It’s the US Government’s Immigration Policy That’s Illegal
The media talks obsessively about "legal" versus "illegal" immigration. But for years, the US government itself — including the Biden administration — has been engaged in a lawless, stealthy dismantling of our refugee asylum system.
Guatemalan Jose Aroche and his son in a makeshift migrant camp in Tamaulipas, Mexico, on July 10, after his family was returned to Mexico under Title 42. (Paul Ratje / AFP via Getty Images)
There’s a crisis on the imaginary line that separates the United States from Mexico, but it’s not the one politicians and media outlets have been talking about.
Earlier this year, the US political class was focused on a supposed “surge” in migration and on serious — but not unprecedented — failures in the treatment of unaccompanied minors. This distracted attention from two far more serious issues: the Trump administration’s misnamed Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), now discontinued, and the ongoing use of the US health code’s Title 42 to exclude asylum seekers from entering the country.
With these two measures, the executive branch all but dismantled the nation’s asylum system, creating a humanitarian catastrophe on the Mexican side of the southwestern border, where tens of thousands of asylum seekers have been forced to live in danger from disease and criminal gangs. But the executive’s assault on asylum seekers has also created a crisis for people on the US side of the border.
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