Washington Wednesday - Border crossing traffic jam

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 25th of August, 2021. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s time for Washington Wednesday.

Historically there have been seasonal surges in the number of migrants crossing the southern border. But this year is different.

During a recent visit to the southern border, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said border officials are facing a migrant surge he calls “unprecedented.”

MAYORKAS: The situation at the border is one of the toughest challenges we face. It is complicated, changing, and involves vulnerable people at a time of a global pandemic.

REICHARD: The Border Patrol reported that its agents encountered migrants more than 200,000 times in the month of July alone. That included a record number of unaccompanied minors.

Joining us now is Victor Manjarrez. He served for many years as sector chief for the U.S. Border Patrol. Today, he is Associate Director of the Center for Law and Human Behavior at the University of Texas El Paso. Good morning to you, sir!

VICTOR MANJARREZ, GUEST: Good morning.

REICHARD: The surge in border traffic is much bigger this year. But it’s exceptional in another way. Normally any surge in migration will peak in the spring and then tail off as the weather gets hotter. But that’s not the case this year, is it?

MANJARREZ: No, it's not. In fact, the idea of a seasonal surge really has tapered off probably in the last decade. Twenty years ago you could really see defined seasonal surges, where you can come up with the first of the year all the way through the spring, and kind of die off there in the summer. And so what we're seeing here is not a seasonal surge. It's just really a huge influx of activity.

REICHARD: I've read that three in 10 migrants crossing the border last month were from places other than Mexico and Central America. Many were from South America, the Caribbean and even from countries in the Eastern Hemisphere.

What’s fueling the changing demographics in border traffic? And what does that tell us?

MANJARREZ: The changing demographics is really interesting because if you look back the last 10 to 15 years, you've seen a subtle change of the demographics. Predominantly, it used to be about 97 percent of the individuals were Mexican nationals, and about 2.5 percent were from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, and the rest of that percentage was from the rest of the world. And so what we're seeing now is 30 percent to 35 percent of individuals other than Mexico. And so part of that you've seen lately has been, one is economics. We've really seen not only in the United States during the pandemic, have we seen, you know, the economy take a hit. It's taken big hits worldwide, and it's very impactful when you start looking at the countries in Central America and South America. So the primary driver really have seen—in terms of the Mexican nationals—have been economics. And secondly is messaging from the U.S. government has a big part of the play in terms of those surges and who comes to the United States.

REICHARD: The Biden administration’s focuses its response to the border surge is on what it calls root causes, the reasons why people from Central American countries are coming over. But a large percentage of people crossing over the border aren’t from Central America as you’ve referenced. Victor, will that force the administration to change its current approach?

MANJARREZ: I believe so. The idea of root causes, you know, being a practitioner and studying this for the last 35 years, is always the primary choice to address when we look at the border security ecosystem. But it’s a tough bear to tackle when you start addressing Central America and you start seeing larger groups of individuals coming from different parts of the world. For example, we're seeing larger groups of Ecuadorians coming in from South America. And that really has not been a historical track. And now we're starting to see people from European Bloc countries. So yes, the approach by the administration is going to have to be much broader than looking at root causes of Central Americans. You're looking at really globally.

REICHARD: As I understand it, the administration has released tens of thousands of migrants inside the country with orders to appear for future court hearings. That’s what critics call “catch and release.” Is that a common practice? Are these people tested for COVID, for example? How’s the administration in general handled people coming across the border that border agents detain?

MANJARREZ: Well, if you ask a border patrol agent that's nonsupervisory during the day in and day out, if they were to answer, they would say it's been a mess. There's no logistical way, a realistic way to test all these people for COVID. So they tell you, they're pretty fearful of the people that they're detaining, the people that come in contact, and the folks that they're setting up for a notice to appear down the road for a hearing. Historically, over half of the people never show up. And so I think that's the case that's going to happen with these individuals. They're just simply not going to show up down the road, you know, whenever they get calendared—12 months, 18 months down the road. So you know, the agents will tell you, it hasn't been handled very well. As an outsider looking at what's being done and knowing that the job of border security is risk mitigation, it looks like the Department of Homeland Security has failed at this point.

REICHARD: Leaves it to the ordinary citizen to try to deal with it all, I suppose.

MANJARREZ: It really does, and it leaves it to communities who are not resourced. And, quite frankly, it's not their responsibility to handle the job of the federal government.

REICHARD: I want to ask you about the “remain in Mexico” policy. That is, of course, the Trump-era policy that required migrants to stay in Mexico until their immigration court date. A federal judge in Texas recently ordered the administration to reinstate that policy. And just last night, the Supreme Court weighed in on the matter and said the Biden administration violated federal in trying to end that policy. So the administration will have to make “a good faith effort“ to restart the “remain in Mexico“ program. What kind of impact did that policy have when it was in effect under President Trump?

MANJARREZ: Well, the policy was extremely helpful. When you start looking at the flows and try to compare what happened, you know, what's currently happening in the last seven months, compared to maybe the seven months prior on that. There was a definite change of the flow where the flow was kind of a trickle. It wasn't much coming up because of a policy that was put in place about remaining in Mexico. Now, that trickle has become a flood. And the impact on that is that at some point, we're going to decide that the folks who need to come to court hearings to plead their case. The vast majority are economic migrants, but they're coming to claim a political asylum, and unfortunately, very few will qualify for that.

REICHARD: Final question: The Biden administration recently decided to hold off on trying to walk back Title 42. It would be helpful for you to explain what Title 42 is and how the government uses it.

MANJARREZ: Well, Title 42 is actually—there's a misconception that it's Customs and Border Protection, or the Department Homeland Security that implements it. Title 42 actually is under the authority of CDC, that allows the restriction of visitors or incoming individuals into the United States based on health reasons. It could be a communicable disease. It could be all sorts of things based on health reasons. And so, Title 42 became very helpful in terms of restricting that flow, which kept many folks in Mexico and other countries—just origin countries coming up. And so I would imagine that DHS and CDC are working pretty close together in terms of how long this will be extended, but ultimately, it becomes a decision by CDC to further extend it, if that's the case.

REICHARD: We will stay attuned to this story. Victor Manjarrez was sector chief for the U.S. Border Patrol and now is Associate Director of the Center for Law and Human Behavior at the University of Texas El Paso. Sir, thank you.

MANJARREZ: Thank you.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.