her two former partners, she said.The last straw was receiving a death threat from one of her sisters in their native Peru recently over a debt, going to police and being ignored and then threatened by three men who came to her door demanding the money be paid, she said.Before leaving Lima to join a small group of mostly Venezuelan migrants traveling together for safety overland to the US, she had to decide which of her children to take with her.She thought of the hazards of the Darién and the danger of extortion and sexual assault in Mexico, she said.She sobbed as she said she took her six-year-old son and left her nine-year-old daughter behind with another sister, to protect her from the greater risk of being raped or kidnapped.“My heart broke into pieces, but I had to leave her to come here and find a better opportunity for all of us,” she said.She plans to make her way to New York and go through the asylum process there. Her son, Luis, talked excitedly of going to school and one day seeing snow.
      Joanna Walters contributed reporting More

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      Mother of girl who died in US border patrol custody says agents ignored her

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      The mother of an eight-year-old girl who died in US border patrol custody said on Friday that agents repeatedly ignored pleas to hospitalize her medically fragile daughter as she felt pain in her bones, struggled to breathe and was unable to walk.Agents said her daughter’s diagnosis of influenza did not require hospital care, Mabel Alvarez Benedicks said in an emotional phone interview. They knew the girl had a history of heart problems and sickle cell anemia.“They killed my daughter, because she was nearly a day and a half without being able to breathe,” Alvarez Benedicks said. “She cried and begged for her life and they ignored her. They didn’t do anything for her.”The girl died on Wednesday on what her mother said was the family’s ninth day in border patrol custody. People are to be held no more than 72 hours under agency policy, a rule that is violated during unusually busy times.The account is almost certain to raise questions about whether the border patrol properly handled the situation, the second death of a child in federal officials’ custody in two weeks after a rush of unlawful border crossings severely strained holding facilities.Roderick Kise, a spokesperson for the border patrol’s parent agency, Customs and Border Protection, said he could not comment beyond an initial statement because the death remained under investigation. In that statement, Kise’s agency said the girl experienced “a medical emergency” at a station in Harlingen, Texas, and died later that day at a hospital.Alvarez Benedicks, 35, said she, her husband and three children, aged 14, 12 and eight, crossed the border to Brownsville, Texas, on 9 May. After a doctor diagnosed the eight-year-old, Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez, with influenza, the family was sent to the Harlingen station on 14 May. It was unclear why the family was held so long.Anadith woke up her first day in the Harlingen station with a fever and had a headache, according to her mother, who said the station was dusty and smelled of urine.When she reported her daughter’s bone pain to an agent, she said he responded: “Oh, your daughter is growing up. That’s why her bones hurt. Give her water.”“I just looked at him,” Alvarez Benedicks said. “How would he know what to do if he’s not a doctor?”She said a doctor told her the pain was flu-related. She asked for an ambulance to take her daughter to the hospital for breathing difficulties but was denied.“I felt like they didn’t believe me,” she said.Anadith received saline fluids, a shower and fever medication to reduce her temperature, but her breathing problems persisted, her mother said, adding that a sore throat prevented her from eating and she stopped walking.At one point, a doctor asked the parents to return if Anadith fainted, Alvarez Benedicks said. Their request for an ambulance was denied again when her blood pressure was checked on Wednesday.An ambulance was called later that day after Anadith went limp and unconscious and blood came out of her mouth, her mother said. She insists her daughter had no vital signs in the border patrol station before leaving for the hospital.The family is staying at a McAllen, Texas, migrant shelter and seeking money to bring their daughter’s remains to New York City, their final destination in the US.Anadith, whose parents are Honduran, was born in Panama with congenital heart disease. She received surgery three years ago that her mother characterized as successful. It inspired Anadith to want to become a doctor.Her death came a week after a 17-year-old Honduran boy, Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza, died in US health and human services department custody. Maradiaga traveled alone.A rush to the border before Covid-19 asylum limits known as Title 42 expired brought extraordinary pressure. The border patrol took an average of 10,100 people into custody a day over four days last week, compared to a daily average of 5,200 in March.The border patrol had 28,717 people in custody on 10 May, one day before pandemic asylum restrictions expired, which was double from two weeks earlier, according to a court filing. By Sunday, the custody count dropped 23% to 22,259, still historically high.Custody capacity is about 17,000, according to a government document last year, and the administration has been adding temporary giant tents like one in San Diego that opened in January with room for about 500 people.On Sunday, the average time in custody was 77 hours. More

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      Vigilante fears as Texas Republicans push for special unit to detain migrants

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      A new Texas bill could soon establish a taskforce using civilians that would have the authority to “arrest, apprehend or detain persons crossing the Texas-Mexico border unlawfully”, raising concerns around state-sponsored vigilantism.House Bill 20, authored by Republican state representative Matt Schaefer, seeks to create a new “border protection unit” that would deter migrants from unlawfully entering Texas using non-deadly force. It could include civilians with prior military experience among its members – such as national guards or former border patrol agents – who would be granted some immunity from prosecution for actions they carried out as members of the force.The HB20 bill itself was killed last week in the Texas legislature but then quickly resurrected as HB7 – a slightly different amendment to existing immigration legislation. The proposed unit was renamed the “Texas border force” and put under the command of the Texas ranger division.With a Republican majority in both the state house and senate, the fresh bill seems likely to pass.Bernardo Cruz, an attorney for the Texas chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the Guardian: “It’s really an unlawful action or exercise by the state government. We are really afraid it’s going to lead to more racial profiling of current migrants, and also that it affects everyone who lives across the border and the states.”Although immigration law and enforcement on the US border is under federal jurisdiction, border states like Texas argue they have the right to protect themselves if the federal government fails to do so, as per the “invasion” clause of the US constitution.Such a drastic move by a state to enforce federal immigration law is likely to end up in court.Schaefer, one of the Texas legislature’s most conservative members, said in a statement: “Enough is enough. If [Joe] Biden won’t defend this country, we will.”The news of the bill comes shortly after the expiration of Title 42, the pandemic-era policy that gave US officials authority to turn away migrants who came to the US-Mexico border claiming asylum in order to prevent the spread of Covid-19.Immigration and civil rights activists have condemned the legislation and said its potential passage was “disheartening”. These critics of the bill, such as the non-profit Human Rights Watch, say it will embolden state-sponsored vigilantism.Testifying in front of the Texas house state affairs committee in April, Bob Libal of Human Rights Watch said the border protection unit would lead to the “codification and expansion of a border policing, court and jailing system that has to date resulted in injuries, deaths, racial discrimination, abusive detention conditions, and a chilling effect on freedoms of association and expression.”The unit would be overseen by the Texas public safety department and would controversially give its officers broad authority to make arrests, build border barriers and search vehicles they deem suspicious.Rochelle Garza, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, told the Dallas Morning News that she was “appalled by this dangerous and unconstitutional proposal designed to violate federal law at the expense of the border community I call home”.She added: “Not only does this bill mobilize a new military force under the governor, it also allows the head of the force to deputize almost anyone to enforce federal immigration law, including vigilante groups that have targeted Texas border communities.”The ACLU’s Cruz said the unit would be an extension of Operation Lone Star, another state effort to secure the US border with Mexico, launched by the rightwing Republican governor, Greg Abbott, in March 2021.Operation Lone Star is a joint operation between the public safety department and the Texas national guard. It was established during an increase of migrants at the state’s border for which Abbott issued a disaster declaration.“Texas does not have the authority to enforce immigration law,” Cruz said. “There’s clear both federal law and supreme court precedent that establishes that the appropriate entity to enforce immigration laws in this country are federal law enforcement agencies.”Like Operation Lone Star, Cruz said the new border protection unit would lead to racial profiling.In a federal complaint filed in July last year, the Texas ACLU, along with the Texas Civil Rights Project, alleged state troopers excessively pull over Latinos as part of Operation Lone Star. The complaint also said at least 30 people were killed in state police car chases connected to Texas’s expansive border security operation.“We really afraid it’s going to lead to more racial profiling of migrants and also that it affects everyone who lives across the border and the states. There’s nothing in the language it just narrows it to specific area of Texas. So this really is an extremely broad attempt by the state of Texas, to really just militarize communities.“And that, of course, impacts everyone’s day-to-day life in a negative way.” More

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      Republicans aren’t fixing the migrant border plight. In fact they’re making it worse | Andrew Gawthorpe

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      Last week saw the end of Title 42, the Trump-era border restriction which was technically introduced as a health measure during the coronavirus pandemic. The policy allowed the Trump and then Biden administrations to expel without due process the vast majority of people seeking asylum at the United States-Mexico border. Given that the acute phase of the pandemic has passed, the end of the policy – which has been used about 2.7m times – was inevitable.But the end of Title 42 has also reignited the political firestorm over the US immigration and refugee system. Republicans have seemed to gleefully anticipate “chaos” and “disaster” at the border after the policy is lifted. Less biased observers are also concerned that the US refugee processing system will be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of people now expected to seek asylum. The Biden administration has come under fierce criticism from the left for a tough new policy of questionable legality which requires most refugees to seek asylum from abroad using a glitchy cellphone app called CBP One.Not to be outdone, Republicans have responded to the situation by promising to return to the failed and cruel policies of the past. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has passed a bill which would order the resumption of Trump’s border wall and eviscerate the right to asylum for those who reach the US. Meanwhile, speaking at a CNN town hall last week, Trump defended his policy of family separation and indicated that he would consider reinstating it if he became president again.All of these proposals show that even though there are many reasons to be concerned about the humanitarian situation at the southern border, Republicans have no solutions to it. Migration is driven by human suffering and the desire for a better and safer life, rooted in structural factors like the climate crisis, human rights violations and economic inequality. US government policies have some impact, but they’re not determinative. If people could be prevented from seeking asylum through angry posturing or cruel policies like family separation, then it’s hard to explain why 2019 – a year when Trump was president – saw the largest number of arrivals in 12 years.What’s even worse is that the policies that Republicans want to pursue in other areas of life only make the structural factors underlying migration more severe. The party is opposed to serious efforts to tackle the climate crisis, and it cut foreign aid to Central America under Trump – in some cases actually as punishment for the arrival of migrants at the border. Furthermore, the weak US gun laws which Republicans back create an “iron river” of firearms flowing into Mexico and Central America, where 70% and 50% of guns used in crimes are traced back to the US.The party also has a long history of promoting US military intervention in Latin America, which has caused instability and propped up the regimes that fuel the inequality and violence of today. Republicans are busy right now proposing that the US invade Mexico to take out its drug cartels, an action that would contribute to the country’s insecurity and undoubtedly fuel an increase in migration northwards.If Republicans wanted to actually help deal with the refugee crisis, there are many things they could do. They could join with Democrats to properly fund the system of refugee centers, in which the number of detainees is already exceeding capacity, and immigration courts, where some refugees have been waiting more than a decade for a hearing. They could try to advance proposals to work constructively with the nations with which the United States shares a hemisphere to tackle common problems like the climate crisis, economic inequality and gun violence. And they could work to expand, rather than contract, legal pathways to citizenship and asylum.The Biden administration is now working to do just that, announcing plans to set up immigration processing centers throughout Latin America, with the first to open in Guatemala and Colombia in the coming weeks. Eventually, the administration hopes to reduce the need for desperate people to arrive at the border by offering them an opportunity to apply for asylum from elsewhere. This should not only dial down the political heat at home, but much more importantly mean that would-be migrants don’t have to suffer the harrowing journey north, which for many ends in abuse or death.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut these plans can only be effective and sustainable over the long term with the cooperation of Republicans, both in Congress and in future administrations. For that to happen, the party would need to start seeing immigrants and refugees as fellow human beings in need of assistance rather than as enemies to be quashed. Only then can America really make progress in tackling this problem and escaping the cycle of cruelty in which it is currently trapped.
      Andrew Gawthorpe is a historian of the United States at Leiden University and the creator of America Explained, a newsletter and podcast More