Examining Title 42 and the Need to Restore Asylum at the Border (Hearing, 2022)
Summary
Record of the hearing "Examining Title 42 and the Need to Restore Asylum at the Border" before the Subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation, and Operations of the Committee on Homeland Security, April 6, 2022, Serial No. 117-52, with Chairwoman Nanette Diaz Barragan presiding. In opening, Chairwoman Barragan said that for 2 years Customs and Border Protection has been expelling vulnerable migrants into Mexico and other countries without access to the asylum system. Ranking Member Clay Higgins also spoke. Witnesses were Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, Kennji Kizuka of Human Rights First, Dr. Adam Richards of The George Washington University and Mark Dannels, Sheriff of Cochise County, Arizona.
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“Examining Title 42 and the Need to Restore Asylum at the Border (Hearing, 2022).”
Archived at Pandemic Darlings, https://pandemicdarlings.com/source-documents/house-hearing-117th-congress-examining-title-42-and-the-need-to-restor-a3e652764a/
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[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
EXAMINING TITLE 42 AND THE NEED TO RESTORE
ASYLUM AT THE BORDER
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
BORDER SECURITY, FACILITATION,
AND OPERATIONS
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 6, 2022
__________
Serial No. 117-52
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
48-221 PDF WASHINGTON : 2022
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY
Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi, Chairman
Sheila Jackson Lee, Texas John Katko, New York
James R. Langevin, Rhode Island Michael T. McCaul, Texas
Donald M. Payne, Jr., New Jersey Clay Higgins, Louisiana
J. Luis Correa, California Michael Guest, Mississippi
Elissa Slotkin, Michigan Dan Bishop, North Carolina
Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri Jefferson Van Drew, New Jersey
Al Green, Texas Ralph Norman, South Carolina
Yvette D. Clarke, New York Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Iowa
Eric Swalwell, California Diana Harshbarger, Tennessee
Dina Titus, Nevada Andrew S. Clyde, Georgia
Bonnie Watson Coleman, New Jersey Carlos A. Gimenez, Florida
Kathleen M. Rice, New York Jake LaTurner, Kansas
Val Butler Demings, Florida Peter Meijer, Michigan
Nanette Diaz Barragan, California Kat Cammack, Florida
Josh Gottheimer, New Jersey August Pfluger, Texas
Elaine G. Luria, Virginia Andrew R. Garbarino, New York
Tom Malinowski, New Jersey
Ritchie Torres, New York
Hope Goins, Staff Director
Daniel Kroese, Minority Staff Director
Natalie Nixon, Clerk
------
SUBCOMMITTEE ON BORDER SECURITY, FACILITATION, AND OPERATIONS
Nanette Diaz Barragan, California, Chairwoman
J. Luis Correa, California Clay Higgins, Louisiana, Ranking
Emanuel Cleaver, Missouri Member
Al Green, Texas Michael Guest, Mississippi
Yvette D. Clarke, New York Dan Bishop, North Carolina
Bennie G. Thompson, Mississippi (ex Andrew S. Clyde, Georgia
officio) John Katko, New York (ex officio)
Brieana Marticorena, Subcommittee Staff Director
Natasha Eby, Minority Subcommittee Staff Director
Zachary Wood, Subcommittee Clerk
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Statements
The Honorable Nanette Diaz Barragan, a Representative in Congress
From the State of California, and Chairwoman, Subcommittee on
Border Security, Facilitation, and Operations:
Oral Statement................................................. 1
Prepared Statement............................................. 3
The Honorable Clay Higgins, a Representative in Congress From the
State of Louisiana, and Ranking Member, Subcommittee on Border
Security, Facilitation, and Operations:
Oral Statement................................................. 4
Prepared Statement............................................. 5
The Honorable Bennie G. Thompson, a Representative in Congress
From the State of Mississippi, and Chairman, Committee on
Homeland Security:
Prepared Statement............................................. 7
The Honorable John Katko, a Representative in Congress From the
State of New York, and Ranking Member, Committee on Homeland
Security:
Prepared Statement............................................. 7
Witnesses
Mr. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Policy Counsel, American
Immigration Council:
Oral Statement................................................. 8
Prepared Statement............................................. 10
Mr. Kennji Kizuka, Associate Director, Research and Analysis for
Refugee Protection, Human Rights First:
Oral Statement................................................. 21
Prepared Statement............................................. 23
Dr. Adam Richards, Associate Professor of Global Health and
Medicine, Milken Institute School of Public Health, The George
Washington University:
Oral Statement................................................. 31
Prepared Statement............................................. 32
Mr. Mark Dannels, Sheriff, Cochise County, Arizona:
Oral Statement................................................. 35
Prepared Statement............................................. 37
For the Record
The Honorable Nanette Diaz Barragan, a Representative in Congress
From the State of California, and Chairwoman, Subcommittee on
Border Security, Facilitation, and Operations:
Statement of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND).................... 83
Statement of First Focus on Children........................... 85
Statement of Daniella Burgi-Palomino, Co-director, Latin
America Working Group (LAWG)................................. 88
Statement of Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL).. 90
Statement of the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights.. 91
EXAMINING TITLE 42 AND THE NEED TO RESTORE ASYLUM AT THE BORDER
----------
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Homeland Security,
Subcommittee on Border Security,
Facilitation, and Operations,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 1:32 p.m., in
room 310 Cannon House Office Building, Hon. Nanette Diaz
Barragan [Chairwoman of the subcommittee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Barragan, Correa, Green, Clarke,
Jackson Lee, Escobar, Higgins, Guest, and Clyde.
Chairwoman Barragan. The Subcommittee on Border Security
Facilitation and Operations will come to order. Without
objection, the Chair is authorized to declare a recess at any
time. Thank you for joining today's hearing to examine the
administration's use of Title 42, its upcoming termination, and
the need to restore access to asylum at the border.
For 2 years, Customs and Border Protection has been
expelling vulnerable migrants into Mexico and other countries
without allowing them access to our asylum system. Vulnerable
migrants are fleeing gang violence and persecution in El
Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, political persecution and
violence in Nicaragua, and kidnapping and political turmoil in
Haiti. Because of Title 42, migrant families and adults have
been unable to apply for asylum at ports of entry throughout
the pandemic.
I would like to remind the committee that applying for
asylum is legal under U.S. and international law. Instead, CBP
expelled approximately 1.7 million migrants from the United
States and denied vulnerable individuals the opportunity to
seek protection.
While Title 42 order was supposedly based on a public
health rationale, the science was never sound. A former senior
official in the Trump administration called it a ``Stephen
Miller special.'' This order was a pretext to close the border
to Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Leading medical experts
have consistently argued throughout Title 42's use that there
has never been a solid public health justification for closing
our border just to asylum seekers. Even if this policy had been
based on public health, we must recognize that we have come a
long way since March 2020, when this policy was first
implemented.
With vaccines, masks, and other effective public health
strategies now widely available, the United States can safely
manage infections and the spread of the virus. There is no
justification for denying vulnerable migrants the legal right
to seek asylum. There is no justification for singling out
migrants as a COVID risk. Republicans stoke fear about migrants
bringing COVID-19 into communities, yet, they have fought to
lift indoor mask mandates since the beginning of the pandemic.
Republicans say there is no safe way to allow migrants to
travel into and throughout the United States, yet, they sued
the Federal Government to lift the mask mandate on public
transportation. We know masks and vaccines work. There is no
evidence that denying people access to our asylum system
prevents COVID.
However, we do know that Title 42 is harming migrants,
including those who are most vulnerable. In fact, one of our
witnesses here today has helped document nearly 10,000
instances of people being kidnapped, tortured, sexually
assaulted, and murdered after being expelled under Title 42.
Title 42 has also resulted in family separations. Parents who
traveled at the border with their children have been denied the
opportunity to request asylum. They are presented with two
options. They can wait for an indeterminate amount of time in
dangerous border towns where they are vulnerable to kidnapping
and violence. Or they can send their children to the border
alone to seek refuge. No family should have to make this
choice.
I would also like to point out that CBP is not uniformly
applying Title 42. For example, we have recently seen migrants
from Europe exempted from this horrible policy, while Black and
Brown migrants are quickly turned away. To be clear, Ukrainians
should be allowed to enter the United States and seek
humanitarian protection. But so should Haitians and Hondurans
and Guatemalans, Africans, and others fleeing violence.
The U.S. Government has the capacity to allow any migrant,
no matter which part of the world they are fleeing, the
opportunity to request asylum. The Department has a plan for
increasing its processing capacity and ending Title 42. I am
willing to work with them to make sure they are prepared to
process people in an orderly and humane manner.
We must also recognize that Title 42 did not stop migration
to the United States. Although our Nation's doors were shut to
asylum seekers for 2 years, migrants have been coming to our
borders in large numbers. Conditions were so dangerous at home
that they could not wait. Given the number of people already at
our doorstep just waiting for a chance to ask for help, it is
not surprising that the administration expects encounters to
increase after Title 42 is lifted. But this is America, and our
Government has the tools to safely process and screen people at
the border as required by law to determine whether they qualify
for asylum or other humanitarian protections.
With the proper planning, this is an opportunity for the
administration to uphold its promise of creating a just and
orderly process at the border. The Department has set up a
Southwest Border coordination center to coordinate planning and
operations across the interagency. It is working to get the
personnel and resources in place to not only process migrants
in a safe and humane manner, but also to provide migrants with
vaccines.
I am just disappointed that the Department still needs more
time to prepare to end Title 42. They have already had it for 2
years, and they have had 2 years to plan to end it. As the
Department deploys resources and personnel at the border, the
administration must also proactively coordinate with non-
Government organizations and border communities in winding down
the Title 42 order.
I look forward to hearing recommendations from our
witnesses on specific actions the administration should
consider in order to restore the asylum process in a humane
manner, as well as on the harms caused by Title 42. I want to
remind everybody, Title 42 is a CDC authority. It is an
authority, a public health authority, to stop the spread of
COVID-19. It is not an immigration law or a policy. It is a
public health authority.
[The statement of Chairwoman Barragan follows:]
Statement of Chairwoman Nanette Barragan
Thank you for joining today's hearing to examine the
administration's use of Title 42, its upcoming termination, and the
need to restore access to asylum at the border. For 2 years, Customs
and Border Protection has been expelling vulnerable migrants into
Mexico and other countries without allowing them access to our asylum
system. Vulnerable migrants are fleeing gang violence and persecution
in El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala, political persecution and
violence in Nicaragua, and kidnappings and political turmoil in Haiti.
Because of Title 42, migrant families and adults have been unable
to apply for asylum at ports of entry throughout the pandemic. I'd like
to remind the committee that applying for asylum is legal under U.S.
and international law. Instead, CBP expelled approximately 1.7 million
migrants from the United States and denied vulnerable individuals the
opportunity to seek protection. While the Title 42 order was supposedly
based on a public health rationale, the science was never sound.
A former senior official in the Trump administration called it ``a
Stephen Miller special.'' This order was a pretext to close the border
to Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Leading medical experts have
consistently argued throughout Title 42's use that there has never been
a solid public health justification for closing our border just to
asylum seekers.
Even if this policy had been based on public health, we must
recognize that we've come a long way since March 2020, when this policy
was first implemented. With vaccines, masks, and other effective public
health strategies now widely available, the United States can now
safely manage infections and the spread of the virus.
There is no justification for denying vulnerable migrants the legal
right to seek asylum. There is no justification for singling out
migrants as a COVID risk. Republicans stoke fear about migrants
bringing COVID-19 into communities--yet they have fought to lift indoor
mask mandates since the beginning of the pandemic.
Republicans say there is no safe way to allow migrants to travel
into and throughout the United States--yet they sue the Federal
Government to lift the mask mandate on public transportation. We know
masks and vaccines work. There is no evidence that denying people
access to our asylum system prevents COVID. However, we do know Title
42 is harming migrants--including those who are most vulnerable.
In fact, one of our witnesses here today has helped document nearly
ten thousand instances of people being kidnapped, tortured, sexually
assaulted, and murdered after being expelled under Title 42. Title 42
has also resulted in family separations. Parents who traveled to the
border with their children have been denied the opportunity to request
asylum.
They are presented with two options. They can wait for an
indeterminate amount of time in dangerous border towns where they are
vulnerable to kidnapping and violence. Or they can send their children
to the border alone to seek refuge. No family should have to make this
choice.
I'd also like to point out that CBP is not uniformly applying Title
42. For example, we've recently seen migrants from Europe exempted from
this horrible policy, while Black and Brown migrants are quickly turned
away. To be clear, Ukrainians should be allowed to enter the United
States and seek humanitarian protection. But so should Haitians,
Hondurans, Guatemalans, Africans, and others fleeing violence.
The U.S. Government has the capacity to allow any migrant, no
matter which part of the world they are fleeing, the opportunity to
request asylum. The Department has a plan for increasing its processing
capacity and ending Title 42, and I am willing to work with them to
make sure they are prepared to process people in an orderly and humane
manner.
We must also recognize that Title 42 did not stop migration to the
United States. Although our Nation's doors were shut to asylum seekers
for 2 years, migrants have still been coming to our border in large
numbers. Conditions were so dangerous at home that they could not wait.
Given the number of people already at our doorstep, just waiting for a
chance to ask for help, it is not surprising that the administration
expects encounters to increase once Title 42 is lifted.
But this is America, and our Government has the tools to safely
process and screen people at the border, as required by law, to
determine whether they qualify for asylum or other humanitarian
protections. With the proper planning, this is an opportunity for the
administration to uphold its promise of creating a just and orderly
process at the border.
The Department has set up the Southwest Border Coordination Center
to coordinate planning and operations across the interagency. It is
working to get the personnel and resources into place to not only
process migrants in a safe and humane manner, but also to provide
migrants with vaccines. I'm just disappointed that the Department still
needs more time to prepare to end of Title 42. They've already had 2
years to plan.
As the Department deploys resources and personnel at the border,
the administration must also proactively coordinate with non-Government
organizations and border communities in winding down the Title 42
order. I look forward to hearing recommendations from our witnesses on
specific actions the administration should consider in order to restore
the asylum process in a humane manner, as well as on the harms caused
by Title 42.
Chairwoman Barragan. Now, the Chair would like to recognize
the Ranking Member of the subcommittee, Mr. Higgins of
Louisiana, for an opening statement.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Madam Chair, and I thank our
witnesses for being here with us today, and for our panelist
that is going to be joining us virtually.
Title 42 is a legal mechanism that Border Patrol uses and
our law enforcement professionals use to try and stem the tide
of millions of illegal immigrants crossing our Southern Border.
We are losing our country down there.
In the summer of 2020, the criminal cartels were incredibly
well-funded, very well-organized. They have deep council within
their networks, within their chain of command, a lot of whom
have been educated in America. They know American laws and
American politics. These cartels run a vast, well-organized
network that traffics human beings and drugs into America. Why
are they coming to America? Because it is a big market for
them. It is their business model and they are very good at it.
By the summer of 2020, when it began to be part of the
narrative that there was a chance that then-candidate Biden
might win the Presidential election, the cartels used their
networks to begin prepping. They got ready. They beefed up
their infrastructure. Based on my data, on the ground through
Central America and Mexico all the way through Venezuela and
Colombia where the pipeline and the Western Hemisphere begins,
I was advised that we can anticipate as many as 2 million
illegal crossings in 2021.
It never happened before. I talked about those numbers and
it turned out I was off a little bit. I was low. We had 2.4
million illegal crossings in 2021. Their pipelines were filled.
They were not interrupted by a hurricane or a earthquake, which
was a possibility but didn't happen. They ramped up their
capacities in the summer. Nothing was stopping them. It is the
equivalent to having a passenger in every seat.
The cartels were making billions and sending untold amounts
of incredibly deadly drugs into our country. They had 2.4
million illegal crossings including 500,000 that were young men
plugged into the criminal networks in Mexico and Central
America hooked up through their cartel connections to cross, a
lot of them, owing their crossing money in the form of criminal
services by delivering sex, slave labor, prisoners, and tragic
souls who had fallen into that trap, and by carrying drugs. A
backpack at a time into our country. Where did those guys go?
They went deep into America to a neighborhood near you.
They all want to come here and be successful in their job
and their job is to be part of the criminal network. Maybe they
can get out of that trap, but it is very hard. You know, once
someone goes down that path, it is very difficult for a young
man that is involved in criminal networking, wherever he is, it
is very hard to get out.
So, they have crossed into our country and they have been
disbursed across America now. This is why your border
communities might not show this as part of the business model,
and boy, if you work for the cartel, you better not mess with
the cartel's business model, which requires passage across our
Southern Border for human trafficking and drug trafficking.
They have the category of human beings that cross over and
want to interact with professional law enforcement. They turn
themselves in. They are largely not violent. Some good people
looking for a better life. We prefer that they come in legally
and access our country through legal means, other than abuse of
the asylum system, which those laws should be strengthened.
But there is the other category of the young men that avoid
contact with law enforcement at the border. They are coming
here for no good. Title 42 has allowed us to stem the tide. If
we take Title 42 away, our country cannot sustain. We are
headed for 3 million this year. People looked at me like I was
crazy at the beginning of last year when I said 2 million. But
my sources were right and America cannot support it, regardless
of how peaceful you find communities here and there, son.
Our Nation cannot sustain this. I will say to my colleagues
across the aisle in good faith, if you have a problem with
Title 42, by all means use your Constitutional access to our
judicial system, challenge it in court, and defeat it. If you
think it is wrong and illegal, un-Constitutional, by all means,
defeat it judicially. Right now, it is a legal tool that is
needed on the border. If we take it away, I am afraid that the
demise of our Nation will accelerate. What we are witnessing
right now will become worse and worse and worse. Madam Chair, I
yield.
[The statement of Ranking Member Higgins follows:]
Statement of Ranking Member Clay Higgins
Thank you, Madam Chair. I am looking forward to this timely hearing
on the importance of Title 42 and to hear from all of our witnesses
today.
The Biden administration has created one of the worst border crises
in our Nation's history. Our Southern Border is completely out of
control and being overrun by lawlessness, all due to this
administration's open border policies.
In fiscal year 2021, Customs and Border Protection recorded nearly
2 million migrant encounters Nation-wide. To put that in perspective,
that number is larger than the populations of Alaska and Delaware, the
President's home State, combined.
For scale, our borders have been overrun by the equivalent of 2 new
States! Biden's own DHS estimates that many as 18,000 migrants per day
will attempt to cross the border after Biden ends Title 42. That's
roughly a brand-new Congressional district every 40 days.
This fails to account for hundreds of thousands of gotaways who
evaded law enforcement altogether. This administration and senior
officials at DHS seem to throw all logic and reason out the window.
Unfortunately, the Biden administration's announcement last Friday
to terminate the use of Title 42 authority to expel illegal aliens
arriving at land borders is a grave mistake and will only further
weaken our already crumbling border security.
The Trump administration began using Title 42 as means to keep the
American people safe by preventing the excessive spread of COVID-19
across our borders when the disease was wreaking havoc across the
world. And it was successful. More than 1 million illegal aliens--
mostly single adults--were denied entry into the United States.
On the campaign trail and from Day 1 in office, President Biden
pledged to ``follow the science.''
Well, his administration is refusing to lift the mask mandate on
public transportation, Democrats refuse to fully reopen the U.S.
Capitol, and according to the Speaker of the House, it is still too
dangerous to end proxy voting. Yet, the Biden administration is opening
our Southern Border to undocumented and largely unvaccinated
populations. Where is the ``science'' behind that?
Make no mistake, we have some of the finest men and women in law
enforcement protecting the sovereignty of the United States, but their
jobs are difficult, and they deserve to have every tool at their
disposal, every authority necessary to protect themselves, our borders,
and the American people.
In rolling back Title 42 authority, President Biden is
intentionally jeopardizing the sovereignty and security of our Nation.
To end this authority without a plan to secure command and control at
the border is horrendous. This change in policy is being made despite
knowing that it will cause border crossings to surge. Despite the
warnings of front-line agents and pleas from border States.
Congress cannot sit idly by and watch the sovereignty of the United
States be eroded.
We need to provide Customs and Border Protection officers and
Border Patrol agents with the means to manage the overwhelming flow of
illegal immigration and smuggling at the border. Axios reported there
are already as many as 25,000 would-be illegal immigrants amassed at
the border, waiting for the termination of Title 42.
Today, we are fortunate to have a true patriot and law enforcement
leader with us--Sheriff Mark Dannels from southern Arizona. I look
forward to hearing the sheriff's perspective on why Federal policies
are important to State and Local law enforcement and the impact the
Federal Government's policies have, either by following the law or
disregarding it, on local communities.
I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member. You
mentioned 2 million. I think Poland has welcomed 2 million
Ukrainians and they are the small size of New Mexico. So,
something like----
Mr. Higgins. I appreciate that Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Barragan [continuing]. Two million.
Mr. Higgins. I don't work for Poland. I work for the
citizens of America but thank you.
Chairwoman Barragan. OK. Well, I was just trying to put
into perspective the numbers that you gave. Thank you, Mr.
Ranking Member. I want to thank you for your opening remarks.
Members are reminded that the subcommittee will operate
according to the guidelines laid out by the Chairman and the
Ranking Member in their February 3 colloquy. Without objection,
Members who do not sit on the committee may participate in this
hearing. Members may also submit statements for the record.
[The statements of Chairman Thompson and Ranking Member
Katko follow:]
Statement of Chairman Bennie G. Thompson
April 6, 2022
We know that Title 42 was never about public health. From the
earliest days of the pandemic, the Trump administration sought to
exploit COVID-19 to advance his anti-immigrant agenda. Simply put, the
Trump administration used this order to prevent vulnerable migrants
from seeking refuge in the United States.
It is not lost on me that the same people who used the Title 42
order to stoke fear about migrants bringing COVID into communities were
among the first to lift indoor mask mandates and other pandemic
response measures. Now that we have increased access to COVID-19
testing, vaccines, and masks and things are returning to normal, the
Federal Government must also prepare to resume normal immigration
processing at ports of entry.
That means terminating Title 42, a policy that has harmed hundreds
of thousands of migrants. Latin Americans, Haitians, and other migrants
have the legal right to request protection under U.S. law. The Biden
administration must restore access and adjudicate asylum claims in a
fair and timely manner.
But we must also recognize that terminating Title 42 is complex
undertaking that requires significant planning. I expect to hear more
about the Department's plans and am willing to help ensure it has the
personnel and resources it needs to process migrants in an orderly and
humane manner.
This must be a robust whole-of-Government operation. I look forward
to hearing from our witnesses today on the impacts of Title 42 and
welcome any suggestions they have on how the administration can best
prepare for the wind-down of this policy.
______
Statement of Ranking Member John Katko
April 6, 2022
Thank you, Madam Chair. I am looking forward to this hearing and
the testimony from our witnesses today.
This week, I joined Leader McCarthy and several of my colleagues at
a meeting with the Border Patrol Council to discuss the crisis at the
Southern Border.
Just as we predicted, the number of daily border encounters has
been trending upwards since President Biden took office in January
2021.
The Biden administration has created an untenable situation--from
which it may take several years to recover.
The irresponsible decision to roll back Title 42 public health
authority, the halting of border wall construction, the lack of support
for front-line law enforcement personnel, the undermining of the
Migrant Protection Protocols, and the total absence of a long-term
border security plan have all only made matters worse.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is now seeing over 7,000
encounters daily and the Department of Homeland Security is said to be
bracing for a significant mass influx of nearly 18,000 migrants daily
when Title 42 ends.
As the United States finally gets a handle on managing the spread
of new variants and moves steadily toward a post-pandemic recovery, now
is not the time to end the use of Title 42 and jeopardize all that
progress--especially as numerous countries continue to struggle with
the rapid spread of COVID-19 and strengthening variants.
The very purpose of Title 42 is to prevent the introduction of any
dangerous communicable diseases into American communities. We should be
doubling down on protecting our economy and communities from health
threats, not weakening them.
Our border security and immigration system cannot handle any more
pull factors as the Biden administration has proven unwilling to secure
our Southern Border.
As we are witnessing, the administration continues to strip every
tool for managing the border crisis away from front-line law
enforcement. Transnational criminal organizations and drug cartels are
taking full advantage by highlighting the weak border security posture
of the administration, while profiting from this crisis.
The administration continues to roll back common-sense border
security measures, thereby feeding into a false narrative for would-be
migrants and encouraging them to come to the United States to seek
asylum.
Many migrants who make the dangerous journey to the United States
will not be eligible under the law for asylum, forcing them to seek
other ways to enter into the United States.
We know for a fact that cartels control who crosses the United
States-Mexico border. They charge migrants exorbitant fees knowing that
some will never be able to repay--leading many of the migrants with
only one option--to work off their fees. This work often leads them
into a trafficking situation here in the United States.
Drugs, such as fentanyl, methamphetamine, and other fentanyl-laced
drugs are pouring across the Southern Border and are destroying our
communities and ending the lives of thousands of Americans every year.
This has got to stop.
I look forward to hearing the testimony of the witnesses today,
especially from Sheriff Dannels, who is on the front lines in southern
Arizona and knows first-hand how the border crisis is impacting our
communities.
With that, I yield back the balance of my time.
Chairwoman Barragan. The Chair would now take the
opportunity to recognize the full committee Chair, but I do not
see him present. Therefore, we will move on. Next, I would
recognize the Chair of--the Ranking Member of the full
committee, Mr. Katko, but not seeing him either virtually. Mr.
Higgins, I will also move on and take an opportunity now to
welcome our panel of witnesses.
We have some of the witnesses here in person today and we
have a witness also appearing virtually, as well.
First, in person, Mr. Aaron Reichlin-Melnick is a senior
policy counsel at the American Immigration Council. Mr. Kennji
Kizuka is an associate director of research and analysis for
refugee protection at Human Rights First. Dr. Adam Richards is
associate professor at George Washington University School of
Medicine and a board member of Physicians for Human rights. Our
last witness is virtually, Sheriff Mark Dannels is a sheriff in
Cochise County, Arizona. Thank you for joining us virtually,
sir.
Now, without objection, the witnesses' full statements will
be inserted into the record. I now will ask each witness to
summarize his or her statement for 5 minutes, beginning with
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick.
STATEMENT OF AARON REICHLIN-MELNICK, SENIOR POLICY COUNSEL,
AMERICAN IMMIGRATION COUNCIL
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. Chairwoman Barragan, Ranking Member
Higgins, and distinguished Members of the committee and
subcommittee, my name is Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, and I am
senior policy counsel for the American Immigration Council, a
nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that the United
States provides a fair process for all immigrants. I am here
today and grateful for the opportunity to provide some
perspective on the effect of Title 42 on border operations and
management.
I am here today with one message. Title 42 has failed. Two
years and 1.7 million expulsions later, border encounters are
on track to hit record levels once again. As you will hear
today, the evidence is clear. Title 42 is neither a meaningful
public health measure, nor a successful deterrent. One
statistic in particular demonstrates this failure. A staggering
94 percent of Mexican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, and Honduran
single adult migrants apprehended in the last 2 years have been
expelled under Title 42.
If Title 42 were a successful deterrent, we would expect
such a near-total border shutdown to reduce apprehensions at
the border of that demographic, but that hasn't happened. Since
the start of fiscal year 2021, single adults from those 4
countries accounted for 1.5 out of 2.5 million total
apprehensions. So, how can this be? Because Title 42, itself,
caused a four-fold increase in repeat border crossings. In
fiscal year 2019, just 7 percent of people encountered by CBP
had previously crossed the border within the last 12 months. It
is now 27 percent and has been for the last 2 years. This
occurred for two reasons.
First, Title 42 almost entirely closed the ports of entry
to asylum seekers. Facing desperation and insecurity in
northern Mexico, even the most staunchly rule-bound asylum
seekers may feel forced to cross the border repeatedly in the
hopes of finding safety. Second, Title 42 expulsions to Mexico
carry no collateral consequences. Meaning that the most likely
outcome of a failed border crossing attempt is a quick
expulsion back to Mexico where people face violence,
insecurity, and the incentive to cross again.
Over the last 17 months, at least 820,000 border encounters
were repeat encounters of the same person on their second,
third, fourth, or even higher attempt. One person even told a
reporter that he had been expelled 30 times under Title 42. Not
only has this placed additional strain on the Border Patrol, it
has also painted a distorted picture of the true number of
people crossing the border.
Title 42 has also failed as a border management tool
because for logistical and diplomatic reasons, it cannot be
applied uniformly to all nationalities. Once a person is on
U.S. soil, they can only be expelled to a country which will
take them. Title 42 relies almost exclusively on Mexico as that
destination. But when it agreed to Title 42, the government of
Mexico placed significant limitations on the groups which could
be expelled there. If someone cannot be expelled to Mexico, it
is unlikely that they can be expelled at all. ICE does not have
the capacity to carry out mass expulsions via air. Some
countries place their own limitations on repatriation, like
Cuba. These reasons, among others, are why Title 42 has failed
as a border management policy.
As DHS prepares to lift Title 42 on May 23, its short-term
goals should be to simultaneously recreate an actual asylum
process at the ports of entry, ensure that those who cross
irregularly are not held in Constitutionally-inadequate
conditions, and free up Border Patrol agents from paperwork
that keeps them out of the field. To do this, DHS should surge
resources to CBP's Office of Field Operations for processing at
the ports of entry and increase resources within the Border
Patrol, including by detailing employees to act as Border
Patrol processing coordinators and standing up additional soft-
sided facilities.
Finally, we cannot discuss Title 42 in migration without
looking to countries like Ukraine and acknowledging that
migrants on the move around the world. Migration cannot be
turned off with the push of a button. So, border management
should not adopt the impossible goal of zero migration.
Operational control of the border can and should include
opportunities for desperate people to seek protection. Going
forward, we should be honest not only about the challenges and
costs of responding to migration, but also about the benefits
that we as a Nation receive from people who still view this
country as a beacon of freedom. In times of global
displacement, the United States has long stepped up and done
the right thing. By acknowledging that Title 42 was a failure,
we can use this as an opportunity to do better.
Thank you and I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Reichlin-Melnick follows:]
Prepared Statement of Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
April 6, 2022
Chairwoman Barragan, Chairman Thompson, Ranking Member Higgins, and
distinguished Members of the subcommittee: My name is Aaron Reichlin-
Melnick, and I serve as the senior policy counsel for the American
Immigration Council, a non-profit organization dedicated to the belief
that immigrants are part of our National fabric and to ensuring that
the United States provides a fair process for all immigrants, including
those who are seeking protection at the border. The Council works to
strengthen America by shaping how America thinks about and acts toward
immigrants and immigration and by working toward a more fair and just
immigration system that opens its doors to those in need of protection
and unleashes the energy and skills that immigrants bring.
The Council has long brought attention through research, advocacy,
and litigation to ways in which the Department of Homeland Security
(``DHS'') has responded to migrants at the border. In 2015, we helped
bring a successful lawsuit against the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector
challenging un-Constitutional conditions of confinement for adults and
children,\1\ and we are currently suing U.S. Customs and Border
Protection (``CBP'') for its unlawful policy of turning away asylum
seekers at ports of entry, in part through a practice known as
``metering.''\2\
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\1\ American Immigration Council, ``Challenging Unconstitutional
Conditions in CBP Detention Facilities,'' https://bit.ly/2PhdT0z.
\2\ American Immigration Council, ``Challenging Customs and Border
Protection's Unlawful Practice of Turning Away Asylum Seekers,''
https://bit.ly/32Eo4z5.
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I am grateful for the opportunity to be here today to help provide
some perspective on the effect of Title 42 on border operations and
management. Since Title 42 went into place over 2 years ago, the
American Immigration Council has tracked the policy carefully and
prepared research and analysis regarding its use, including through a
dedicated publication on Title 42 \3\ and extensive analysis of rising
border encounters in 2021 and the effect of Title 42 on the border
during that time.\4\
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\3\ American Immigration Council, ``A Guide to Title 42 Expulsions
at the Border,'' October 15, 2021, https://
www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/guide-title-42-expulsions-
border.
\4\ American Immigration Council, ``Rising Border Encounters in
2021: An Overview and Analysis,'' March 4, 2022, https://
www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/rising-border-encounters-in-2021.
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I am here today with one clear message: Title 42 has failed. As you
will hear from other witnesses today, public health experts have
repeatedly confirmed that Title 42 does not protect the American public
from COVID-19 and has led to severe consequences for thousands of
people seeking humanitarian protections in the United States. But on
top of those flaws, Title 42 has also failed as a border management
policy, leading to the highest levels of recidivism in decades. Two
years after Title 42 went into place and over 1.7 million expulsions
later, border encounters are on track to hit record levels once again.
The evidence is clear; Title 42 is neither a meaningful public health
measure nor a successful deterrent.
Title 42 itself has been a major contributor to increased border
crossings because it caused a significant increase in repeat border
crossings. In fiscal year 2019, just 7 percent of people encountered by
CBP had previously crossed the border that year. In the 2 years since
Title 42 went into place, the rate of repeat crossings rose to 27
percent. This is due in large part to the fact that under Title 42,
individuals expelled back to Mexico are not subject to any collateral
consequence. This lack of collateral consequences (other than the
inherent risk of death in the journey), combined with the desperation
and insecurity faced by people waiting at the border for the asylum
process to restart, strongly incentivizes many migrants expelled under
Title 42 to try again.
One statistic most obviously demonstrates Title 42's failure. Since
Title 42 went into effect, the Border Patrol expelled a staggering 94
percent of single adult migrants it encountered who were from Mexico,
Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador. If Title 42 were a successful
deterrent, we would expect such a near-total shutdown of the border to
lead to declining apprehension numbers. Nothing of the sort has
happened. Over the last 17 months, single adults from those 4 countries
accounted for 1.5 out of 2.5 million total apprehensions. In total,
there have been more than 750,000 repeat encounters under Title 42. Not
only has this placed additional strain on the Border Patrol, it has
also painted a distorted picture of the true number of individuals
coming to the border.
Emboldened by this expulsion practice, within less than a year of
Title 42 going into effect, smugglers began offering package deals that
allow multiple attempts at crossing the border for one fee.\5\ Last
year one person even admitted to reporters that he had made 30 failed
attempts to cross the border, each time being apprehended and expelled
back to Mexico.\6\
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\5\ Laura Gottesdiener, Sarah Kinosian, ``Migrant smugglers see
boost from U.S. pandemic border policy,'' Reuters, November 12, 2020,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-immigration-smuggling-insight/
migrant-smugglers-see-boost-from-u-s-pandemic-border-policy-
idUSKBN27S24A.
\6\ Kate Morrissey, ``Mexican adults are crossing the border again
and again in attempts to reach the United States,'' San Diego Union-
Tribune, July 11, 2021, https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/
immigration/story/2021-07-11/mexican-adult-migrants.
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In addition, DHS has been unable to expel most nationals of
countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
Since Title 42 went into effect, Border Patrol agents expelled 72
percent of nationals of those 4 countries encountered at the border. By
contrast, just 15 percent of nationals of other countries were
expelled.
This nationality disparity is due to one of Title 42's biggest
flaws as a border management tool; it relies almost exclusively on
Mexico as the final destination for most expulsions, and Mexico has
significantly limited the groups of people who can be expelled there.
Once a person is physically on United States soil, they can only be
expelled to a country which will take them. And if a person cannot be
expelled to Mexico, they generally must be expelled by airplane to
their home country. At the scale of current migration, this is simply
impossible. ICE does not have, and has never had, the capacity to carry
out mass deportation flights. And even if ICE had that capacity, many
asylum seekers come from countries like Venezuela or Cuba which do not
permit the United States to carry out mass deportation flights.
Thus, under the agreement with Mexico that allowed Title 42,
Mexicans, Guatemalans, Hondurans, and Salvadorans subject to expulsion
are sent right back to northern Mexico and incentivized to cross the
border over and over again until they make it through. Individuals from
other countries can cross the border between ports of entry and be safe
in the knowledge that they are unlikely to be expelled.
Meanwhile, ports of entry have been almost entirely closed to
asylum seekers for more than 2 years thanks to Title 42, which has
created perverse incentives for even the most staunchly rule-bound
asylum seekers. If they cannot return home and face the persecution
they fled, and if they find themselves unable to reside indefinitely in
Mexico, the only way for them to access the United States asylum
process is to cross the border and hope they are not expelled. These
reasons are why Title 42 has failed.
As DHS prepares to lift Title 42 on May 23, it must take common-
sense steps to restore orderly processing at the border. DHS should
immediately surge processing resources to the ports of entry and work
to make it possible to seek asylum once again at the ports of entry. At
the same time, DHS should work to increase processing resources within
the Border Patrol, including detailing other DHS employees to act as
Border Patrol Processing Coordinators and standing up additional soft-
sided facilities, all with the goal of ensuring that no individuals are
held in overcrowded and Constitutionally-inadequate conditions at the
border and that Border Patrol agents are not kept out of the field due
to do paperwork.
Finally, we cannot discuss Title 42 without noting that migrants
are on the move around the world, and not just on their way to the
United States. Last year, a record number of people applied for asylum
in Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans have fled political
persecution, some going north to the United States and others going
south to Costa Rica. In recent years, millions of Venezuelans have fled
their homes and sought refuge in surrounding nations. Most recently,
nearly 3 million Ukrainians have fled the invasion of Russia and sought
refuge in Poland and surrounding nations.
Migration, especially that of refugees, is not something that can
be turned off with the push of a button. Title 42 is ostensibly about
public health, but today many people speak of it purely in terms of
deterrence.\7\ Over the last decade, we have seen repeated cycles of
failed deterrence policies, none of which have stopped people from
coming to the border. Title 42 is the latest in that series of
failures.
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\7\ See, e.g., Letter from 22 Members of Congress to DHS Secretary
Mayorkas, March 29, 2022, https://www.cornyn.senate.gov/sites/default/
files/Texas%20Delegation%20Letter%20to%-
20DHS%20and%20HHS%20on%20Title%2042%20Cancellation.pdf (urging the
Biden administration to keep Title 42 in place as a deterrent).
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In times of global displacement, the United States has long stepped
up and done the right thing. Rather than search around for yet another
deterrent, we should be honest not only about the challenges and costs
of border management, but also about the benefits that we as a Nation
receive from people who still view this country as a beacon of freedom.
By acknowledging that Title 42 was a failure, we can use this as an
opportunity to do better.
the origins of title 42 and the creation of ``expulsions''
To understand how we reached this point, it's necessary to explain
the origin of Title 42 and the way in which it has been used
operationally at the border.
On March 20, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
(CDC) issued an order suspending ``covered aliens'' from entering the
United States. The ``covered'' group included only those individuals
who would be placed into ``congregate settings'' upon their entry to
the United States, exempting American citizens, lawful permanent
residents, individuals possessing valid visas, and anyone who was
entitled to enter the United States. As Professor Lucas Guttentag
wrote, the order was ``like a bullseye drawn on the side of the barn
around the arrow that has already been shot'' at asylum seekers and
those ``crossing the border without documentation.''\8\ However, the
CDC's Title 42 order did not provide any guidance or instruction as to
what would happen to individuals who had already entered the United
States and were taken into the custody of Customs and Border
Protection.
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\8\ Lucas Guttentag, ``Coronavirus Border Expulsions: CDC's Assault
on Asylum Seekers and Unaccompanied Minors,'' Just Security, April 13,
2020, https://www.justsecurity.org/69640/coronavirus-border-expulsions-
cdcs-assault-on-asylum-seekers-and-unaccompanied-minors/.
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It was DHS, not the CDC, which created a concept that had never
before existed in U.S. history; ``expulsions.'' An expulsion is an
exercise in raw power in which the U.S. Government takes a person
present on U.S. soil and forcibly sends them to another country. Unlike
a deportation, an ``expulsion'' carries no further legal consequences--
there is no ``order of expulsion'' entered by an immigration official
that carries collateral consequences, no opportunity to appeal, and no
process by which a migrant may challenge the decision to expel.
Thousands of people subject to Title 42 expulsions were not even
issued the standard ``A number,'' but were simply fingerprinted and
then pushed back across the border. Border Patrol agents did not even
interview migrants to learn about how they had been smuggled into the
country, a fact which Border Patrol agents told the Government
Accountability Office (GAO) ``negatively affected enforcement by
reducing opportunities to gather intelligence.''\9\
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\9\ U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-21-431: CBP's
Response to COVID-19 June 2021, at 42, https://www.gao.gov/assets/720/
714997.pdf.
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Title 42 was put into place at a time when the United States had
only limited, but not halted, international entry. Reporting suggests
that the Trump administration used Title 42 as a transparent attempt to
halt migration through the guise of public health, as Stephen Miller
had apparently sought to do for years. Throughout the pandemic, even
with border restrictions in place, millions of people drove or walked
across the U.S.-Mexico border through the ports of entry each
month.\10\
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\10\ Aaron Reichlin-Melnick and Jorge Loweree, ``Tracking the Biden
Agenda on Legal Immigration in the First 100 Days,'' American
Immigration Council, April 29, 2021, https://
www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/tracking-biden-agenda-
legal-immigration-first-100-days.
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As the Trump administration planned Title 42 in mid-March 2020, it
began negotiations with the Mexican government. On March 17, 2020, the
Mexican government issued a statement in response to news reports that
the Trump administration would soon begin expelling migrants, stating
that the government of Mexico had not received a formal request from
the United States Government to expel migrants. The government then
went on to note that if such a proposal were to be formally advanced,
the government of Mexico would consider it according to its own
sovereign interests.\11\
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\11\ Government of Mexico, ``Nota informativa RELACIONES
EXTERIORES,'' March 17, 2020, https://www.gob.mx/sre/documentos/nota-
informativa-relaciones-exteriores?State=published.
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Negotiations continued over the following days. On March 21, 2020,
the government of Mexico made the announcement that allowed Title 42 to
go into effect at the Southern Border. It declared that ``to minimize
the build-up in United States Border Patrol stations,'' it was
considering ``the regular internment of some citizens of El Salvador,
Honduras, and Guatemala that are presented to Mexican immigration
authorities.'' The statement went on to declare that ``The Mexican
authorities will decide on a case-by-case basis whether these migrant
persons will be admitted to [Mexico's] national territory. For the sake
of protecting vulnerable people, we will not accept minors or the
elderly, among others. Likewise, citizens of other nationalities not
mentioned previously will not be admitted. . . .''\12\ The statement
concluded with a note that the government of Mexico ``has estimated
that the number of migrant persons who will be subject to this legal
entry into Mexican territory will be less than 100 persons per day.''
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\12\ Government of Mexico, ``Nota informativa RELACIONES EXTERIORES
No. 11,'' March 21, 2020, https://www.gob.mx/sre/documentos/nota-
informativa-relaciones-exteriores-no-11.
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With that announcement, Title 42 began in earnest. The Mexican
government's estimates were proven wrong within days. Even though Title
42 was in effect for just 10 days in March 2020, the Border Patrol
carried out 6,984 expulsions of Mexicans, Hondurans, Guatemalans, and
Salvadorans. Over the next 2 years, DHS would carry out an average of
over 2,250 daily expulsions to Mexico.\13\
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\13\ DHS has not provided exact figures on the number of migrants
expelled to Mexico. As a result, this figure is an estimate, based on
the assumption that nearly 100 percent of the 1.6 million Title 42
expulsions of nationals of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador
since March 21, 2020, have been to Mexico. This assumption is supported
by the GAO's June 2021 report on CBP's response to COVID-19, which
indicated that through the end of December 2020, 92 percent of Title 42
expulsions occurred via land border to Mexico. U.S. Government
Accountability Office, GAO-21-431: CBP's Response to COVID-19, June
2021, at 41, https://www.gao.gov/assets/720/714997.pdf. Over that same
time period, 93.7 percent of all Title 42 expulsions were of nationals
of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, suggesting a near 100
percent rate of expulsions to Mexico for that demographic. See U.S.
Customs and Border Protection, ``Nation-wide Encounters,'' March 15,
2022, https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters.
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title 42's negative effect on border management becomes apparent in
2020
Within a week of Title 42 going into effect, much of the world shut
down due to the coronavirus. On March 30, Mexico's Ministry of Health
declared a National emergency and called for wide-spread lockdowns to
slow the spread of the pandemic. As Mexico closed down in April 2020,
the number of migrants taken into custody by the Border Patrol
plummeted to the lowest level for an April in 10 years. But despite
international lockdowns and the use of Title 42, migrants still came to
the United States seeking protection or a better life. In total, the
Border Patrol carried out 15,003 expulsions in April 2020, the
overwhelming majority to Mexico.
Once lockdowns lifted in Mexico, the number of migrants crossing
the border began picking up. Driven by deteriorating security
situations and increased political repression across Central America,
economic shocks caused by the pandemic, and two Category 4 hurricanes
in November 2020 that left hundreds of thousands homeless, migration to
the United States border rose every single month from May 2020 through
July 2021. By October 2020, border apprehensions were at the highest
level for a fall in 15 years, despite the fact that 91 percent of
people encountered by the Border Patrol that month were expelled. This
increase in encounters primarily consisted of single adult migrants, a
demographic which has made up nearly two-thirds of all border
encounters since Title 42 went into place (see Figure 1).
Despite the fact that Title 42 technically permits the Border
Patrol to ``seal the border'' in a way that had never been possible
before, there is almost no evidence that it has a deterrent effect.
This was true even in 2020, when Title 42 was used to the greatest
extent. This is because: (1) Rapid returns to Mexico incentivize people
to cross the border again, and (2) Mexico's limitations on the use of
Title 42 prevents it from being applied to nearly half of all people
who crossed the border in the last 2 years.
Since Title 42 went into place, 79 percent of single adults have
been rapidly processed at the border and sent right back to Mexico
without a deportation order. This arrangement incentivized repeated
attempted crossings for multiple reasons, including that:
Many individuals become more desperate following an
expulsion, as they lose stability, resources, and often their
personal belongings following expulsions. Because the border
region remains highly dangerous for asylum seekers expelled
back to Mexico, and because the Biden administration has not
resumed normal processing of asylum seekers at ports of entry
along the border, many people feel as if they have no choice
but to make a renewed attempt to seek safety in the United
States.\14\
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\14\ Kathryn Hampton, Michele Heisler, Alana Slavin, ``Neither
Safety nor Health: How Title 42 Expulsions Harm Health and Violate
Rights,'' Physicians for Human Rights, July 28, 2021, https://phr.org/
our-work/resources/neither-safety-nor-health/.
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Due to post-COVID changes made at the Department of Justice
in spring 2020, individuals who cross the border for the first
time under Title 42 are largely exempt from Federal prosecution
for misdemeanor ``improper entry.''\15\ They are also not
issued a deportation order.\16\ For individuals crossing the
border who are not planning on turning themselves in and asking
for asylum, this policy eliminates two possible negative
consequences of being apprehended by the Border Patrol. As a
result, following a failed attempt to cross the border, some
individuals are more willing to try again.\17\
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\15\ ``Major Swings in Immigration Criminal Prosecutions during
Trump Administration,'' Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse,
https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/633/.
\16\ American Immigration Council, ``A Guide to Title 42 Expulsions
at the Border,'' October 15, 2021, https://
www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/research/guide-title-42-expulsions-
border.
\17\ Andrew Rodriguez Calderon and Isabel Diaz, ``Strict Border
Enforcement Policies Put Migrants in Harm's Way. Title 42 Is No
Exception,'' The Marshall Project, May 26, 2021, https://
www.themarshallproject.org/2021/05/26/strict-border-enforcement-
policies-put-migrants-in-harm-s-way-title-42-is-no-exception.
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In fiscal year 2019, just 7 percent of people who crossed the
border had done so more than once. In fiscal year 2020, under Title 42,
this rose to 27 percent, the level it has remained in fiscal year 2021
and fiscal year 2022. According to CBP, the average number of times a
repeat crosser had been apprehended rose from 2.31 in fiscal year to
3.14 in fiscal year 2021, a 36 percent increase.\18\ In total, more
than half a million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border over the last
2 years have been repeat encounters of individuals who had already
tried and failed at least once before. Despite nearly twice as many
border apprehensions in fiscal year 2021 as in fiscal year 2019, the
actual number of people encountered at the border was only 45 percent
higher (see Figure 2).
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\18\ Department of Homeland Security, ``U.S. Customs and Border
Protection Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2023 Congressional
Justification,'' (2022), at CBP-4, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/
files/2022-03/
U.S.%20Customs%20and%20Border%20Protection_Remediated.pdf.
expulsions of unaccompanied children in 2020 revealed significant
difficulties in using title 42 on people who could not be expelled to
mexico
Once a person from any country other than Mexico, Guatemala,
Honduras, or El Salvador arrives on U.S. soil, DHS can only expel that
person under Title 42 if: (1) Their home country (or a third country
such as Mexico) agrees to accept them, or (2) if ICE has sufficient
resources to both detain the person and expel them by air within a
short period of time after they entered the country.
Throughout 2020, it became increasingly apparent that DHS struggled
to expel any individuals who could not be expelled to Mexico. To carry
out an expulsion by air, CBP or ICE is required to detain the
individual for potentially days while waiting for a plane to become
available. Certain countries also impose their own restrictions on
Title 42 flights due to COVID-19 restrictions. As of June 2021, DHS HQ
staff told the GAO that even though the United States had signed Title
42 repatriation agreements with 9 countries other than Mexico, due to
COVID-19 ``testing stipulations'' on expulsions imposed by multiple
countries, the agency was only carrying out Title 42 expulsion flights
to Colombia, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Ecuador.\19\
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\19\ U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-21-431: CBP's
Response to COVID-19, June 2021, at 41, https://www.gao.gov/assets/720/
714997.pdf.
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As the practice of expelling unaccompanied children in 2020 showed,
expelling large numbers of people by air quickly became impractical.
For nationals of some countries, the Border Patrol was required to hold
people in custody for 72 hours or longer until a repatriation flight
was available.\20\ When Title 42 went into place, the Trump
administration applied it to unaccompanied children, notwithstanding
Federal laws which provided unaccompanied children the right to have
their cases heard in immigration court. But there are no ICE detention
centers for unaccompanied children, and the Border Patrol didn't want
to hold children in their custody for days.
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\20\ Ibid.
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To carry out Title 42 expulsions of unaccompanied children, DHS was
forced to secretly rent hotel rooms and hire private contractors to
stand guard over hundreds of children while they waited for a
deportation flight.\21\ At one point, in order to meet the testing
requirements put in place by Guatemala, DHS was first testing
unaccompanied children to ensure that they weren't positive for COVID-
19, and then expelling them under Title 42--despite the lack of any
public health need to expel children who'd tested negative.\22\
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\21\ Nicole Narea, ``DHS is holding migrant children in secret
hotel locations and rapidly expelling them,'' Vox, August 21, 2020,
https://www.vox.com/2020/8/21/21377957/migrant-children-unaccompanied-
hotels-dhs-expulsion.
\22\ Dara Lind and Lomi Kriel, ``ICE Is Making Sure Migrant Kids
Don't Have COVID-19--Then Expelling Them to `Prevent the Spread' of
COVID-19,'' ProPublica, August 10, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/
article/ice-is-making-sure-migrant-kids-dont-have-covid-19-then-
expelling-them-to-prevent-the-spread-of-covid-19.
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Even with these extreme measures, DHS was unable to expel most non-
Mexican unaccompanied children as the number of children arriving at
the border began rising back to pre-pandemic levels in 2020. In October
2020, the last full month in which unaccompanied children were
expelled, only 35 percent of non-Mexican unaccompanied children were
subject to Title 42 (see Figure 3).
DHS's inability to expel more than 1,000 non-Mexican unaccompanied
children by air in a month foreshadowed the problems the agency would
have in carrying out Title 42 in 2021, when hundreds of thousands of
people arrived at the border who couldn't be expelled to Mexico.
title 42 breaks down further in 2021
On January 24, 3 days after President Biden took office, the
government of the Mexican State of Tamaulipas announced that it would
no longer permit DHS to expel families back to Tamaulipas if a child in
the family was under the age of 7.\23\ As a result of Tamaulipas'
refusal to accept the expulsion of families with young children, when
the numbers of families arriving at the border in south Texas began
rising in early February, the Biden administration was unable to expel
the majority under Title 42 and was forced to release thousands of
families.\24\ Likely as a result of this shift, the number of families
crossing the border in south Texas rose significantly in spring 2021,
and the Biden administration was unable to expel the majority of them
despite its desire to apply Title 42 to them.\25\
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\23\ Elliot Spagat and Valerie Gonzalez, ``Inside Biden's border
plans: How optimism turned to chaos,'' Associated Press, November 3,
2021, https://apnews.com/article/immigration-coronavirus-pandemic-
donald-trump-joe-biden-health-af698c3434cc31dfbce43a66fbf43b49.
\24\ Adolfo Flores and Hamed Aleaziz, ``Border Agents In Texas Have
Started Releasing Some Immigrant Families After Mexico Refused To Take
Them Back,'' Buzzfeed News, February 6, 2021, https://
www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adolfoflores/border-agents-in-texas-have-
started-releasing-some.
\25\ U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ``Nationwide Encounters,''
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/nationwide-encounters.
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Although the number of families coming to the border peaked in
summer 2021 and then fell throughout the fall and winter, other
demographic groups that could not be easily expelled under Title 42
began arriving in larger numbers in the second half of 2021. Nationals
of countries other than Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, and Mexico
could not be expelled to Mexico. Asylum seekers from primarily Western
Hemisphere countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Brazil, Ecuador, and
Cuba who came to the border and crossed could largely not be expelled
under Title 42.
The exception that proved this rule came in September 2021, when
nearly 15,000 Haitians arrived in Del Rio, Texas and sought asylum. In
response, the Biden administration decided to send a message and
massively ramp up expulsions by air to Haiti, a move that led to the
resignation of multiple administration officials and accusations of
racism. In order to carry out roughly 8,000 expulsions to Haiti in a
matter of 2 weeks, ICE had to sign an emergency contract with GEO
Group, a private prison company, to carry out dozens of charter
flights. The cost to the U.S taxpayer was $15,758,960, or nearly $2,000
per expulsion.\26\ Continued mass expulsions at that rate would quickly
bankrupt the agency.
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\26\ Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ``JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER
THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION,'' Sept. 27, 2021, https://sam.gov/opp/
91706b03fec145589a- 73c92959cbbf4d/view.
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the border is not open--but neither is it closed
However, just because individuals were not expelled did not mean
that they were released at the border. Our independent analysis of data
produced by DHS reveals that in the 13-month period from February 2021
through February 2022, 73.1 percent of Border Patrol encounters
resulted in a migrant being expelled, repatriated, or sent to an ICE
detention center (see Figure 4). In total, from February 2021 through
February 2022:
60.2 percent of Border Patrol encounters led to an immediate
expulsion under Title 42, either by bus or plane to northern
Mexico, or by plane to the migrant's home country;
19.9 percent of Border Patrol encounters led to a person
being released at the border under humanitarian parole, with a
notice to report to an ICE office, or with a notice to appear
in immigration court;
9.8 percent of Border Patrol encounters led to a person
being sent to an ICE detention center or to a State, local, or
Federal jail for criminal prosecution.
7.0 percent of Border Patrol encounters were of an
unaccompanied child who was sent to a shelter run by the Office
of Refugee Resettlement.
3.1 percent of Border Patrol encounters led to an immediate
deportation or other form of repatriation.
As Figure 5 shows, direct releases at the border over the last year
(primarily families who cannot be expelled to Mexico) occurred in just
1 in 5 encounters. Roughly 2 out of every 3 encounters resulted in a
failure to remain in the United States. For those individuals, the
border was decidedly closed. Despite significantly increased crossings,
CBP reports that its overall effectiveness at detecting and
interdicting migrants in fiscal year 2021 was 82.6 percent, higher than
both the agency's target of 81.0 percent and the previous result of
79.4 percent in fiscal year 2020.\27\
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\27\ Department of Homeland Security, ``U.S. Customs and Border
Protection Budget Overview, Fiscal Year 2023 Congressional
Justification,'' (2022), at CBP-4, https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/
files/2022-03/
U.S.%20Customs%20and%20Border%20Protection_Remediated.pdf.
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Importantly, when reviewing these numbers, it is important to
consider the original stated purpose of Title 42--limiting the spread
of COVID-19 from people crossing the border. But for the past 2 years,
millions of people have crossed the border legally at the ports of
entry each month. As Figure 5 shows, even at the height of the
pandemic, closures in April 2020, more than 6 million people crossed
the border. Until late 2021, there was no vaccine requirement to cross
the border legally, nor were people crossing the border at ports of
entry required to show a negative COVID-19 test.\28\ At no point during
the pandemic have U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents been the
target of any restriction on their entry from Mexico into the United
States, because DHS declared in March 2020 that the reentry of U.S.
citizens and lawful permanent residents was per se ``essential
travel.''\29\
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\28\ Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Emily Cochrane, ``The U.S. will reopen
its land borders for fully vaccinated travelers,'' New York Times,
October 12, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/12/us/politics/us-
canada-mexico-borders-open.html.
\29\ U.S. Customs and Border Protection, ``Notification of
Temporary Travel Restrictions Applicable to Land Ports of Entry and
Ferries Service Between the United States and Mexico,'' 85 Fed. Reg.
16547, 16548 (March 24, 2020).
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Since Title 42 went into place, people crossed the U.S.-Mexico
border at ports of entry more than 225 million times--over 100 times
greater than the number of people who crossed between ports of entry.
In short, people crossing the border between ports of entry has
constituted less than 1 percent of traffic across the U.S.-Mexico
border since Title 42 went into effect. Yet until very recently, only
the far smaller group was turned away on the basis of public health.
Despite claims that ``the border is open'' to migrants, since Title
42 went into place, over 1.7 million border encounters have resulted in
an expulsion and over 60,000 people have been deported or otherwise
sent back to Mexico under Title 8. By contrast, less than 1 million
people have been processed under normal immigration law and either
permitted to apply for asylum or sent to ICE detention centers. And
throughout that time, cross-border traffic has continued in the
millions, with people able to cross back and forth every day for
school, work, or simply a shopping trip--most without being tested for
COVID-19.
title 42 and increased migration has no impact on the flow of opiates
into the united states
The overwhelming majority of hard drugs such as fentanyl, heroin,
and methamphetamine enter the United States through ports of entry,
usually concealed in commercial traffic or passenger vehicles.\30\ At a
recent hearing in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
Committee, Diane Sabatino, the deputy executive assistant commissioner
of Customs and Border Protection, testified that just 15 percent of
commercial vehicles and only 2 percent of private vehicles are screened
for narcotics.\31\ As the Drug Enforcement Agency has long recognized,
commercial ports of entry are the primary means by which fentanyl and
other drugs enter the United States.\32\ Since the beginning of fiscal
year 2019, just 5 percent of opiates seized at the border (heroin and
fentanyl) have been seized by Border Patrol agents between ports of
entry, rather than at the ports of entry or internal vehicle
checkpoints.
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\30\ Customs and Border Protection, Drug Seizure Statistics,
https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/drug-seizure-statistics.
\31\ Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee,
Subcommittee on Government Operations and Border Management, ``Federal
Government Perspective: Improving Security, Trade, and Travel Flows at
the Southwest Border Ports of Entry,'' November 17, 2021, https://
www.hsgac.senate.gov/hearings/Federal-government-perspective-improving-
security-trade-and-travel-flows-at-the-southwest-border-ports-of-entry.
\32\ Salvador Rivera, ``DEA: Local drug sales now fueling most of
the bloodshed south of the border,'' Border Report, March 7, 2022,
https://www.borderreport.com/hot-topics/border-crime/dea-local-drug-
sales-now-fueling-most-of-the-bloodshed-south-of-the-border/.
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Despite these facts, defenders of Title 42 have at times attempted
to link the policy to the flow of opiates and other hard drugs across
the border from Mexico, arguing that an increase in migrants distracts
Border Patrol agents from their normal duties and provides
opportunities for drugs to be smuggled into the United States. This
argument is not supported by the data, which shows little change in the
pattern of drug seizures during times in which migration is high. As
demonstrated by Figure 6, the overwhelming majority of opiates continue
to be seized at ports of entry and vehicle checkpoints regardless of
whether migration is high or low.
Migration increased significantly in 2019, fell through early 2020,
increased throughout the second half of 2020, then doubled again in
2021. Despite these massive swings in migration across the Southern
Border, there is no evidence that Border Patrol seizures of opiates
between ports of entry were affected. Instead, the most likely driver
in recent shifts in fentanyl seizures is the port of entry restrictions
that were in place from March 2020 through November 2021 and which
correspond to a period of higher seizures at the ports of entry (see
Figure 6). This is because the restrictions caused reduced traffic
through the ports of entry and a shift in the demographics of the
smugglers, which made it possible for CBP to detect and intercept a
higher percent of narcotics.\33\ Not surprisingly, after the
restrictions ended in November and traffic across the border increased,
CBP's ability to detect and intercept illicit narcotics at ports of
entry has fallen, leading to reduced opiate seizures from December
through February.
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\33\ Deborah Bonello and Luis Chaparro, ``Mexican Cartels Are Using
More U.S. Citizens to Smuggle Drugs Because of COVID,'' VICE News,
November 5, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en/article/88aazb/mexican-
cartels-are-using-more-us-citizens-to-smuggle-drugs-because-of-covid,
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88aazb/mexican-cartels-are-using-more-
us-citizens-to-smuggle-drugs-because-of-covid.
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how the biden administration should implement an end to title 42
Over the last 8 years, in 2014, 2018-2019, and 2021, the United
States has gone through successive times of high humanitarian
migration. Each time, the response from the United States has been
similar; aggressive, enforcement-centric, and focused on deterrence.
Title 42 was intended to be the ultimate deterrent, blocking nearly all
who came across and implementing a near-total denial of access to
asylum. But Title 42 failed miserably in that goal, as this statement
has already articulated. Our experiences over the last decade have
shown that deterrence-based programs are limited in their effectiveness
at best and actively harmful at their worst. The overarching lesson
we've learned from a decade of attempts to slow or stop humanitarian
migration is that U.S. border policy alone cannot solve the
humanitarian crises that are driving migrants to the United States.
To prepare for the lifting of Title 42, DHS should immediately
surge resources and manpower to the Office of Field Operations that
would permit all ports of entry along the Southern Border to rapidly
restart humanitarian processing of asylum seekers at levels at least
twice or three times as high as in 2016. If necessary, Congress should
provide additional funding targeted solely to facilitate DHS processing
of individuals seeking asylum at ports of entry. DHS should cross-
detail employees from across the agency and seek volunteers from other
Federal agencies to assist with this mass operation to resume asylum
processing at ports of entry. The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR)
should also prepare additional shelter capacity and detail ORR
caseworkers to the border to assist with the increased number of
unaccompanied children crossing in recent months.
In addition, DHS should coordinate with humanitarian and legal
NGO's that operate on both sides of the border to spread accurate
information about restoration of asylum at ports of entry and to create
an orderly, dignified, and humane process to access asylum. The State
Department should simultaneously coordinate with Mexico to further
increase shelter capacity on the Mexican side of the border, to
encourage people to avoid the smugglers and instead come to the ports
of entry. In addition, the State Department should work with Mexico to
increase security surrounding the ports of entry, with a focus on
limiting cartel access to vulnerable asylum seekers who are waiting to
access asylum.
DHS should focus its strategy first on the ports of entry where
flow would likely be highest; San Diego, El Paso, and Brownsville, and
then smaller ports secondarily. The agencies should simultaneously
begin a messaging campaign encouraging people seeking asylum to come to
the ports of entry rather than crossing between POEs. The agencies
should extensively coordinate with Mexican and U.S. border NGO's and
build trust with allies, ensuring that those who are admitted are
paroled in or placed in Alternatives to Detention (ATDs) rather than
being sent to detention.
In addition to resourcing the ports of entry to resume asylum
processing, DHS should immediately cross-detail as many people as
possible to be Border Patrol processing coordinators and/or issue
contracts to third parties to act as temporary processing coordinators.
Congress should provide additional funding to the Department to help
facilitate this expansion of processing, ensure increased transparency
of Border Patrol spending and resource allocation, and provide for
additional supervision of Border Patrol processing.
The increase in humanitarian processing will serve two primary
goals; reduce the deprivation of rights that asylum seekers face in
Border Patrol custody, while simultaneously permitting the Border
Patrol to continue to carry out their primary law enforcement duties.
More efficient humanitarian processing of asylum seekers that frees
up Border Patrol agents to carry out their enforcement functions will
also mean that a higher percentage of migrants who are not seeking
asylum will be subject to the Biden administration's plan to restore
many of the deterrent-focused policies that existed prior to Title
42.\34\ While we do not condone the use of ``consequence-based''
policies, which generally lack sufficient procedural safeguards to
avoid refoulment of asylum seekers, there is little doubt that the mass
use of expedited removal and increases in immigration prosecutions will
have at least some temporary deterrent effect on migrants, especially
on those who were crossing the border repeatedly under Title 42. Thus,
after an initial influx of asylum seekers who have been waiting in
Mexico, the end of Title 42 is likely to lead to an eventual reduction
in border crossings.
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\34\ U.S. Department of Homeland Security, ``FACT SHEET: DHS
Preparations for a Potential Increase in Migration,'' March 30, 2022,
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2022/03/30/fact-sheet-dhs-preparations-
potential-increase-migration.
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However, in discussing the deterrent effect of certain border
policies, we must acknowledge that long-term border management should
not adopt a goal of zero migration. ``Operational control'' of the
border can and should include opportunities for desperate people to
seek protection in the United States. And we must acknowledge that the
flow of individuals seeking a better life has been a constant at the
U.S. border for over a century. Even the harshest border policies, like
the deliberate separation of families, did not stop people coming to
the United States. We cannot change human nature, and there is nothing
more human than seeking to protect yourself and/or your family,
including by striking out for a new land to seek a better life.
conclusion
Two years of evidence have shown that Title 42 was a failure.
Rather than continuing to try to deter our way out of migration, we
need to make a sustained investment in the creation of an orderly
humanitarian protection system that reduces the incentives to cross the
border between ports of entry and helps address the root causes of
migration. Medium- and long-term solutions to asylum processing require
time and political will, not simply yet another attempt to crack down.
The American Immigration Council looks forward to working with the
subcommittee on these solutions.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you for your testimony. I now
recognize Mr. Kizuka to summarize your statement for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF KENNJI KIZUKA, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, RESEARCH AND
ANALYSIS FOR REFUGEE PROTECTION, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST
Mr. Kizuka. Thank you, Chairwoman Barragan, Ranking Member
Higgins, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee. Thank
you for holding his timely hearing on the Title 42 policy and
for the opportunity to testify.
For over 40 years, Human Rights First has pressed the
United States to take a leading role in upholding human rights.
Today, my colleagues are supporting Ukrainian human rights
defenders, documenting atrocities, working with partners around
the globe to advocate for targeted sanctions against human
rights abusers, and providing pro bono legal representation in
the United States to refugees seeking asylum.
We applaud the Biden administration's decision to terminate
the Title 42 policy. It is not, and never was, a justifiable
public health response to the pandemic, as epidemiologists and
medical experts have repeatedly confirmed. Instead, the Title
42 policy has been used to evade U.S. asylum laws and treaty
obligations. Asylum seekers have been blocked from requesting
protection at ports of entry. People seeking refuge who are
overwhelmingly Black, Brown, and Indigenous have been expelled
to danger without an opportunity to apply for asylum.
Through field investigations and interviews with asylum
seekers, attorneys, and human rights monitors, our refugee
protection team has documented the grave human rights
violations that have been caused by this illegal policy. We
have tracked at least 9,886 reports of kidnapping, torture,
rape, and other brutal assaults on people blocked in or
expelled to Mexico under Title 42 during the Biden
administration. Many have been abducted and attacked by cartels
that target asylum seekers expelled to Mexico.
A Salvadoran family with 8- and 12-year-old children,
kidnapped almost immediately after being expelled to Mexico in
the middle of the night, were held captive for 20 days locked
in a storage room by men who repeatedly threatened to rape the
mother. A 29-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker turned away at
the Hidalgo port of entry was abducted, threatened at
knifepoint, and raped.
Black asylum seekers stranded in Mexico due to Title 42
face brutal violence. Mexican police beat an Afro-Honduran man
in the head with a tree branch leaving him blind in one eye. In
Tijuana, a man with a baton severely beat a Haitian asylum
seeker in front of Mexican police, who did nothing.
Title 42 has also inflicted horrific harm on children
blocked from protection and expelled to further danger. A 14-
year-old Cuban boy chewed off his fingernails from the stress
and anxiety of being expelled with his grandmother to Mexico,
where they had been kidnapped and forced to watch as their
abductors killed another kidnapping victim. A 13-year-old
Honduran girl, who had been raped in Mexico, was expelled with
her asylum-seeking mother back to Mexico despite threats
against them by the attacker.
Blocking requests for asylum at ports of entry endangers
lives. A young LGBT man fleeing political persecution in
Venezuela was turned away at the Laredo port of entry and
returned to highly dangerous Nuevo Laredo, where he and an
American friend, who was trying to help him, had been kidnapped
the day before. Following the instructions of Border Patrol
agents to present herself legally, a Guatemalan woman was raped
after attempting to seek protection at the San Ysidro port of
entry, which she found closed to asylum seekers. Unable to
request asylum at ports of entry because of Title 42 and facing
grave dangers in Mexico, refugees have been pushed across the
border between ports.
Recently, DHS has rightly exempted Ukrainian refugees from
Title 42, receiving them at ports of entry. We urge DHS to also
process asylum seekers from Africa, the Americas, and the
Caribbean who remain stranded in danger, unable to seek asylum
due to Title 42. This discriminatory double standard must end.
Restarting and ramping up asylum at ports of entry is also
crucial to ending the disorder caused by Title 42. In addition,
expulsions that return people to persecution or torture in
violation of U.S. laws and treaty obligations must end,
including expulsions to the deteriorating security and
political situation in Haiti. The administration should ensure
safe reception of people seeking asylum with support and legal
information provided through border shelter networks and should
work to establish a fair, timely, and accurate asylum process
in communities where asylum seekers will stay.
Coordination with and support to NGO's providing assistance
should also be strengthened. People fleeing for their lives
will continue to arrive at the border to seek asylum as they
have for more than 2 years with Title 42 in place. Extending
Title 42 will only exacerbate disorder and result in yet more
grievous attacks against refugees illegally blocked from
protection.
The United States has capacity to welcome asylum seekers
and treat them with dignity. Other countries with far fewer
resources host the vast majority of the world's refugees.
Individuals, communities, and NGO's around this country stand
ready to receive and welcome refugees. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Kizuka follows:]
Prepared Statement of Kennji Kizuka
April 6, 2022
Chairwoman Barragan, Ranking Member Higgins, and distinguished
Members of the subcommittee: On behalf of Human Rights First, I thank
you for the opportunity to testify on the Title 42 policy and the need
to restore asylum at the southern U.S. border.
Human Rights First is an independent, non-profit advocacy
organization that for more than 4 decades has pressed the United States
to take a leading role in promoting and defending human rights. The
organization was founded in 1978, at a time when the United States was
jailing and seeking to deport refugees fleeing repression in El
Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and the Soviet Union, among other
countries. Human Rights First worked with Members of Congress to pass
the landmark 1980 Refugee Act, which established a legal framework for
refugee protection. In our research and advocacy, we work with asylum
seekers, attorneys, and other human rights organizations to ensure U.S.
compliance with domestic refugee law and international treaty
obligations, and our refugee representation team recruits and trains
lawyers to provide pro bono legal representation to asylum seekers.
Over the years, Human Rights First has helped thousands of refugees to
receive asylum.
background
I am the associate director of research and analysis for refugee
protection at Human Rights First. Over the past decade, I have worked
in the United States, Mexico, and other countries to monitor and defend
the human rights of refugees. I graduated from the U.C. Berkeley School
of Law, order of the coif, and hold a Masters' degree in public policy
from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs. I was a
judicial clerk for the Honorable Rosemary S. Pooler on the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the Second Circuit. I currently serve as a member of the
Human Rights Watch advisory committee on children's rights.
I first joined Human Rights First as an Immigrant Justice Corps
legal fellow to represent asylum seekers before the asylum office and
immigration court. Subsequently, I have led Human Rights First's
efforts to document the impact of Trump and Biden administration
policies at the southern U.S. border that violate U.S. refugee law and
treaty obligations and return people to danger.
Since the Trump administration issued the first Title 42 order in
March 2020 to block and expel people seeking safety in the United
States without access to the U.S. asylum system, my colleagues at Human
Rights First \1\ and I have tracked the devastating human toll of this
illegal policy. We have spoken with hundreds of asylum seekers,
attorneys, and human rights monitors and published more than a dozen
reports and research updates, including with partner organizations,
that document the grave human rights violations caused by the Title 42
policy during both the Trump and Biden administrations: March 2022,
February 2022, January 2022, December 2021, November 2021 (with
Florence Immigrant and Refugee Rights Project), October 2021, August
2021, July 2021 (with Hope Border Institute), June 2021, May 2021 (with
RAICES and Interfaith Welcome Coalition), April 2021 (with Al Otro Lado
and Haitian Bridge Alliance), December 2020, and May 2020.
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\1\ Allison Perlin, Ana Ortega Villegas, Julia Neusner, Lamisse
Abdel Rahman, Martha Arreola, Miguel Pineda, and Rebecca Gendelman have
also conducted interviews on behalf of Human Rights First with people
turned away to danger due to Title 42.
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This research has identified nearly 10,000 reports of kidnapping,
torture, rape and other brutal attacks on asylum seekers and migrants
blocked in or expelled to Mexico by the U.S. Government under the Title
42 policy during the Biden administration alone.
On behalf of Human Rights First, I have also documented and tracked
the human rights catastrophe caused by the so-called ``Migrant
Protection Protocols'' under which tens of thousands of asylum seekers
and migrants have been forced to remain in Mexico facing similar
targeted attacks as they wait for U.S. immigration court hearings.
the title 42 policy's demise is a welcome and necessary step toward a
fairer, timelier, and less-traumatizing asylum process
Human Rights First welcomes the Biden administration's announcement
that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will terminate its
use of the Title 42 policy to illegally block people from seeking
asylum at U.S. ports of entry and halt expulsions of asylum seekers to
grave danger. The Title 42 policy reportedly came straight from the
xenophobic playbook of Stephen Miller--painting migrants as spreaders
of disease as a pretext to block refugees and immigrants from the
United States. But the Title 42 policy never had any reasonable basis
as a public health response to the pandemic, as epidemiologists,
medical experts, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
own senior scientists repeatedly affirmed.
For more than 2 years, under both the Trump and Biden
administrations, the policy has been used to evade U.S. immigration and
refugee law. Citing Title 42, DHS has blocked refugees from Belarus,
Cameroon, Colombia, Cuba, Ghana, Guatemala, El Salvador, Ethiopia,
Honduras, Haiti, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Russia, Ukraine,
Venezuela, and other countries from seeking protection at U.S. ports of
entry. With asylum largely unavailable at ports of entry, many asylum
seekers facing grave dangers in Mexico are pushed to undertake border
crossings between ports--fueling disorder and exposing them to added
harms. At the same time, DHS has used Title 42 to expel refugees, who
are overwhelmingly Black, Brown, and Indigenous, returning them to
systematic human rights violations in Mexico and to the countries of
persecution they fled.
Ending the Title 42 policy is a necessary first step toward
upholding the Biden administration's commitment to establish a more
fair, orderly, and humane immigration system. We remain, however,
concerned that the policy's continued implementation through May 23
violates U.S. refugee law and will continue to turn away yet more
refugees to grave harm.
During the implementation of the Title 42 policy's termination, DHS
must begin accepting requests for asylum at U.S. ports of entry along
the Southern Border, as required by U.S. law, and swiftly ramp up
capacity. Many asylum seekers stranded in Mexico due to Title 42 have
been waiting months or even years for an opportunity to seek protection
in the United States at a port of entry. Every day that they are forced
to wait in danger in Mexico is another day that they could be
kidnapped, raped, or murdered.
DHS can provide exemptions under Title 42 to asylum seekers, as the
welcome reception of many Ukrainians currently arriving at the Southern
Border confirms. Yet, the administration has chosen to continue to
block refugees primarily from Africa, the Americas, and the Caribbean
from applying for asylum at ports of entry. Racially discriminatory
access to asylum violates the fundamental principle of equal protection
under law, as well as U.S. treaty obligations. Asylum seekers should be
welcomed in the United States whether they are from Ukraine or Congo,
Cuba, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, or elsewhere.
We also urge the administration to immediately halt expulsions and
to instead process asylum seekers under U.S. asylum law, which bars the
return of asylum seekers to countries of persecution without an
opportunity to apply for refugee protection in the United States and
prohibits transfer to a third country where a person would face
persecution or torture. Last month, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals
found the Title 42 policy likely illegal and ruled that the U.S.
Government ``cannot expel [asylum seekers] to places where they will be
persecuted or tortured.'' We are deeply concerned that the
administration will continue to use Title 42 to expel asylum seekers to
danger, including by returning Haitians to escalating insecurity in
Haiti. Expulsions that would return individuals to persecution or
torture violate U.S. refugee law and binding international treaty
obligations.
As the administration restarts asylum at the border, it should halt
the use of the flawed expedited removal process, avoid sending asylum
seekers to immigration detention, and instead strengthen coordination
with and support to NGO partners providing crucial humanitarian
assistance at the border and case support services in destination
communities.
Human Rights First has previously published its recommendations to
the Biden administration to restore U.S. compliance with refugee law
and create a fair, timely, and less-traumatizing asylum process, which
are also summarized at the end of this testimony.
to safeguard lives and restore order, dhs should begin accepting
requests for asylum at ports of entry on the southern u.s. border
For years, DHS has illegally turned back refugees attempting to
approach U.S. ports of entry on the Southern Border to request asylum.
Since March 2020, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers have
cited the Title 42 policy to stop nearly all asylum seekers at the
international border line before they can reach a port of entry to
request protection, telling them asylum is not available in the United
States due to the pandemic. Many people who would have sought asylum at
a port of entry, including Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and
Venezuelans who historically arrived through ports of entry, have been
pushed to make dangerous crossings elsewhere, driving up the number of
encounters between ports of entry.
Blocking asylum at ports of entry further exposes asylum seekers
stranded in Mexico to abduction, torture, and extortion by the cartels
that target them. Indeed, our research has found that some organized
criminal organizations are working to actively prevent asylum seekers
from approaching ports of entry, as the restoration of port of entry
processing of asylum threatens the cartels' control and extortion
efforts. The Kino Border Initiative, a nonprofit organization assisting
migrants at the Arizona border, for example, reported that in Nogales,
Sonora ``organized crime has become so protective of the business they
have made from the border closure that they have begun watching the
ports of entry . . . and harassing migrants who attempt to be processed
there.''
U.S. ports of entry have unused capacity to process asylum seekers
currently arriving at the border. Since August 2021, processing at
Southern Border ports of inadmissible individuals, including asylum
seekers, has dropped by 49 percent (from 13,326 to 6,841 in February
2022). These numbers remain well below monthly processing during the
Obama administration when CBP processed 20,524 people at Southern
Border ports of entry in October 2016, for example. Since then, ports
of entry have received significant Congressional funding, including
most recently through the fiscal year 2021 and 2022 appropriations, to
upgrade and expand capacity (both in infrastructure and staffing) but
have processed far fewer individuals than in 2016. The administration
should leverage this capacity at U.S. ports of entry to immediately
begin processing asylum claims during the implementation of the Title
42 termination.
Blocking Asylum at Ports of Entry Endangers Lives
In our research we have identified many cases in which asylum
seekers blocked from asylum at ports of entry due to Title 42 have been
subjected to harm amounting to persecution and torture on return to
Mexico. DHS officers are also turning away asylum seekers trying to
request protection at ports of entry who have previously been kidnapped
and attacked in Mexico.
In one shocking incident, CBP officers turned away a Guatemalan man
who was covered in blood from having been tortured by the cartel that
abducted him as he tried to request protection at the international
bridge leading to the Laredo port of entry. The man had been held for
days and repeatedly brutally beaten by cartel members because he could
not provide the phone number of a family member in the United States to
extort. The man told me, ``If I return to my country, I'll be killed.
If I stay here, I'll be killed. I want an opportunity, for someone to
consider my case.''
When asylum seekers have arrived at a port of entry to request
protection, CBP officers have turned them back to Mexico without
allowing them to apply for asylum or referring them for a fear
screening required under U.S. law for expedited removals. For instance,
a young LGBT man fleeing political persecution in Venezuela managed to
approach the Laredo port of entry to request asylum in the company of
an American friend. He told me that CBP officers at the port refused to
process his request for asylum and forced him back across the
international bridge into Nuevo Laredo even though the day before the
young man and his friend had been kidnapped and extorted as they
searched for a place to stay for the night.
Even though DHS has refused to accept requests for asylum at ports
of entry under the Title 42 policy and U.S. law guarantees the right to
seek asylum at or after crossing the border, some Border Patrol agents
falsely instruct refugees to seek protection at ports of entry. A
Guatemalan woman was raped in Tijuana after she followed the
instructions of Border Patrol agents to present herself ``legally'' at
a port of entry. The woman, who was fleeing severe domestic violence
with her 6-year-old daughter, had initially crossed the border near
Mexicali and was expelled to Mexico under Title 42. The woman was
attacked after the family relocated to Tijuana to attempt to seek
asylum at the San Ysidro port of entry, where she found that DHS had
closed the port to asylum seekers due to Title 42.
Asylum Seekers Pushed to Undertake Dangerous Crossings Between Ports of
Entry
DHS's failure to comply with asylum law at ports of entry under the
Title 42 policy has pushed asylum seekers to undertake increasingly
dangerous border crossings away from ports. Analysis of Government data
by Human Rights First and the CATO Institute confirm that policies that
block or reduce asylum processing at ports of entry drive crossings of
the border away from ports of entry by asylum seekers who are unable to
access protection at official border posts. Reports by the Office of
Inspector General (OIG) for DHS have repeatedly confirmed that
restrictions on asylum at ports of entry push asylum seekers to cross
the border away from these ports. For instance, a Border Patrol
supervisor told OIG that ``the Border Patrol sees an increase in
illegal entries when [noncitizens] are metered at ports of entry.''
In fiscal year 2017, for instance, 99 percent of the total number
of Cubans and Haitians encountered at the Southern Border arrived
through a port of entry. However, after the launch of illegal turnback
policies that prevent asylum seekers from requesting protection at
ports of entry, including Title 42, the overwhelming majority have
crossed into the United States between ports. In fiscal year 2022
(through February 2022), with DHS effectively shuttering access to
asylum at U.S. ports of entry, just 0.2 percent of Cubans and 2.2
percent of Haitians arriving at the Southern Border entered through a
port of entry. More limited government data also shows that the
percentage of Nicaraguans and Venezuelans presenting themselves at
Southern Border ports has followed a similar downward trend, declining
from 32 and 56 percent, respectively, in fiscal year 2020, to just 0.2
percent in fiscal year 2022.\2\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ DHS has not made data on Nicaraguans and Venezuelans arriving
at ports of entry prior to fiscal year 2020 publicly available, but
reports on asylum wait lists suggest that high percentages of people
from these countries sought protection at ports prior to the
implementation of Title 42 and other restrictions on asylum at ports of
entry.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The rise in crossings of the Southern Border away from ports of
entry due to Title 42 has in turn led to increasing fatalities. At
least 650 people are known to have died while crossing the U.S.-Mexico
border in 2021, the highest figure recorded since the International
Organization for Migration began tracking in 2014. For instance, in
January 2022, a 7-year-old Venezuelan girl drowned in the Rio Grande
attempting to enter the United States with her mother near Ciudad
Acuna. In March 2022, Maria Angelica, a 4-year-old Nicaraguan girl,
drowned attempting to cross the Rio Grande. The child was swept away by
a strong current, according to her mother.
To safeguard the lives of asylum seekers stranded in Mexico and to
restore order at the border, DHS should begin to process asylum seekers
at ports of entry as it prepares for the full termination of the Title
42 policy.
the biden administration must halt title 42 expulsions that return
asylum seekers to persecution and fuel insecurity
The Title 42 policy has fueled thousands of heinous targeted
attacks against people seeking refuge in the United States who were
turned away by DHS without an opportunity to apply for U.S. asylum or
provided a fear screening required by Congress for expedited removals.
Every day that DHS uses the Title 42 policy to block and expel people
seeking refuge in the United States to places where they would face
persecution and torture--in violation of the D.C. Circuit's ruling--the
immense suffering this illegal policy has caused will continue to
escalate.
Between January 21, 2021 and March 15, 2022, Human Rights First
tracked at least 9,886 reports of murder, torture, rape, kidnapping,
and other violent attacks on people blocked in or expelled to Mexico
under the Biden administration's use of the Title 42 policy. This tally
includes incidents published in media, interviews of asylum seekers
carried out by Human Rights First, information supplied by attorneys
and humanitarian services providers at the border, as well as reports
catalogued through an on-going electronic survey conducted by the
organization Al Otro Lado. However, these nearly 10,000 reported
attacks are likely just a small fraction of the true scale of violence,
as the vast majority of people expelled or blocked from protection due
to Title 42 have not spoken with a human rights investigator, attorney,
or journalist.
Our research over the past 2 years confirms that the Mexican
cartels that exercise considerable territorial authority across an
expanding area of Mexico have adapted their criminal enterprises to
target and profit from kidnapping, torturing, and extorting asylum
seekers and migrants stranded in Mexico due to Title 42. They are
viewed by the cartels as obvious and easy prey due to their
nationality, race, gender, sexual orientation, and perceived ties to
U.S. family members, among other characteristics.
Murder
At least one person subjected to Title 42--a cognitively impaired
15-year-old boy with the functional development of a 5-year-old child--
was murdered after being expelled by DHS to Mexico. His mutilated body
was discovered after the boy fled alone across the border from Reynosa.
According to a declaration filed by a lawyer assisting the boy's family
after his killing, he was likely murdered for failing to pay a ``fee''
to one of the criminal groups that extort, kidnap, and attack people
who attempt to cross the border without their permission.
Two asylum seekers placed in the similarly dangerous ``Migrant
Protection Protocols'' are also known to have been murdered after DHS
returned them to Mexico, including a 19-year-old Cuban asylum seeker
and an asylum-seeking father from El Salvador.
Targeted Kidnappings and Attacks
People expelled under Title 42 to dangerous areas of the border
region in Mexico are targeted for kidnapping, rape, torture, and other
brutal attacks by the cartels and other organized criminal groups that
prey on asylum seekers stranded in Mexico due to U.S. border policies.
Our research on Title 42 has identified many reports of asylum seekers
kidnapped or attacked in the moments after DHS officers returned them
to Mexico through a U.S. port of entry. DHS has also expelled asylum
seekers who were previously kidnapped or attacked in Mexico, thereby
returning them to grave risk of further harm.
A 4-year-old Honduran boy and his pregnant asylum-seeking mother
were abducted immediately after DHS expelled them to highly dangerous
Nuevo Laredo. The terrified little boy was sick and not eating from the
ordeal. His aunt, herself a refugee granted asylum who lives in
Tennessee, told me the cartel that had abducted her family was
threatening to harm them if she failed to pay a $20,000 ransom. After
the FBI failed to answer her requests for help, she managed to cobble
together enough money from her savings and donations from other members
of her church to secure the release of her nephew and sister.
After DHS turned away a 29-year-old Venezuelan asylum seeker at the
Hidalgo port of entry, she was abducted and raped. A man impersonating
a Mexican immigration official near the port told the woman he would
help her register on an asylum wait list but instead took her to a
rundown hotel where he held her against her will, threatened her at
knifepoint, and sexually assaulted her.
DHS used Title 42 to expel to Mexico an 18-year-old Nicaraguan
political dissident who had twice been kidnapped there, leaving him
stranded in danger. After the second kidnapping in the border city of
Nogales, the young man managed to escape his abductors and fled across
the border to request asylum in the United States. But DHS officers
expelled him back to danger in Mexico using Title 42.
A Salvadoran asylum seeker was kidnapped along with her husband and
their 8- and 12-year-old children almost immediately following their
expulsion by DHS in the middle of the night to Mexico. They had crossed
the border near Reynosa to seek protection in the United States after
fleeing death threats by the gang that had brutally attacked the woman
and her husband in El Salvador. Finally free from captivity, but still
stranded in danger in Mexico, after 20 terrifying days locked in a
storage room by men who repeatedly threatened to rape her, the woman
told my colleague, ``[w]e cannot go back to El Salvador, and we cannot
stay here. Why won't the United States let us ask for asylum?''
Widespread Anti-Black Brutality
Black asylum seekers blocked in or expelled to Mexico under Title
42 have faced severe dangers with many reports of targeted anti-Black
violence and discrimination, including by Mexican authorities.
An Afro-Honduran asylum seeker who had been expelled to Ciudad
Acuna by DHS told me that Mexican state police had beaten him so
severely that he is now blind in one eye--a fact which was evident from
his completely clouded pupil. The officers, he said, had hit him in the
head with a tree branch. Unable to return home and with no way to seek
asylum in the United States due to Title 42, he did not attempt to
report the incident to authorities for fear of further retaliation.
In another incident we documented, a man with a baton severely beat
a Haitian asylum seeker in Tijuana in front of Mexican police, who did
not intervene. Another Haitian asylum seeker who witnessed the incident
told a Human Rights First researcher, ``[w]e felt like we couldn't say
anything because we don't have any power here and we were afraid for
our own lives. Haitians are targeted here . . . the police don't care.
We have to protect ourselves and look out for one another.''
Our analysis of survey data collected by Al Otro Lado found that 61
percent of Haitian asylum seekers blocked from U.S. asylum protections
were victims of crime while stranded in Mexico and that 1 in 5 Haitian
asylum seekers in the northern Mexican border region were victims of
abuse by the police, including beatings, extortion, and threats.
Violence Against LGBTQ Asylum Seekers
LGBTQ asylum seekers stranded in Mexico who are unable to seek U.S.
protection due to Title 42 have frequently faced attacks and
discrimination in Mexico due to their sexual orientation and/or gender
identity--as well as their race, nationality, and other
characteristics. Our analysis of the asylum seeker survey conducted by
Al Otro Lado shows that 89 percent of LGBTQ asylum seekers were the
victim of an attack or attempted attack in the prior month.
Among the incidents of anti-LGBTQ violence identified in our
research is a lesbian asylum seeker from Central America who was raped
and repeatedly subjected to homophobic attacks in Mexico. When I met
her in Ciudad Acuna, across the border from Del Rio, Texas, her arm was
broken and bruises were visible on her face. Unable to seek asylum in
the United States due to Title 42, she and her partner were sleeping on
the streets. A group of men had recently attacked and beaten her as she
sold sweets to passersby to try to survive.
A transgender Honduran asylum seeker was kidnapped and raped in
Piedras Negras after DHS used Title 42 to repeatedly expel her to
Mexico when she attempted to request protection in the United States.
The woman was forced to escape the kidnappers by jumping out of a
window, falling into a cactus that left painful needles stuck all over
her body. The woman told my colleague at Human Rights First that she
had fled Honduras after the gang that murdered and beheaded her brother
also attacked her because of her gender identity.
Horrific Harm to Children, Family Separations
The Title 42 policy has inflicted horrific harms on children
blocked from safety in the United States. Children expelled to Mexico
under Title 42 have been kidnapped, raped, and assaulted. Many children
blocked from protection due to Title 42 have been forced to live with
their families in dangerous informal tent encampments, including in
Tijuana and Reynosa, at the mercy of cartels and gangs that target
asylum seekers stranded there. On visits to these squalid camps, we
have repeatedly received reports of kidnappings and rapes of children.
A 13-year-old Honduran girl, who had been raped in Mexico and
threatened by the attacker after reporting him to the police, was
expelled by DHS back to Mexico with her asylum-seeking mother. Stranded
in danger and unable to seek protection due to Title 42, the girl's
mother told my colleague, ``My daughter is afraid to go out. She can't
go to school. She feels like [the man who raped her] is always watching
her.''
Armed men kidnapped a 7-year-old girl and her asylum-seeking mother
just blocks from the port of entry in Ciudad Juarez after DHS expelled
them there under Title 42. With no space available in local shelters,
the family had been searching for a place to sleep for the night when
they were abducted. Held captive for 2 months in a house with dozens of
other kidnapped women and children, the family survived on meagre
rations of potatoes and eggs. When we met them at a Juarez migrant
shelter after they managed to escape, the girl's mother told a Human
Rights First researcher they were hardly sleeping with nightmares from
the trauma they had suffered.
Expelling children to a place where they were previously harmed is
also deeply traumatizing. A 14-year-old Cuban boy chewed off his
fingernails from stress and anxiety after DHS expelled him and his
grandmother to Mexico under Title 42. There they had been kidnapped and
forced to watched helplessly as their abductors murdered another
kidnapping victim.
Title 42 has also driven family separations. In just the first few
months of 2021, more than 2,000 children crossed into the United States
alone after DHS expelled them to Mexico with their families. Some
separated children crossed alone because their parents had been
kidnapped. At a migrant shelter in Mexico, I met a mother desperate to
reunite with her 8-year-old daughter. After DHS used Title 42 to expel
the family, the woman was kidnapped in Reynosa as she searched for
something to feed her daughter. By the time the woman was finally
released, the girl had crossed by herself into the United States in
search of safety. Other families blocked from protection due to Title
42 have made the impossible decision to send their children across the
border to try to protect them from this horrific violence. A Honduran
woman in the Tijuana encampment told me that she felt she had no choice
but to send her daughters alone to the United States for fear they
would be raped by men who had been threatening to assault them.
Complicity by Mexican Authorities
In our research, we have found that Mexican migration officials,
police, military, and other authorities are frequently complicit in, if
not directly responsible for, kidnappings and other violence against
people turned back to or stranded in Mexico.
A Honduran asylum-seeking woman and other migrant women were
extorted, raped, and threatened by Mexican migration officers
immediately after DHS expelled them to Mexico. The officers demanded
money from the woman and other people with whom she had been expelled
and threatened to deport them. The officers locked the women in the
group in a separate room, forced them to remove their clothes, and
raped them. The woman told my colleague: ``We did what they asked of us
out of fear because they threatened to turn us over to a human
trafficking network.''
Mexican police kidnapped 23 Nicaraguans who had been attempting to
seek asylum in the United States at a checkpoint near Reynosa and
handed the group over to a Mexican cartel that extorted their relatives
for ransom. I learned of this mass kidnapping at a shelter in Reynosa
from two Nicaraguan women who told me that they had witnessed the
kidnapping and that some of the group, including their partners,
remained in the hands of the cartel. They were deeply concerned for the
safety of their loved ones and friends as at least one of the kidnapped
asylum seekers had gone missing even though his family had paid ransom
to try to secure his release.
After DHS expelled a Central American asylum seeker to Tijuana,
Mexican immigration agents turned him over to a cartel that held him
hostage in horrendous conditions for days. The man, who was fleeing
threats from the gang that had murdered his father, reported to a
colleague that the kidnappers beat other migrants in front of him,
killing one man. He was only released after his family paid ransom.
Fueling Criminal Cartels, Undermining Security
The Title 42 policy has not only been a boon to the brutal criminal
cartels in Mexico that target asylum seekers turned back by DHS for
kidnapping, torture, and extortion, but has reduced DHS's ability to
collect information on these cartels that are increasingly fighting to
exercise even greater control over border regions. The power of these
cartels in the Mexican border region was reaffirmed last month, when a
cartel that exercises significant control in Nuevo Laredo exchanged
gunfire with Mexican authorities across the city, detonated grenades,
and set 18-wheeler trucks ablaze on major highways, causing the U.S.
Government to shut down international bridges, temporarily close the
U.S. consulate, and advise U.S. citizens to shelter in place.
According to DHS officials, Title 42 undermines the agency's
ability to investigate cartel activity. A June 2021 Government
Accountability Office report confirms that Border Patrol officials have
concluded that rapid ``expulsions under Title 42 have negatively
affected enforcement by reducing opportunities to gather
intelligence.'' Because DHS has used Title 42 to quickly expel
individuals without any legal process in most cases, Border Patrol
agents reported that they ``are unable to thoroughly interview
individuals in custody,'' which ``limit[s] the opportunity to gather
information,'' including about cartels operating along the border.
Expulsions to Danger in Haiti, Disparate Impact on Black Asylum Seekers
DHS has used Title 42 to block Haitian families and adults at the
Southern Border from U.S. refugee protection, subjected them to
abhorrent abuse in CBP custody and immigration detention, and expelled
thousands to the country they fled without access to the U.S. asylum
system. Since March 2020, more than 17,000 Haitians have been turned
away by DHS under Title 42, many of them expelled directly to
escalating insecurity and political instability in Haiti. A March 2022
Human Rights Watch report on Haiti found that ``[t]he security
situation in Haiti has dramatically deteriorated in recent years'' with
powerful gangs exercising control over so-called ``lawless zones'' in
which over 1 million people live at the mercy of the gangs, which
``reportedly use sexual violence to terrorize and control
neighborhoods.'' U.S. Department of State legal advisor and former Yale
Law School Dean, Harold Koh, resigned from the Department after
concluding that the use of Title 42 to expel people seeking protection
to Haiti is ``illegal and inhumane.'' Daniel Foote, the former U.S.
Special Envoy for Haiti, also resigned his post, denouncing Title 42
expulsions to Haiti as ``inhumane [and] counterproductive.''
DHS's treatment of Haitians has exposed the disparate impact of
Title 42 on Black asylum seekers. Haitians encountered by DHS at the
Southern Border are 34 times more likely than Canadians, Romanians,
Russians, and Ukrainians (collectively) to be subjected to the Title 42
policy (26.7 percent versus 0.78 percent) than to be processed under
Title 8 U.S. immigration authority, based on my analysis of the
Government's data on Southern Border encounters between March 2020 and
February 2022. Civil and human rights leaders have noted that the Title
42 policy is ``infused with anti-Black racism'' and has been used ``to
attempt to deter people, particularly Black migrants, from seeking
refuge at the border.''
continuing the title 42 policy would further undermine u.s. leadership
in welcoming refugees
The Title 42 policy has undermined U.S. credibility, global
standing, and respect for international law. At a time when the U.N.
Refugee Agency has reported that the number of refugees displaced
around the world is ``the highest ever seen,'' the U.S. Government
cannot credibly encourage other countries to welcome and host the vast
majority of the world's refugees while simultaneously turning away
asylum seekers at our borders.
Many countries are providing refuge to people fleeing persecution,
conflict, and disaster. In a single month, more than 2.3 million
Ukrainians have arrived in Poland, which is more than double the number
of unique individuals encountered by DHS at the U.S. Southern Border in
all of fiscal year 2021. UNHCR estimates that Colombia, whose total
population is less than one-sixth that of the United States, is hosting
2.4 million displaced Venezuelans. More than 1.5 million refugees
reside in Uganda, making it one of the top 5 refugee-hosting countries.
Turkey hosts the largest refugee population in the world. The
proportion of refugees to the total population in Turkey is 10 times
higher than the United States. By contrast, in the United States
refugees and asylum seekers make up less than one-half of 1 percent of
the population.
The United States has had capacity to manage arrivals of people
seeking refuge here with the Title 42 policy in place, and we have the
capacity to welcome people seeking asylum who arrive after the policy
ends. But for months, there has been predictable fear-mongering with
dangerous rhetoric equating people seeking refuge in the United States
as an ``invasion.'' Already politicians and pundits are claiming that
the ``flood gates'' are open and that there will be a ``surge,'' an
``unstoppable wave,'' or a ``tsunami'' of arrivals. This dehumanizing
language falsely paints families and individuals seeking asylum in the
United States as a mob poised to wreck the United States.
But political dissidents and LGBTQ people escaping repression are
not an ``invasion.'' Families fleeing for their lives from deadly gangs
and cartels that dominate their countries are not a ``surge'' or a
``wave.'' Journalists and activists trying to carry on their work in
safety are not a ``flood'' or a ``tsunami.''
If Title 42 is intended to deter migration, as the calls for its
retention suggest, then it is a failure by this metric. For more than 2
years, the Title 42 policy has not stopped refugees forced to leave
their homes in search of safety for themselves and their families.
Refugees continue to arrive at the Southern Border, including people
who were previously expelled under Title 42.
Last week, at a border shelter, a Human Rights First researcher
interviewed a Haitian political activist forced to flee Haiti with his
wife after receiving death threats for his work. In December 2021, they
tried to seek asylum in the United States but were instead expelled in
shackles on a flight to Haiti after enduring days of horrendous
conditions in CBP custody. Because of continued death threats, the
couple were forced to flee Haiti a second time. Now they are stranded
in Tijuana, sleeping in a tent, hoping to attempt to request protection
in the United States. The man said, ``I'm really, really scared
because, if I get sent to Haiti again, I'll be dead.''
Extending the Title 42 policy for another 2 months or another 2
years will not, and cannot, stop refugee displacement, and it will not
stop the arrival of asylum seekers at the border. Its continued use
will only return yet more people who are running for their lives and
hoping to find refuge in the United States to death, torture, rape,
abduction, and other egregious human rights violations, generate
further disorder, and exacerbate insecurity at the border.
To safeguard lives, re-establish an orderly asylum process,
including at ports of entry, and comply with U.S. refugee law and
treaty obligations, the United States must completely and permanently
end the terror of the Title 42 policy.
recommendations
Congress should exercise its oversight authority, while also
providing appropriate appropriations, to ensure compliance with U.S.
refugee law and treaty obligations in the processing of asylum claims
and treatment of people seeking refuge in the United States.
Specifically, Congress should confirm that:
the Title 42 policy is brought to a swift and final end;
the asylum processes adopted by Congress through the Refugee
Act and subsequent legislation restart along the entire border,
including at ports of entry; and
people seeking refuge in the United States are not expelled
to persecution or torture in violation of U.S. law and treaty
obligations.
In addition, Congress should:
reject any attempt to write the dangerous and discriminatory
Title 42 policy into U.S. law;
adopt a Refugee Protection Act to modernize U.S. asylum
processes and bolster adherence to international refugee laws
and norms;
ensure that asylum seekers arriving at or after crossing the
border are processed safely within the United States--not sent
to unsafe third countries--and permitted to stay with families
and in communities as their cases are decided--not jailed in
immigration detention centers; and
direct and fund a humanitarian response to refugee arrivals
at the border, including support for and coordination with non-
profit service providers at the border and in destination
communities.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you for your testimony. I now
will recognize Dr. Richards to summarize your statement for 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF ADAM RICHARDS, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF GLOBAL
HEALTH AND MEDICINE, MILKEN INSTITUTE SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH,
THE GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Dr. Richards. Thank you for the opportunity to speak here
today to bring the public health and medical perspective
regarding the impact of Title 42 expulsions. My name is Adam
Richards, and I am an associate professor of Global Health and
Medicine at the George Washington University and a member of
Physicians for Human Rights Board of Directors.
So, as a physician, a public health professor, researcher,
and practitioner, I know with intimate knowledge the
devastating effects of COVID-19. Last year, I worked in a COVID
isolation and quarantine unit at the center of epidemic in Los
Angeles and saw the death and destruction from the novel
coronavirus. I personally lost both patients and colleagues to
COVID. Even for those who survive, COVID takes a toll on our
bodies and on our communities.
Here in the District of Columbia, I work in a COVID
recovery clinic and I take care of people with long-COVID. They
are exhausted but they can't sleep. They have chronic
headaches, shortness of breath, and difficulty concentrating.
They struggle to work and to take care of their families. I
take COVID-19 seriously and I want us as a country to do what
we can to reduce our risk of infection, death, and disability.
However, expelling asylum seekers under Title 42 has not
done anything to protect us from COVID. While PHR welcomes the
CDC's recently announced plan to rescind Title 42 order
effective May 23, the fact remains that public health should
never have been invoked to further a political decision to
block people from seeking asylum.
There is wide-spread scientific consensus that there is no
public health justification for Title 42. As Dr. Fauci stated,
COVID-19 transmission, ``is not driven by immigrants.''
Expelling migrants is not the solution to an outbreak. A
perspective article, last week's New England Journal of
Medicine, also applies a scientific lens to Title 42 expulsions
as completely lacking in epidemiological evidence and not
reflecting public health best practice.
The U.S. Government can implement border processing safely.
I am part of a national group of physicians and public health
experts that has sent a series of letters to both the Trump and
to the Biden administrations to repeatedly explain that Title
42 expulsions do not protect public health and to offer,
instead, common-sense, evidence-based, rights-respecting
recommendations for the safe processing of people who arrive at
the U.S.-Mexico border.
We have strategies to drive the risk of COVID-19 to near
zero with evidence-based public health tools. You know these--
masks, social distancing, testing, and vaccines--to safely
process asylum seekers at the border and ensure the risk to
public health in the United States is close to non-existent.
However, threats to the health of asylum seekers who are
prevented by Title 42 from crossing the border are very real. I
heard these accounts first-hand in Tijuana, Mexico from asylum
seekers who courageously described how they were extorted for
money and exposed to physical and sexual violence. They shared
how conditions on the border took a tremendous toll on their
physical and mental health. For additional stories on the
border, I suggest you read the report from July 2021 by a team
of PHR researchers who visited Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez to
document the health and human rights consequences of Title 42.
But if you aren't moved by stories and prefer quantitative
studies with numbers, then it is worth highlighting again the
work that Kennji Kizuka and his colleagues at Human Rights
First have done that tracked more than, let's see, 10, 20, 30,
9,866 reports of kidnappings and other violent attacks against
migrants and asylum seekers blocked in Mexico or expelled to
Mexico since Biden took office. That is nearly 10,000 violent
attacks that could have been prevented by ending Title 42.
You may be familiar with the historical legacy of using
public health as a pretext to justify racist and xenophobic
U.S. immigration policies. In the past, it was typhus,
trachoma, and HIV, though the ever-shifting medical labels
misused to exclude immigrants also went beyond so-called
contagions to include mental health disorders, chronic
disability, or even a poor physique. Today, the medical excuse
misused to exclude is COVID.
These exclusionary practices are not now, and were not
ever, based on sound public health principles. We, in medicine
and public health often pretend that we are immune from the
pernicious plagues of racism, xenophobia, and hate. Tragically,
these pathologies continue to propagate within our ranks. Not
anymore, not in our name. Tools exist to calibrate mitigation
procedures to safely process migrants in response to local
COVID conditions. There is no public health justification for
Title 42. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Richards follows:]
Prepared Statement of Adam Richards
April 6, 2022
Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today and to bring a
public health and medical perspective regarding the impact of Title 42
expulsions. My name is Adam Richards, and I am an associate professor
of global health and medicine at The George Washington University and a
member of Physicians for Human Rights' (PHR) Board of Directors.
As a physician and public health professor, researcher, and
practitioner, I have an intimate knowledge of the devastating effects
of COVID-19. Last year, I worked in a COVID-19 isolation and quarantine
center in Los Angeles when the city was at the epicenter of
transmission and death from the novel coronavirus. I personally lost
both patients and colleagues to COVID-19. Even for those who survive,
COVID-19 takes a toll on our bodies and on our communities. Here in
Washington, DC, I work in a COVID-19 recovery clinic, caring for
patients with long COVID who continue to suffer physical and emotional
consequences of the virus. They are exhausted but they can't sleep,
they have chronic headaches, shortness of breath, and difficulty
concentrating; they struggle to work and to take care of their
families. I take COVID-19 seriously and I want us as a country to do
what we can to reduce our risk of infection, death, and disability.
However, expelling asylum seekers under Title 42 has not done
anything to protect us from COVID.
While PHR welcomes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
(CDC) recently-announced plan to rescind the Title 42 order effective
May 23, the fact remains that public health should never have been
invoked to further a political decision to block people from seeking
asylum.
There is wide-spread scientific consensus that there is no public
health justification for Title 42 expulsions. As Dr. Anthony Fauci
stated, COVID-19 transmission ``is not driven by immigrants,'' and
``expelling [migrants] is not the solution to an outbreak.'' A
Perspective article published last week in the leading American medical
journal the New England Journal of Medicine also applies a scientific
lens to Title 42 expulsions as completely lacking in epidemiological
evidence and not reflecting public health best practice.
The U.S. Government can implement border processing safely. I am
part of a national group of physicians and public health experts which
has sent a series of letters to the Trump and Biden administrations to
repeatedly explain that Title 42 expulsions do not protect public
health, and to offer instead common-sense, evidence-based, rights-
respecting recommendations for the safe processing of people who arrive
at the U.S.-Mexico border.
As with the processing of people admitted from the ``Remain in
Mexico'' policy, the U.S. Government should coordinate and share
resources and information with Mexican public health authorities, the
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as well as with
international organizations like the International Organization for
Migration and the U.N. Refugee Agency and with U.S. and Mexican civil
society organizations. It is critical to use masks, social distancing,
and hand hygiene at border posts and during processing, while
minimizing delays that keep people stuck in congregate settings and
maximizing ventilation. The Government can repurpose larger locations
appropriate for non-congregate processing to scale up reception
capacities, should arrivals increase or shift. Testing capacity can be
enhanced with mobile testing units. The Government can expand
quarantine capacity and isolation capacity through the use of motels,
mobile units, or other individualized accommodations for those who need
to quarantine, under the jurisdiction of CDC or local health
authorities. During transportation, masks should be used as well as
well-ventilated, larger capacity vehicles to allow sufficient
distancing, and frequently-touched surfaces should be cleaned and
disinfected. People should be given health screenings and provided with
health information and education in their primary language. PHR
advocates for vaccines to be free, fair, and accessible and for
equitable vaccine allocation and distribution that prioritizes
marginalized communities, including all migrants, whether refugees,
asylum seekers, or unauthorized immigrants.
We have strategies to drive the risk of COVID-19 to near zero, with
evidence-based public health tools--masks, social distancing, vaccines,
and testing--to safely process asylum seekers at the border and ensure
the risk to public health in the United States is close to nonexistent.
However, threats to the health of asylum seekers who are prevented by
Title 42 from crossing the border are very real. I heard these accounts
first-hand in Tijuana, Mexico from asylum seekers who courageously
described how they were extorted for money and exposed to physical and
sexual violence; they shared how conditions on the border took a
tremendous toll on their physical and mental health.
A team of PHR researchers visited Tijuana and Ciudad Juarez last
year to document the health and human rights consequences of the Title
42 order. The July 2021 research report documented family separations,
abusive actions by U.S. and Mexico government officials, and acute
medical and psychological impacts on asylum-seeking children and
adults. Families described being held for days in crowded border
facilities and denied emergency medical care in U.S. detention,
including for sick children. During a pandemic, the U.S. Government is
detaining migrants in crowded, inhumane, and unsafe conditions for days
before expelling them, and is denying children necessary emergency
medical care. The psychological effects of expulsions and family
separation are profound. Of the 26 participants who were administered
validated screening tools by PHR, 25 (96 percent) screened positive for
at least one mental health diagnosis; 25 (96 percent) screened positive
for at least two disorders; and 23 (88 percent) screened positive for
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, and depression. Of the
26 who were administered psychological screening tools by the research
team, 23 people (88 percent) screened positive for PTSD related to
events leading to the separation of their family, 25 (96 percent)
screened positive for depression, and 24 (92 percent) screened positive
for anxiety. The crowding created by Title 42 expulsions has stretched
the Mexican health system to the breaking point. As a clinic
coordinator in Tijuana told PHR researchers: ``There are more and more
people needing help . . . The health care system has collapsed.''
Although the stated justification of the Title 42-based expulsion
is to prevent migrants from being held in congregate settings with the
attendant risk of COVID-19 transmission, the Government is still
placing migrants in congregate settings during the expulsion process.
PHR interviews found that every aspect of the expulsion process,
including holding people in crowded Customs and Border Protection
holding cells for days without testing and then transporting them in
crowded buses and planes, increases the risk of spreading and being
exposed to COVID-19.
As Kennji Kizuka from Human Rights First (HRF), before me, has
stated--but which bears repeating--HRF has tracked more than 9,866
reports of kidnappings and other violent attacks against migrants and
asylum seekers blocked in Mexico or expelled to Mexico since President
Biden took office. That is nearly 10 thousand violent attacks that
could have been prevented by ending Title 42 expulsions. People are
caught in an impossible situation, as they are unsafe in their own
country, unsafe in Mexico, and yet cannot seek safety in the United
States.
During one of my visits to Tijuana, I volunteered in a wound clinic
for people living on the streets, where I met people with treatable
infections who were prevented from accessing inexpensive and life-
saving care. One man's story in particular illustrates the health
conditions and health risks in overburdened Mexican border states. He
had a nasty skin infection, for which he'd been unable to receive
definitive treatment. His infection progressed to the point that he was
at risk for amputation or even losing his life. We explained that he
needed to go to the hospital for aggressive wound care and IV
antibiotics. He reluctantly agreed, but predicted that they would not
admit him: ``I have no money and I live on the street; they do not care
about people like me.'' On the next trip we learned that he had gone to
the emergency room but had not been admitted; he was given some oral
antibiotic pills and discharged to the street, where he died of his
treatable wounds.
Now that I'm in Washington, I conduct medical examinations remotely
for people who are unable to enter the United States due to the Title
42 order, including a man in substantial pain, with symptoms indicative
of severe gastrointestinal conditions, for which any delay in treatment
can result in life-altering complications or even death, and an elderly
grandmother who is hard of hearing and almost blind, with severe
rheumatoid arthritis and high blood pressure. She is terrified even to
step outside her shelter after being kidnapped by cartel members and
held for over 2 weeks with limited food and water. Other PHR clinicians
have conducted remote evaluations for asylum seekers in Mexico with
metastatic breast cancer, pregnancy at high risk for eclampsia with
signs of premature labor, peptic and gastric ulcers at risk of
perforation, repeated transient ischemic attacks and congestive heart
failure, hypoxic brain injury, late-term pregnancy with severe anemia,
and seizure disorders.
You may be familiar with the historical legacy of using the pretext
of protecting health to justify racist and xenophobic U.S. immigration
policies. In the past, it was tuberculosis and then HIV, and today it
is COVID. These exclusionary practices are not now, and were not ever,
based on public health principles. We in medicine and public health
often pretend we are immune from the pernicious plagues of racism,
xenophobia, and hate. Tragically, these pathologies continue to
propagate within our ranks. Not anymore. There is no public health
justification for Title 42 expulsions.
Congress should:
Direct the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to prepare
facilities and personnel to process asylum seekers along the
border, while implementing all necessary public health
measures, including:
Testing, hand washing, mask wearing, social distancing,
and vaccinations;
Processing of asylum seekers in well-ventilated, non-
congregate settings; and
Non-custodial quarantine procedures under the authority of
the CDC or local public health authorities;
Encourage the DHS to partner with civil society and
humanitarian aid organizations to further bolster capacity for
humane processing;
Follow and implement the ``Public Health Recommendations for
Processing Families, Children, and Adults Seeking Asylum or
Other Protection at the Border,'' published by public health
experts, while restoring regular operations and processing
along the border;
Redirect funding away from any policies that may negatively
impact the right to seek asylum;
Propose and pass new legislation to affirm the full range of
rights guaranteed to asylum seekers to counteract any executive
or departmental policies or directives that effectively
restrict individuals' access to asylum protection; and
Pursue policies that seek to create a safe environment for
asylum seekers to fulfill their long-established legal right to
pursue their asylum claims within the protection of the United
States, policies that meaningfully guard against re-
traumatizing asylum seekers and exposing them to preventable
health risks.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you, Dr. Richards, for your
testimony. I now will recognize our next witness who is
virtual, Sheriff Dannels, to summarize your statement for 5
minutes.
STATEMENT OF MARK DANNELS, SHERIFF, COCHISE COUNTY, ARIZONA
Sheriff Dannels. Good afternoon, Madam Chair Nanette
Barragan, and Ranking Member Clay Higgins, and distinguished
Members of this subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to
address this committee regarding the status of our Southern
Border from the aspect of a community/law enforcement
perspective. I have served our border communities for 38 years,
and prior to that as a member of our military serving in the
U.S. Army stationed here on Fort Huachuca within Cochise
County.
I have always been a genuine believer in the oath of office
to protect our country and now my county as a duly elected
sheriff for the last 9 years. I am the current president of the
Arizona Sheriff's Association, chair of the National Sheriff's
Association, Border Security, on the executive board for
Western State Sheriffs, and an active member of Southwest
Border Sheriffs.
All these associations share four objectives: Public
safety, National security, humanitarian, and now health, due to
the pandemic. In my submitted brief, I have shared with you an
overview of Cochise County and the history of our border. I
have personally experienced the good, the bad, the ugly of
being a border country. My office has also addressed border-
related crimes, smuggling of both illicit drugs, humans,
weapons, and cash by our transnational organizations, i.e.,
criminal cartels.
I am proud of our relationship with our law enforcement
partners that serve our communities. To begin, I want to thank
our Customs and Border Patrol officers and agents who have
worked tirelessly and diligently to protect this great Nation.
I want to thank our Governor, Doug Ducey, and our State
Congressional members for all their support, the men and women
of the Cochise County sheriff's office for their dedication and
commitment to keeping our communities safe, and to my fellow
sheriffs that stand united for the rule of law in the
protection of their communities. Finally, I want to thank my
citizens for their patience and support in a time of crisis and
disarray here at our borders.
To best understand my presentation is to understand where
we were approximately 18 months ago. My county was one of the
safest counties along the Southwest Border based on our
collective efforts in messaging and, yes, enforcement efforts
supported by legal consequences. We maintained a 100 percent
conviction rate on any drug smuggler within Cochise County. Our
border-related encounters were a manageable 400 per month.
Yesterday, I got the stats that we are over 7,000. Border-
related crimes were minimal at best, and most important, our
citizens felt safe with their quality of life being promoted
within their home and family.
Currently over the last year, the Southern Border
experienced 379 percent increase of encounters, 1.7 million,
representing over 160 countries, 180,000 pounds of meth, 10,000
pounds of fentanyl, 86,000 pounds of cocaine, 60 homicide
suspects, 488 sexual assault suspects, and 336 weapon
violations. Sadly, just in Arizona, over 160 migrant deaths in
our southern Arizona.
In February 2022, there was 163,539 encounters with 151,869
being released in our country. Only a little over 11,000 were
returned. Additionally, there was 53,464 got-aways and 67
deaths just in the month of February. In my area, we had 22,289
encounters with 21,209 being released and only 995 returned
with 7 deaths and 16,000 migrants--excuse me--got-aways.
What is the direct impact on my county? We have seen
infrastructure shutdown down here. Mainly what we deal with is
the got-aways. We receive between 900 to 1,000 smugglers come
to my country at $1,000 per person to drive them 3 hours to
Phoenix, Arizona in Maricopa County. That has created a huge
impact. Between July 1 of 2021 and February 2022, $1.1 million
just in border-related crime being booked into my local jail.
A couple personal stories. A citizen in my county driving
to her 65th birthday was struck by a 16-year-old smuggler who
had three undocumented individuals in the vehicle, drove
through a red light at 100 miles an hour, cut the car in half
and killed her instantly. Her son drove up in the scene moments
later. A home invasion where they broke into an elderly
couple's home. They ransacked the home while the couple
barricaded themselves in the bedroom.
I will say this, my fellow sheriffs and I tried to partner
with this administration to include the President of the United
States with high hopes to share a collective message,
collective action plan, support the rule of law, prioritize our
Southern Border, and provide updates to reference community
impacts and concerns, with little to no success.
By allowing our border security mission and immigration
laws to be discretionary, these criminal cartels continue to be
the true winners. They exploit mankind--the exploitation of
mankind is simply modern-day slavery. Allowing thousands of
pounds of illicit drugs in our country continue to erode the
core values of our families. Our voice of reason has been
buried in what I call the intellectual avoidance by this
administration and, yes, Members of the U.S. Congress.
Committees have neglected and we are abandoned to rely on our
own local and State resources to address border security that
is in a crisis.
I will close out with my 5 minutes. I will say this. Once
again, I thank this subcommittee for the invite and opportunity
and now stand ready to answer any questions by Members. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Sheriff Dannels follows:]
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you, Sheriff Dannels, for your
testimony. I want to thank all of our witnesses for their
testimony. I will remind the subcommittee that we will each
have 5 minutes to question the panel. I will start with myself
and recognize myself for 5 minutes.
My first question is for, you, Mr. Kizuka. The Biden
administration has committed to ensuring orderly processing at
the U.S. Southern Border. How would reopening ports of entry
help the administration achieve this goal?
Mr. Kizuka. Thank you, Representative Barragan. Opening
ports of entry along the Southern Border is a crucial step that
the Biden administration should take immediately to ensure that
asylum seekers can present themselves safely and in an orderly
manner and that their claims are processed under U.S. law that
Congress adopted. For 2 years now, those laws have been ignored
and asylum seekers have been turned away to danger, creating
additional disorder, creating unnecessary suffering of people
who return back to danger.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you. We have been hearing about
alleged, you know, the cartel information. We can all agree the
cartels should be shut down. I think that one of the things, by
opening our ports of entry, is you are going to have people
coming to the ports of entry as opposed to feeling like they
have to go to a smuggler.
My next question for you is, Mr. Reichlin-Melnick, in your
testimony you state that Title 42, an increased migration has
no impact on the flow of opioids into the United States. Our
Republican colleagues like to claim otherwise. Can you explain
the data that supports your statement?
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. Thank you, Rep Barragan. As former
CBP Commissioner Gil Kerlikowske said recently, the drugs that
are actually taking the lives of people here in the United
States, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl, almost
universally come through the ports of entry along the Southern
Border. Indeed, if you look at the CBP's own data, 95 percent
of all opioids that were seized at the Southern Border in the
last 2 years--sorry--in the last 2\1/2\ years, were seized at
the ports of entry or were seized at Border Patrol checkpoints
in vehicles. That is because as the DEA itself says, ``land
transportation via the interstate system is the most
predominant method of transporting illicit opioids.'' Smugglers
know that they can get drugs in through the ports of entry
because as CBP's Diane Sabatino testified in the Senate in
November, just 15 percent of commercial vehicles are screened
for narcotics at ports of entry and only 2 percent of passenger
vehicles are screened for narcotics.
Chairwoman Barragan. So, just to follow up on that. Which
rules are effective in preventing the flow of opioids into the
United States?
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. As CBP has said for years,
investments in technology at the ports of entry are the No. 1
thing that will help reduce the flow of opioids into the United
States. The cartels are smart and they know that where they can
get the drugs into the country is in tractor-trailers, in
parcels, in packages, and through the mail. There is very
little fentanyl coming across the border on the backs of
migrants in backpacks. Nearly all of it comes in through the
ports of entry.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you. Dr. Richards, my last 2
minutes is for you. As our understanding of COVID-19 has
evolved and improved, so have the measures society can take to
beat back the spread of the virus. I have two questions. What
preventive measures can the administration use to mitigate the
risk of COVID-19 infections at the border? No. 2, if these
preventive measures are taken, do you believe migrants would
pose a public health threat to border communities or the
Nation?
Dr. Richards. Thank you, Chairwoman Barragan, for those two
questions. So, I think everybody by this point probably knows
the answer to what we can do because it is the same things that
we have been using in this country. It is masking and social
distancing. One of the more effective things in this setting
would be to minimize the time that people spend in congregate
settings. So, detention is never a good idea. But limiting the
amount of time that people have to spend in those congregate
settings like detention centers, CBP facilities, would be
great. But if you have to, you know, keep people in those
facilities, we can definitely also keep them safe. Masking is
highly, highly effective. You know, I have worked for months in
this isolation center. People were coughing virus all around
me. I still to this day, I don't think, have, you know, gotten
COVID.
It is also worth noting that around the world, vaccination
rates have been going up. So, people who present to our borders
are more likely to be vaccinated. It is now over half of adults
from most of the countries that folks come from now and
encouraging vaccination is probably the single most important
tool that we would have. So, it is great to that there is
progress being made there.
There would not be a risk, I mean, there are over 50,000,
you know, there are tens of thousands of cases that are
transmitted internally in the United States. The number that
would potentially sneak through would be infinitesimally small
and not contribute in any meaningful way to transmission here.
So, there is no risk to communities. Thanks.
Chairwoman Barragan. Well, thank you for that. We know that
migrants that are coming now under other programs like Remain
in Mexico, the United States is actually vaccinating them as
they come in. So, there is opportunities to vaccinate migrants
as they come in.
So, now, I would like to recognize the Ranking Member of
the subcommittee, the gentleman from Louisiana, Mr. Higgins,
for your 5 minutes.
Mr. Higgins. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Melnick, Mr.
Kizuka, and Dr. Richards, I am going to ask you gentlemen a
couple of yes or no questions. It is not a trap, just to set up
my further question, and it is sort-of to all of you.
Dr. Richards, before I get started, thank you for working
with the homeless, sir, in the streets of Los Angeles. My
understanding is you are a part of that effort. So, as a
compassionate child of God, I thank you for that work that you
do.
So, Mr. Melnick, Kizuka, Dr. Richards, you are each an
American citizen? Sir, yes?
Mr. Kizuka. Yes.
Mr. Higgins. Yes? Yes?
Dr. Richards. Yes.
Mr. Higgins. Yes? OK. Do each of you believe that your
position on Title 42 is righteous, that you have eloquently
stated, each of you? Do you believe you are righteous and solid
in your position? Mr. Melnick.
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. I believe the facts and the data
support the conclusion.
Mr. Higgins. Yes, that is a--you may be a Congressman one
day, sir, up here. If you are solid in your position, may I
say, you can say, yes, I am solid in my position. Mr. Kizuka.
Mr. Kizuka. Our opposition to Title 42 comes from our
believe----
Mr. Higgins. I am not asking where it came from----
Mr. Kizuka [continuing]. In compliance with----
Mr. Higgins [continuing]. Just do you feel solid?
Mr. Kizuka [continuing]. U.S. law and treaty obligations.
Mr. Higgins. So, you feel it is a righteous position that
you presented?
Mr. Kizuka. It is the lawful position.
Mr. Higgins. OK. I am glad you said that. One would hope
that your lawful position and your determination is also based
upon what you feel is right. That is what righteous means. Dr.
Richards.
Dr. Richards. My statement reflects scientific evidence and
medical and public health science. Thank you.
Mr. Higgins. So, you feel solid about it? It is a right
position, a righteous position. I don't know why----
Dr. Richards. You seem to have----
Mr. Higgins [continuing]. We are avoiding the word----
Dr. Richards [continuing]. Different words.
Mr. Higgins [continuing]. Righteous, but I shall not----
Dr. Richards. I stand by my statement. Thank you.
Mr. Higgins. So, let me ask you gentlemen, in your
nonprofits have any of your nonprofits associated yourself or
signed onto lawsuits against Title 42 in Federal court? The
answer is no. You, Mr. Melnick, your organization has not. Mr.
Kizuka.
Mr. Kizuka. Yes, we have joined amicus briefs.
Mr. Higgins. Have you joined ACLU?
Mr. Kizuka. We have joined amicus briefs in opposition to
the Title 42. That is correct.
Mr. Higgins. OK. That is excellent. You were the young man
that said your position was lawful. Dr. Richards, is your
nonprofit, what is it called, CPI? Has it joined a lawsuit?
Dr. Richards. I am here with Physicians for Human Rights.
Community Partners International is another organization I have
been affiliated with. I am no longer on the board of directors
of that organization.
Mr. Higgins. Well, according to your background, I was just
reading your background, sir. It is nothing to be ashamed of.
Are you aware of--are you associated with any lawsuit against
Title 42?
Dr. Richards. Personally, I am unaware.
Mr. Higgins. OK. Well,----
Dr. Richards. I am with Physicians for Human Rights.
Mr. Higgins [continuing]. Let me just say, gentlemen, that
you could be. You could be if you feel passionately about your
position, you are an American citizen, by all means, pursue
your rights under the Constitution to seek legal remedy. But
right now, Title 42 is legal.
Sheriff, are you there, my brother?
Sheriff Dannels. Yes, Ranking Member.
Mr. Higgins. Sheriff, tell us what is going to happen on
May the 23 in your community if Title 42 is lifted.
Sheriff Dannels. We have great concern. Let me say that the
Border Patrol agents, Customs, to include local law enforcement
communities are very concerned because we have failed to
recognize border security throughout the last 18 months, which
has been a huge impact on my community, along with my sheriffs
I work with on the Southwest Border. Effective May 23, when
Title 42 goes away, this will compound our issues already in a
community that addresses public safety, National security, and
humanitarian with the deaths that we are seeing on our borders.
So, until we get a manageable, reasonable policy and direction
on our Southern Border, this will continue to get worse. It is
a slippery slope as we speak.
Mr. Higgins. It is pretty bad, isn't it, Sheriff? In the
interest of time, I only have 45 seconds remaining, my thin
blue line brother, how long have you been wearing a badge,
Sheriff?
Sheriff Dannels. Thirty-eight years.
Mr. Higgins. In 38 years, have you ever seen anything like
what we are facing right now?
Sheriff Dannels. This is the worst I have ever seen it.
Mr. Higgins. You are sworn to protect and serve the
citizens of your community, are you not?
Sheriff Dannels. Yes, I am.
Mr. Higgins. Your men, your women, as to serve, and wear
your badge, you're dedicated, compassionate, law enforcement
professionals, sir?
Sheriff Dannels. Yes.
Mr. Higgins. Well, some of us stand with them.
Sheriff Dannels. Thank you.
Mr. Higgins. God bless you. Sheriff, I am at your avail.
Madam Chair, I yield.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you, Mr. Ranking Member. Some of
us stand with law enforcement too and we did help fund, make
sure they had dollars under the American Rescue Plan. The Chair
will now recognize other Members for questions they may wish to
ask the witnesses. As previously outlined, I will recognize
Members in order of seniority, alternating between Majority and
Minority.
Members are reminded to unmute themselves when recognized
for questions. The Chair recognizes for 5 minutes, the
gentleman from California, Mr. Correa, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Correa. Thank you, Madam Chair. I want to thank the
witnesses, as well, for being here today. This is an important
hearing, not just because it is about Title 42, but it touches
about a very important issue, which is refugees to our Nation.
Not just at the border, to our Nation, the historical context
of how America has been open to refugees and what constitutes a
refugee or not.
The four witnesses, I believe, have talked more or less of
some of the facts that we have in front of us. But to me,
bottom line is, 42 has been used inconsistently to address a
bigger issue, which is the refugee challenge. I am very proud
that the Biden administration just waived 42 and gave temporary
protective status to the Ukrainian refugees.
A week and a half ago, I was at the Tijuana border, got off
a plane at the airport. Had Ukrainian refugees welcoming other
Ukrainian refugees to Tijuana getting ready to bring them over,
process them, so to speak, help them in the process to the
United States.
I just spoke to another Ukrainian activist who told me that
in Mexico, Tijuana, Mexico, they are right now, Mexican
government, setting up a soccer stadium to take in all of the
Ukrainian refugees because they are essentially overwhelmed by
the numbers. This is before the Russian refugees hit Tijuana,
Mexico. We are looking at a very interesting and challenging
situation. The question we have to ask ourselves as Americans
is are we open to refugees or not? Mr. Ranking Member, your
witness very correctly stated the ill effects of having cartels
in the middle of the smuggling business. Eight- to $10,000 per
person is what these folks pay to get to the Mexican border,
U.S.-Mexico border. I got to figure, you sell everything you
own, your soul into human slavery to get to the U.S. border.
Then you have very ugly outcomes.
I ask myself we can debate the facts. Let's talk about
solutions, folks. I am going to ask the witnesses how practical
would it be to set up a system where you can apply for refugee
status in your home country? Ten thousand dollars you pay to
get to the border. I was talking to a Central American
ambassador that told me 80 percent of the ladies, the women, by
the time they get to the U.S.-Mexico border, are either raped
or sexually assaulted. A horrible situation. I would like us to
reach across the aisle here and not talk about, you know, the
negativity, but talk about the challenge, the problem in front
of us. How can we get legitimate refugees to apply for refugee
status in a safe manner that doesn't cost them $10,000? They
don't have to expose themselves to a 1,000-mile trip and be in
harm's way.
Can we legitimately fund? Can we fund refugee application
processes in their home countries, and have legitimate outcomes
in a timely manner? I have like a minute left, but if any of
the witnesses would care to answer that question. Is that
something we can do? I got 55 seconds. Come on, folks, come on.
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. Thank you, Representative Correa. The
answer is is that we can support refugee processing in other
countries. The correct time to do that would have been years
ago. But we also have to recognize that there are some people
who can't wait. If the cartels or MS-13 shows up at your home
tomorrow and says if you don't leave, we are going to kill you
and we are going to take your children, it is nice to know that
you could have applied for refugee status, but you might have
to leave the next day. All of us who have been to the border
have talked to people who never wanted to leave, but they had
to make a split-second decision because if they didn't, their
lives were going to be lost. So, we have to put----
Mr. Correa. I would say to you that those are factors we
can look at. Because getting to the border and being in the
situation that I see right now at the border, is also not a
safe, acceptable situation. So, I hope that I can work with my
colleagues across the aisle to figure this one out. Because,
again, right now thinking about over the last 2 weeks, you got
a stadium full of Ukrainian refugees that just popped up on
you. You got a couple more coming at you. We got to figure out
this problem sooner rather than later.
Finally, let me say, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and
others are stepping up and saying we need the workers. There is
a win-win here somewhere. Madam Chair, I yield.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you, Mr. Correa. The Chair now
recognizes for 5 minutes, the gentleman from Mississippi, Mr.
Guest.
Mr. Guest. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Before I begin, I
would ask unanimous consent to submit Ranking Member Katko's
Statement for the record.*
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* The document has been previously included in the record.
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Chairwoman Barragan. No objection. Thank you.
Mr. Guest. Sheriff, I want to thank you for joining us this
afternoon. In your opening statement, you mentioned some
statistics. I also want to cite some troubling statistics that
have been provided by the Department of Homeland Security.
Fiscal year 2021, CBP encountered a record number of immigrants
along the Southwest Border, 1.73 million. Fiscal year 2022, we
are on track to surpass that number. In the first 5 months, we
have encountered 838,000 immigrants and current estimates are
that we encountered over 200,000 in March 2022, bringing during
the first 6 months of fiscal year 2022, bringing that number to
over 1 million immigrants encountered across that Southwest
Border.
We have seen reports recently that DHS after the expiration
of Title 42, is preparing for a potential increase of as many
as 18,000 immigrant encounters every day. Some 2\1/2\ to 3
times higher than the number of encounters that we are
currently facing. We know that Title 42 has been successful. We
saw it implemented under the administration of President Donald
Trump. Under the original administration, over 90 percent of
immigrants were returned to their country of origin under Title
42.
We have seen under the Biden administration, we have seen
that number drop, but it is still above 50, 55 percent of
immigrants that are encountered today by the Department of
Homeland Security are returned to their country of origin under
Title 42. Now, we know that in outdoor circumstances, that the
use of Title 42, that an immigrant can be processed within as
little as 15 minutes.
So, now here as we are within just 6 weeks, a little over 6
weeks of Title 42 coming to an end on May the 23, Sheriff, I
want to ask you, as a 38-year law enforcement officer, someone
who has dedicated your entire career to protecting your
community at the Southwest Border, your continued daily
interaction with Border Patrol, with the Department of Homeland
Security, my question to you is are we prepared to deal with
the surge of immigrants that the Department of Homeland
Security is predicting? Can we in any shape, form, or fashion
process anywhere close to 18,000 immigrants coming across our
border every day? Eighteen thousand immigrants over a 30-day
period is over 500,000 immigrants in a individual month. So,
are we prepared to deal with that surge of immigrants coming
across the border?
Sheriff Dannels. Member Guest, I will say this, no, we are
not. What we are not talking about when it comes to our
Southern Border is the rule of law. We are also not talking
about border security. We turned this into two separate
programs. We have immigration. We have border security. Sadly,
border security has been set aside. The absent words within our
border. So, talking to my fellow agents, talking to Federal
leadership with Border Patrol, working with our communities, we
are outpaced here on the Southern Border right now.
We run details right now every day costing my county
$17,000 a week just trying to help Border Patrol and keep our
communities safe from the juvenile smugglers, the adult
smugglers, the repetitive crime, home invasions, murder, you
name it, we are seeing it down here. We are not exempt. This is
happening all along our Southern Border right now. We need to
get a handle on the rule of law, support our borders, support
our men and women wearing the badge, and address immigration.
We are missing the rule of law here and border security.
Mr. Guest. Sheriff, during your opening statement, you also
gave some individual examples about cases where we had seen
immigration, illegal immigrants come across the border, and the
impact that it had had on your citizens directly. So, my
question is with Title 42 setting to expire, with the number of
immigrants we believe that will dramatically increase, two
things. One, what impact will this have on your community
personally? Then what impact will this have on both human
trafficking and drug smuggling?
Sheriff Dannels. Well, Member Guest, the first thing I
would say is this, that we need to understand, smuggling comes
with criminal cartels. These transnational organizations they
have no respect for Americans. They have no respect for
communities that we are talking about today. It is going to be
a huge impact.
We are already outpaced like I said a few minutes ago. We
are already overwhelmed in these rural communities. There are
31 counties along the Southwest Border, 20 are considered rural
like mine. We don't have the resources. All I hear is we are
talking about CDC. Folks, I will just say in the last 18
months, I don't recall Dr. Fauci or anybody from CDC talking
about our Southern Border and what law enforcement's been
addressing when it comes to the health pandemic down here. I
would argue that all day.
Nobody has talked to us and that is a big concern of the
sheriffs. We have tried to reach to this administration to
include letters to the President of the United States and it
has gone on deaf ears. It is intellectual avoidance. So, if I
say I am frustrated, if I say my fellow sheriffs are
frustrated, that would be an understatement. So, we are
concerned because there is not a collective action. There is
not a collective shared plan. There is not a collective
message, especially starting in communities with this
administration.
Chairwoman Barragan. The gentleman's time has expired. I
also want to point out that there is not a prediction that
there is going to be 18,000 migrants a day. The committee,
rather the Department is preparing, preparing for different
scenarios.
With that, I will yield to Mr. Green, the gentleman from
Texas, for your 5 minutes. Mr. Green, I think you are still on
mute. We still can't hear you, Mr. Green. OK. There we go, sir.
Mr. Green. I am audible. Thank you, Madam Chair. To the law
enforcement officer who is there, I would have you know, I have
great respect for law enforcement.
Sheriff Dannels. Thank you.
Mr. Green. My uncle was a deputy sheriff. I believe that I
am in Congress probably because of him. He told me when I was a
very young child that I was going to be a lawyer. Because he
was so well respected, from that moment forward, I wanted to be
a lawyer. I never had any thought of being anything else. By
the way, I didn't know what a lawyer was at the time. But my
uncle said it and it meant something. So, I have great respect.
Sheriff Dannels. Thank you.
Mr. Green. This problem at the border is something that we
have been grappling with for some time. It seems to me that any
solution is going to require doing something about the
conditions that would cause a mother, knowing what can happen
to her child along this route, cause that mother to say I am
going to risk sending my child north because the conditions
here are such that I don't believe my child is safe. So, it
seems to me that we have to focus on doing something about
those conditions.
I believe that the law enforcement officers, I don't doubt
you when you say you are overwhelmed. But what you are doing is
at the border and we have to do something beyond the border. We
now have sent billions to Ukraine and I voted to do it and I
will send more. I want to send planes. I want to do whatever we
can do to help them. It seems to me that we can do something
more for our neighbors. I think it is going to take the will of
Congress to get it done. But that has to be a part of the
solution.
Now, I have had a personal experience with this. I had a
constituent, Mr. Escobar, who was deported. He was married to
an American woman. He had two children born in the United
States of America, no criminal history, and he was deported. I
went to El Salvador three times. I brought him home on the
third time. Three times he could not walk the streets. When he
was deported, he became sort-of a target, if you will. So, we
brought him home. He was within the law. Nothing outside of the
law. But it is really sad to know the conditions that persons
are living under such that they would send their children over
this long distance.
The staff has provided me some intelligence that I would
just like to share with everyone. I am sure that everyone has
perused the documentation that we have. It reads families and
other asylum seekers expelled back to Mexico are often targeted
by drug cartels and face violence and extortion. In fact, human
rights organizations have documented nearly 10,000 instances of
people being kidnapped, tortured, sexually assaulted, and
murdered after being expelled under Title 42. Title 42 is the
law of the land. I am not debating whether that should not
happen under the law of the land. Just stating the facts.
Conditions in Mexico have led to hundreds of parents
fearing for the lives of their children. To choose to self-
separate, send their children across the border alone, knowing
that unaccompanied children would be accepted and cared for by
the Department of Health and Human Services. It is a tragedy.
So, Sheriff, I am appealing to you. I just want to know. Do you
know enough about it? If you don't, I will understand. To give
a comment about the conditions that are causing a mother to
send her baby on this dangerous journey knowing what the
consequences might be, but she would rather face that than have
her child stay with her and suffer. You thoughts, Sheriff,
please.
Sheriff Dannels. Member Green, I appreciate those comments.
One of my objectives as a sheriff and with my sheriff's
association is humanitarian. We have big hearts here as we wear
the badge, and we respect. I have talked to my sheriffs in Del
Rio, Sheriff Martinez, Sheriff Wilmont, over in Yuma, Arizona.
They see what you are talking about. That is what your--those
examples.
In my section of the southeast corner of the State of
Arizona, we don't see that. We see 100 percent aggravated
individuals that are camouflaged and they are coming into the
country for all ill intent. They are taking advantage of
current times. That is what bothers me. That is why I am
testifying today on the public safety side of this and the
humanitarian side.
We also see the death. We also see those that die in the
process of coming across our border because we have lost the
managing side of it on the public safety side. That is where I
come from.
There has got to be a balance. Member Green, I agree with
you. There has got to be a balance. We need to take the
politics out of this. We need to take the reelection thoughts
out it. Let's get to the business and secure our country and
security our border and make this humanitarian and public
safety and National security.
Mr. Green. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Barragan. Mr. Sheriff, thank you. The
gentleman's time has expired. I will now yield to the gentleman
from Georgia, Mr. Clyde, for your 5 minutes.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Chairwoman and Ranking Member, for
holding this hearing today. For our three witnesses who are
here in the committee room, and we will start with Dr. Richards
here, please answer yes or no to this question. Do you think
border security directly relates to National security? Yes or
no?
Dr. Richards. I don't see how that has anything to do with
public health or medical science.
Mr. Clyde. OK. You are a doctor, sir, you have got an MD, a
PhD, you are a smart guy. So, you don't have an opinion? Yes or
no?
Dr. Richards. The two are related, yes.
Mr. Clyde. OK, all right. We will go to the next person.
What do you think, sir? Does border security directly relate to
National security?
Mr. Kizuka. That is certainly an issue that certain Members
of this House have tried to make a connection.
Mr. Clyde. So, yes, or no?
Mr. Kizuka. Receiving asylum seekers is not----
Mr. Clyde. Yes or no, sir?
Mr. Kizuka [continuing]. A National security issue.
Mr. Clyde. Yes or no? You don't have an opinion. You, sir.
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. It can, but it depends on the
context.
Mr. Clyde. So, it could?
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. Again, it depends on the context of
what we are talking about.
Mr. Clyde. OK, all right. Do you think we have a secure
border? I mean, you have seen the news. Do you think we have a
secure border?
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. By almost every metric, the border is
in some ways more secure than it has been, according to Customs
and Border Protection----
Mr. Clyde. OK, all right.
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick [continuing]. Itself,----
Mr. Clyde. Thank you. All right. We will go back to you.
Mr. Kizuka. Returning asylum seekers to be kidnapped,
raped, tortured in Mexico is not a secure border.
Mr. Clyde. OK. We do not have a secure border. You, Doctor,
do you think we have a secure border?
Dr. Richards. From the perspective of human rights, human
rights law, the treaties that the United States has ratified,
and the 1980----
Mr. Clyde. Just yes or no is fine, sir.
Dr. Richards [continuing]. Refugee Act, then the answer is
no. It is not secure.
Mr. Clyde. We do not have a secure border.
Dr. Richards. Individuals' rights are being violated. Thank
you.
Mr. Clyde. You know, we have a rule of law and this country
is literally the most prosperous and the most free in the world
because we have a rule of law. Because we believe that everyone
should follow the law. We have immigration law.
Sheriff, what do you think? Do you think border security
directly relates to National security?
Sheriff Dannels. Absolutely, 100 percent correct on that.
If I could add, Member, the fact that we have lost law
enforcement on the Southern Border as a result of an unsecure
border, both on the health side of it and the public safety
because of violent acts. My office right now is investigating
several acts here in the last few weeks that in the last month
where an agent was--they tried to cut his throat. Had another
one they tried to kill the agent. So, yes. A secure border is
National security and community and public safety.
Mr. Clyde. Thank you, Sheriff. Just a follow-up. As of
right now, how much of your manpower goes into filling the gaps
for the Federal Government as it relates to the flow of illegal
immigration and smuggling? If Title 42 goes away, how do you
think that will change for you, for your agency?
Sheriff Dannels. Currently, we are spending $17,000 a week
out of a rural county sheriff's office to address border
security. We have had over 1,000 calls in the last 8 to 9
months just border-related crimes, just to my office. We run
details every day just to assist Border Patrol that are
stretched very thin right now. Like I said, this is the worst I
have ever seen it when it comes to the lack of management on
our Southern Border.
Mr. Clyde. So, you are spending almost $1 million or right
around $1 million a year because the Federal Government is not
doing its job when it comes to illegal immigration and
smuggling. If Title 42 goes away, how much do you think that is
going to change?
Sheriff Dannels. It is going to compound that to levels I
have never seen in my 4 decades almost. The State of Arizona
provided my office $12.8 million just to address the cost. In
the first 5 months, my overtime budget both in jail and patrol
was 92 percent expended. We don't have the funds. The State of
Arizona and to Governor Ducey, that is why I thanked him, have
been stepping up just to help us secure our borders here in
southern Arizona.
Mr. Clyde. Well, thank you. So, it is quite evident that if
Title 42 goes away, it is going to be a huge impact on local
law enforcement and local communities.
Sheriff Dannels. Yes.
Mr. Clyde. The Biden administration's decision to phase out
and ultimately terminate Title 42, will only further exacerbate
the crisis at our Southern Border. As of March 2022, U.S.
Border Patrol officers and agents have expelled over 1.7
million illegal immigrants under Title 42 since its inception
in March 2020.
During 2021, over 2 million illegal border immigrants were
apprehended by Border Patrol, of which more than 400,000 were
released into the United States. Apprehended illegal immigrants
that were simply released into the United States, that is
unconscionable. Thank you and I yield back.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you. The gentleman yields back.
The Chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from New York, Ms.
Clarke, for your 5 minutes.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Let me thank
our Ranking Member for today's hearing. Let me go directly to
my questions. My first question is to Mr. Kizuka. Title 42, in
my humble opinion, is an inhumane policy that has allowed CBP
to expel about 1.7 million migrants without granting them
access to the asylum system. Your organization has documented
nearly 10,000 instances of people being kidnapped, tortured,
sexually assaulted, and murdered after being expelled under
Title 42. Can you further describe the dangerous conditions
that asylum seekers and migrants face upon their expulsion and
how it disproportionately affects migrants of African descent?
Mr. Kizuka. Thank you for that question, Representative. It
is a sad truth that the Title 42 policy has had a devastating
impact leading to grievous human rights violations of people
who have been returned or blocked in Mexico, unable to seek
asylum. We don't even know how many of the 1.7 million times
Title 42 has been used were on people trying to seek asylum
because there are no screenings, because the Department is not
following U.S. law to determine who is an asylum seeker, who is
in need of protection, who should be permitted to continue the
asylum process.
For people who are trapped in Mexico, who are sent back to
Mexico, they face daily violence. They are at risk of being
kidnapped, of being tortured, of being extorted by the cartels
that there has been so much concern about on this committee.
Those are businesses of the cartels that have expanded because
of Title 42, not in spite of Title 42. They are not being
depleted by Title 42. They are a boon to the cartels. They give
the cartels an opportunity to target people who are trapped in
Mexico. These policies have had a disproportionate impact on
people of African descent because they face anti-Black
discrimination and violence throughout Mexico.
As I mentioned in my remarks, we have documented may cases
of people of African descent who have been attacked, including
by Mexican authorities, police, migration, military, who were
either directly responsible for those attacks or complicit in
them. African descendant migrants also face discrimination.
They have great difficulty finding a way to support themselves,
to find a place to live while they are waiting to seek asylum
in the United States. Many even today, are waiting near ports
of entry hoping that the United States will comply, once again,
with our U.S. asylum laws and permit them the opportunity to
seek protection at a port of entry.
Ms. Clarke. Very well. I thank you for you response. To Mr.
Reichlin-Melnick and Dr. Richards, the United States response
to the Ukrainian asylum seekers and refugees has illustrated
that we are capable of processing migrants when we want to.
What recommendations would you have so that the Federal
Government can best use its resources to process migrants
waiting to claim asylum?
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. Thank you, Representative Clarke. We
have recommended a resource surge to the ports of entry so that
CBP can better process migrants arriving at ports of entry and
prevent the kind of build-up that we are seeing occurring right
now. For the last 4 years, access to asylum at the ports of
entry has been heavily restricted. First, through metering,
which the Trump administration put in place in 2018, and then
through the near complete shutdown in 2020, due to Title 42.
If we had spent the last 4 years pouring money into the
ports of entry and finding a way to process asylum seekers
safely and humanely and orderly, far fewer people would feel
the need to cross between the ports of entry. We can do this.
Congress just funded the ports and Border Patrol and CBP to
respond to migration. A lot of that money and resources should
go to the ports of entry.
Ms. Clarke. Thank you. Dr. Richards.
Dr. Richards. Sure, thank you. Thank you for the question,
Congresswoman. Well, the CDC has recognized that we need to be
flexible in both time and place in how we respond and that that
should be driven by science. So, as the coronavirus, you know,
shifts in its intensity, in its severity, how lethal it is, our
response is going to vary. We have more tools now, that is the
good news, than we ever have before with treatments, certainly
vaccines. As I mentioned in my comments, it is the usual public
health tools of masking, social distancing, making sure you
limit the number of people in detention, and the time spent in
congregate settings. Thanks.
Ms. Clarke. Very well. Thank you. Madam Chair, I yield
back, and I thank you for this hearing. It is very important
that we put the truth up front. Thank you, I yield back.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you. The gentlewoman yields
back. Now, the Chair will recognize Representative Escobar, the
gentlewoman from Texas, for her 5 minutes.
Ms. Escobar. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. I really
appreciate the opportunity to wave on to the committee today
and thank you for hosting this very important hearing. I want
to thank all of our panelists for being here.
I serve in Congress representing the U.S.-Mexico border
community of El Paso, Texas. I am a lifelong El Pasoan, a
third-generation proud border resident. I am so proud to uplift
the voice of my community, which has always engaged with
migrants in the spirit of goodwill, welcoming the stranger,
really embracing true American values.
You know, our Republican colleagues can't have it both
ways. Just a week ago, weeks ago, they decried President Biden
as not doing anything on the border. Then when he lifts Title
42, claiming what he was doing was working, so let's keep doing
what he was doing. The fact of the matter is migration patterns
have been changing. We started seeing that change 10 years ago.
Not during the Biden administration, not during the Trump
administration, but before that. Congress and administration
after administration really has failed to act.
I am proud to be part of House Democrats who brought
forward comprehensive immigration reform, but we get stymied at
every turn by Republicans who choose to obstruct instead of
work toward solutions. The truth is this is complicated. It is
not easy. There is no one more who wants to see security and
dignity than those of us who live on the U.S.-Mexico border.
But addressing migration at the border and only at the border
really is a signal of failure. I wish we could all recognize
that failure and the opportunity.
We have had a test case during the entirety of the Trump
administration and 1 year into the Biden administration. Do
walls stop migration? Does Title 42 stop migration? We have
tried that. For colleagues of mine who want to stop migration,
I hope that the test case has proven what works and what
doesn't work.
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick, I have a series of questions for you.
I am going to try to get through as many of them, so if we can
be succinct. First, you know, my colleagues talk about the
number of encounters at the border and the media, CBP, have
reported these numbers. Those numbers do they, are they
representative of individuals arriving at the border or what do
encounters mean, succinctly, if you could tell us?
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. Yes. An encounter is an arrest of an
individual taken by Customs and Border Protection. So,
importantly, the same person can be arrested multiple times. In
my opening statement, I talked about 1 person arrested 30 times
and expelled every time under Title 42. That was 30 encounters.
We actually know it hasn't been 2.5 million people over the
last since the start of fiscal year 2021, despite 2.5 million
encounters, there has been 820,000 repeat encounters. So, it is
actually about 1.7 million. In addition, border crossings are
actually lower than they were 20 years ago because----
Ms. Escobar. I am going to interrupt you. That takes me----
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. Yes.
Ms. Escobar [continuing]. To my next question. So, the
Sheriff mentioned this is the worst he has ever seen. Again,
mind you, with walls and with Title 42, it is the ``worst he
has ever seen.'' How do the numbers of encounters, you were
about to get into that, what we have seen in the last year, how
does that compare over time?
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. Yes. So, 20 years ago people weren't
coming through Cochise County. They were coming through the
Tucson sector. I mean, which is also included in it. But they
were coming a little bit further over west, and primarily in
California, as well. But also, we had far fewer Border Patrol
agents and far less surveillance at the border. So, in fiscal
year 2000, when there were 1.7 million encounters, CBP and DHS
estimates that there were an additional 2 million undetected
unlawful entries. That is----
Ms. Escobar. Very----
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick [continuing]. Not what it is today.
Ms. Escobar. Perfect, thank you. Very quickly, when Members
say people need to get in line or do it the right way, yes or
no, has Congress created a line or a right way?
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. For almost every migrant who comes to
the border, the right way is to cross the border and seek
asylum, because seeking asylum is legal. There is no other
pathway.
Ms. Escobar. When was the last time Congress updated
immigration law?
Mr. Reichlin-Melnick. Nineteen ninety-six, but that was
basically the last time. So, it has been almost 25 years.
Ms. Escobar. Thank you. I would like to just talk a little
bit about, in my remaining few seconds, securing the border and
the question around whether the border has been secured. For
over a decade, Republicans have told Democrats, if you will
just secure the border, we will give you comprehensive
immigration reform. Hundreds of millions of dollars later into
border security, there has been no movement on comprehensive
immigration reform. The more that we shrink legal avenues,
which is what has happened, the more that we should anticipate
that we will see more irregular crossings. So, I invite
Congress to work on real solutions. Madam Chair, I yield back.
Chairwoman Barragan. Thank you. I want to thank our
panelists. I want to thank all the Members for questions. I
think this is a very important hearing. I think it is timely.
Title 42, as I mentioned, is a tool of the CDC, the Centers for
Disease Control, and was used as a public health declaration.
There has been a lot of talk about the rule of law.
Frankly, the rule of law is that you can come to a port and you
can apply for asylum. We are not following that rule of law.
So, there is one agreement where we have where the rule of law
is not being followed. Our frustration on our side is that
because the rule of law is not being followed, immigrants can't
come to a port of entry and seek asylum, which is legal in the
United States.
So, that has been my frustration as I kind-of hear, and
then we talked about border security. As we all know as Members
of Homeland Security, we have been to multiple briefings and we
know the largest terror threat is from not the Southern Border.
It is the Northern Border. So, this is where I think--and maybe
we need to have a conversation about that. But this is why I
think it is helpful for us to have the hearing and I appreciate
the participation on both sides today. Again, to all our
witnesses, I want to thank you all for your valuable testimony.
And you, Sheriff, thanks for joining us virtually, as well.
Without objection, I submit statements for the record from
Kids in Need of Defense, First Focus on Children, the Latin
American Working Group, the Friends Committee on National
Legislation, and the Young Center for Immigrant Children's
rights.
[The information follows:]
Statement of Kids in Need of Defense (KIND)
April 6, 2022
Kids in Need of Defense (KIND) is the leading national organization
working to ensure that no child faces immigration court alone. KIND was
founded by the Microsoft Corporation and the United Nations Refugee
Agency (UNHCR) Special Envoy Angelina Jolie. We have served more than
20,000 unaccompanied children in removal proceedings, trained over
57,000 attendees in pro bono representation of these children, and
formed pro bono partnerships with over 700 corporations, law firms, law
schools, and bar associations. KIND's social services program
facilitates the coordinated provision to unaccompanied children of
counseling, educational support, medical care, and other services.
Additionally, the organization's programs in Mexico and Central America
work to address the root causes of forced migration and help protect
the safety and well-being of migrant children at every phase of their
migration journey. KIND's team has been on the ground on the in Mexico
since 2020 providing legal orientations, case screenings, and
assistance to vulnerable, unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico
border.
Since March 2020,\1\ the U.S. Government has used the ``Title 42''
public health authority to carry out more than 1.7 million expulsions
of individuals arriving to the United States between ports of entry
\2\--including unaccompanied children--without providing them with a
meaningful opportunity to request protection or legal safeguards.
Independent public health experts have made clear that these Title 42
expulsions lack a valid public health rationale.\3\ The Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) has also maintained entry restrictions that
prevent unaccompanied children and other protection seekers from
requesting humanitarian relief at ports of entry. Despite these
restrictions, DHS has allowed access to ports of entry for other
reasons that include shopping and tourism.
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\1\ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 85 Fed. Reg.
17060 (March 20, 2020); 42 USC 265.
\2\ Customs and Border Protection, ``Southwest Land Border
Encounters'' (updated March 15, 2022); https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/
stats/southwest-land-border-encounters#.
\3\ See, e.g., Physicians for Human Rights, ``After Two Years of
Health and Rights Abuses, it's Past Time to End Title 42 Border
Expulsions: PHR'' (March 17, 2022); https://phr.org/news/after-two-
years-of-health-and-rights-abuses-its-past-time-to-end-title-42-border-
expulsions-phr/.
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KIND welcomes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's
announcement that the use of Title 42 will end on May 23, 2022.
However, even during the time that unaccompanied children were exempt
from Title 42, they remained unable to access protection at ports of
entry. These port closures compel children to pursue more hazardous
routes between official crossings, or outright deny them an opportunity
to seek humanitarian relief. DHS must fully lift port of entry
restrictions for protections seekers, including unaccompanied children.
There are also serious concerns that unaccompanied children traveling
with non-parental relatives, and Mexican children traveling on their
own, are not being screened and protected in accordance with U.S. law,
including the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of
2008 (TVPRA).\4\ Altogether, without required due process safeguards
intended to recognize unaccompanied children's particular vulnerability
to exploitation, trafficking, and other threats, children face return
to the very dangers they fled and/or areas where they confront
pervasive violence or may be targeted for harm.
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\4\ William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection
Reauthorization Act, Pub. L. No. 110-457, 122 Stat. 5044 (2008).
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Moreover, the termination of Title 42 and reopening of ports of
entry are only the first steps toward restoring humane and orderly
processing at the U.S.-Mexico border. The Biden administration must
also end the use of the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy that forces
protection seekers to await U.S. immigration proceedings in dangerous,
unstable conditions.\5\ The administration should complement those
measures with adoption of the below recommendations on both an
immediate and long-term basis, which would help ensure appropriate
reception and treatment of unaccompanied children and other protection
seekers now and in the future.
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\5\ See KIND, ``Forced Apart: How the ``Remain in Mexico'' Policy
Places Children in Danger and Separates Families (February 24, 2020);
https://supportkind.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/MPP-KIND-
2.24updated-003.pdf.
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recommendations for implementing humane and orderly border processing
following termination of title 42 and the reopening of ports of entry
to protection seekers
Hire child welfare professionals to administer screenings
and care of children in Customs and Border Protection (CBP)
custody.--Children are held at the U.S.-Mexico border in CBP
facilities originally designed for single adults and
fundamentally unsuited to children's unique needs. CBP agents
and officers trained in law enforcement, together with other
personnel who lack child welfare expertise, administer these
children's protection screenings and care. While broader
reforms are critical to ensure the humanitarian reception of
children in child-appropriate spaces, DHS can take immediate
steps toward improved treatment of children in CBP custody by
hiring State-licensed child welfare professionals to administer
screenings and care of children in CBP facilities along the
border. By assuming child welfare functions currently being
performed by CBP agents and officers, child welfare
professionals would not only improve conditions for migrant
children but also ensure that CBP agents and officers are able
to dedicate their time to the law enforcement functions for
which they are specially trained.
Fiscal year 2022 omnibus legislation provided $14.55 million to DHS
to hire licensed child welfare professionals at border
facilities. It is critical that DHS promptly on-board these
experts.
Co-locate specialists from the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS)'s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in
CBP border facilities.--Some unaccompanied children arrive at
the U.S.-Mexico border with family members such as aunts,
uncles, grandparents, or adult siblings who are trusted
caregivers but not their parents or legal guardians. These
children meet the legal definition of an ``unaccompanied alien
child,'' as defined by the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and
the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008,
under which they are afforded certain procedural
protections.\6\ Under current practice, these children are
separated from their non-parent family members, placed in U.S.
custody, and hopefully later reunited with family after ORR
review. CBP and ORR can avoid unnecessary separation from
loving caregivers by immediately commencing the family
reunification process during the time the family is in CBP
custody. Through the placement of ORR Federal field specialists
in CBP facilities, ORR could consider caregivers traveling with
a child as potential sponsors and help facilitate the
simultaneous release of the child and caregiver together. ORR
staff can also rapidly identify children with known
vulnerabilities or special needs and ensure their initial
placement in facilities best-suited for their needs and
similarly ensure that the process of identifying potential
sponsors for all unaccompanied children begins as soon as
possible. This reform would also reduce children's length of
stay in CBP or ORR facilities. The Federal Government recently
demonstrated its capacity to deploy a coordinated co-location
model through its reception of unaccompanied Afghan children at
airports and military bases. The agency should identify
improvements needed to refine and scale this approach and to
adopt a similar model at points along the Southern Border at
the earliest date possible.
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\6\ Pub. L. 107-296; William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims
Protection Reauthorization Act, Pub. L. No. 110-457, 122 Stat. 5044
(2008) (TVPRA).
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Undertake broader reforms to create a humanitarian reception
model.--Through engagement of a nongovernmental humanitarian
actor, DHS and HHS can help ensure the appropriate reception,
screening, and care of children who arrive in the United States
at or between ports of entry. DHS's engagement of the American
Red Cross to assist with reception during a period of
significant border arrivals in 2021 was an example of
successful collaboration. Efforts to formalize a humanitarian
reception model over the long-term should continue beyond
crisis response and involve outreach to and engagement with
nongovernmental humanitarian organizations.
Modification of border facilities is also critical to ensure the
availability of child-friendly spaces for temporary processing,
designated areas in which children can be screened by child
welfare professionals in a confidential and child-appropriate
manner, basic hygiene accommodations, and meeting spaces for
in-person ``Know Your Rights'' presentations and other legal
assistance by nongovernmental organizations. In addition, DHS
should work to improve accountability and oversight of CBP's
compliance with legal requirements in the TVPRA, the Flores
Settlement Agreement,\7\ and the Transport, Escort, Detention,
and Search (TEDS) standards by allowing access to CBP
facilities and monitoring by independent third parties,
including nongovernmental organizations. The emphasis must be
on ensuring the welfare, best interests, and rights of
children, minimizing detention, and ensuring the safe and swift
reunification of children with sponsors.
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\7\ Flores v. Reno, No. CV 85-4544-RJK (C.D. Cal. Jan. 17, 1997)
(``Flores Settlement Agreement'' or ``Flores'').
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Expand legal representation of unaccompanied children.--
Congress and the Biden administration should prioritize the
provision of legal representation to unaccompanied children in
immigration proceedings before the Executive Office for
Immigration Review (EOIR). Despite their unique vulnerabilities
in the immigration system, many if not most unaccompanied
children lack an attorney to assist them in navigating
immigration proceedings with the highest of stakes for their
lives and safety. Government data illustrate that unaccompanied
children without an attorney have virtually no meaningful
chance of receiving a fair day in court: EOIR statistics on
completed immigration court cases from fiscal year 2018 through
the first half of fiscal year 2021 show that immigration judges
were almost 100 times more likely to grant legal relief to
unaccompanied children with counsel than unaccompanied children
without legal counsel.\8\
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\8\ KIND calculated this figure based on Executive Office for
Immigration Review (EOIR) data published by the Congressional Research
Service in its report titled ``Unaccompanied Alien Children: An
Overview, p. 16 (September 1, 2021); https://sgp.fas.org/crs/homesec/
R43599.pdf.
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Though ORR currently provides financial support to a network of
nonprofit legal services providers to enable legal
representation of unaccompanied children, current needs far
exceed existing funding and allocation. Amid continuing high
numbers of unaccompanied children arriving to the United
States, this due process crisis will only expand unless
Congress and the administration prioritize measures to ensure
that no child faces immigration court alone.
Enhance bilateral coordination between U.S. and Mexican
officials to ensure safe transfer of unaccompanied children to
the United States when it is in their best interests.--At
times, Mexican child welfare authorities encounter migrant
children who are in Mexico but wish to reunite with family
members in the United States and apply for protection there.
When these authorities determine that it is in the child's best
interest to do so, children should be safely transferred to the
United States and reunified with U.S-based family, where they
can seek legal protection. The U.S. and Mexican governments
must develop and implement formal mechanisms for the safe
transfer of unaccompanied migrant children in these
circumstances.
conclusion
The administration's plan to end Title 42 is a welcome and long-
overdue policy shift that will help return the United States to its
founding principles as a Nation that protects the most vulnerable. But
on its own, the termination of Title 42 is insufficient. Congress and
the administration must reverse port of entry restrictions and take
proactive steps to ensure the safe and orderly reception of
unaccompanied children, families, and others arriving at the U.S.-
Mexico border.
______
Statement of First Focus on Children
April 6, 2022
Chairwoman Barragan, Ranking Member Higgins, and Members of House
Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security, Facilitation, and
Operations, we thank you for the opportunity to submit this statement
for the record. First Focus on Children is a bipartisan child advocacy
organization dedicated to making children and families a priority in
Federal policy and budget decisions. As an organization that advocates
for the health and well-being of all children, we have long urged both
Congress and various administrations to uphold the best interests of
the child in all immigration policy. Nearly a year ago, First Focus led
more than 30 child advocacy organizations to call on the Biden
administration to end all Title 42 expulsions, particularly
highlighting the harms for children in families.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Letter to President Biden on Title 42, First Focus on Children
(April 12, 2021), https://firstfocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/
First-Focus-on-Children_Title42- 2.pdf.
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We are pleased that the Biden administration has announced the
termination of the Title 42 policy by May 23 and encourage a swift
start to winding down the policy. While Title 42 was in place, at least
29,000 children in families, 9,000 under the age of 5 and 600 under the
age of 1, have been expelled,\2\ including more than 3,200 children to
Haiti at a time when the Nation faces overlapping political crises and
natural disasters.\3\ Despite unaccompanied children's exemption from
this policy in 2021, a Human Rights First report found that
unaccompanied children have been denied access to protection at ports
of entry.\4\ In its most recent report, Human Rights First recorded
almost 10,000 instances of kidnapping, torture, rape and other violence
against those expelled.\5\
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\2\ ``Illegal and Inhumane'': Biden Administration Continues
Embrace of Trump Title 42 Policy as Attacks on People Seeking Refuge
Mount, Human Rights First 3 (October 2021), https://
www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/IllegalandInhumane.pdf.
\3\ Returns of Migrants and Reception Assistance in Haiti,
International Organization for Migration Haiti (January 9, 2022),
https://haiti.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl1091/files/documents/
factsheet-returns-9-january-2022.pdf.
\4\ Border Restrictions Lift, But Biden Administration Blocks
Protection for Asylum Seekers and Children, Human Rights First,
Florence Immigrant & Refugee Rights Project 7 (November 2021), https://
www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/BorderRestrictionsLift%2C-
BlockingAsylumSeekersContinues.pdf. Two Years of Suffering: Biden
Administration Continues Use of Discredited Title 42 Order to Flout
Refugee Law, Human Rights First 5-6 (March 2022), https://
www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/TwoYearsofSuffering.pdf.
\5\ Two Years of Suffering: Biden Administration Continues Use of
Discredited Title 42 Order to Flout Refugee Law, supra note 4.
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Reports have also confirmed that Title 42 led to family
separation.\6\ Public reports estimate that over 2000 children
previously expelled returned to the border by themselves between
January 20 and April 5, 2021.\7\ Additionally, under Title 42 children
arriving with family members such as older siblings and uncles are
designated as unaccompanied and referred to the Office of Refugee
Resettlement (ORR), while their family members are expelled under Title
42.\8\ Separation from parents, particularly for children who have
already experienced trauma, leads to additional toxic stress and
negative impacts for children's mental, physical, and emotional health
that could be lifelong,\9\ and evidence shows that children's
separation from loving caregivers that they know and trust has the same
impact as separation from a parent.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Id.
\7\ Nicole Sganga and Camilo Montoya-Galvez, Over 2,100 Children
Crossed Border Alone After Being Expelled with Families to Mexico, CBS
News (May 7, 2021), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/migrant-children-left-
families-asylum-border/.
\8\ Border Restrictions Lift, But Biden Administration Blocks
Protection for Asylum Seekers and Children, supra note 7-8.
\9\ Hajar Habbach, Kathryn Hampton, & Ranit Mishori, You Will Never
See Your Child Again: The Persistent Psychological Effects of Family
Separation, Physicians for Human Rights (February 25, 2020), https://
phr.org/our-work/resources/you-will-never-see-your-child-again-the-
persistent-psychological-effects-of-family separation/.
\10\ Key Points: Traumatic Separation and Refugee & Immigrant
Children, The National Child Traumatic Stress Network, https://
www.nctsn.org/sites/default/files/resources/tip-sheet/
key_points_traumatic_separation_and_refugee_immigrant_children.pdf
(last visited April 23, 2021) (noting that a child's relationships with
a primary caregiver is critical to a children's ability to thrive, and
that separation is one of the most potent stressors a child can
experience).
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Title 42 never had a legitimate public health basis. Experts from
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opposed the policy when
it was first contemplated \11\ and public health experts have
repeatedly stated that there is no public health basis for the
policy.\12\ The claim that Title 42 had a public health rationale
became even more specious as vaccines become more available in the
United States and around the world and as U.S. States and localities
began to lift COVID-19 restrictions. Rather, the pandemic was an excuse
used by the previous administration to flout domestic and international
asylum laws.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ Camilo Montoya-Galvez, How Trump Officials Used COVID-19 to
Shut U.S. Borders to Migrant Children, CBS News (November 2, 2020),
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-closed-borders-
migrant-children-covid-19/.
\12\ 1300+ Medical Professionals From 49 State and Territories Call
on CDC to End ``Junk Science'' Border Expulsion Policy, Physicians for
Human Rights (October 28, 2021), https://phr.org/our-work/resources/u-
s-medical-professionals-demand-cdc-end-title-42/.
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The American people support policies that ensure our immigration
system is fair, humane, and provides due process, including the end of
Title 42 expulsions.\13\ As Title 42 winds down, we urge Congress and
the administration to implement the following recommendations:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\13\ State of the Union: New Poll Shows Majority of Likely Voters
Support Bold Action on Immigration, National Immigration Law Center
Justice Fund (February 28, 2022), https://www.immigrantjusticefund.org/
press/2022/2/28/new-poll-shows-majority-of-likely-voters-support-bold-
action-on-immigration (finding that 63 percent of respondents support
allowing asylum seekers to have their case heard and 52 percent support
ending Title 42).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Immediately begin to process asylum seekers at the border.--Any
delay in restoring the right to seek asylum at the border
prolongs the proven risks of harm to children and families who
have been expelled. We urge the administration to immediately
allow asylum seekers, particularly children, Black and
Indigenous asylum seekers, and other marginalized populations,
to seek safety. Importantly, we urge the administration to not
put asylum seekers into the Remain in Mexico Program, given the
clear record of harm and denial of due process children,
families, and individuals have suffered under that policy.\14\
To make this termination a success, we urge Congress and the
administration to partner with and provide resources to
migrant-serving organizations on the group to support those
arriving.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\14\ Termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols Program,
Memorandum from Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security (June 1, 2021), https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/
files/publications/21_0601_termination_of_mpp_program.pdf. Termination
of the Migrant Protection Protocols, Memorandum from Secretary
Alejandro N. Mayorkas, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (Oct. 29,
2021), https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/
21_1029_mpp-termination-memo.pdf. Explanation of the Decision to
Terminate the Migrant Protection Protocols, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security (Oct. 29, 2021), https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/
publications/21_1029_mpp-termination-justification-memo-508.pdf. Camilo
Montoya-Galvez, ``Leave Me in a Cell'': The Desperate Please of Asylum
Seekers Inside El Paso's Immigration Court, CBS News (Aug. 11, 2019),
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/remain-in-mexico-the-desperate-pleas-of-
asylum-seekers-in-el-paso-who-are-subject-to-trumps-policy/. Brief for
Amici Curiae Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights, et al. in
Support of Appellant and Reversal, Texas v. Biden, Case No. 21-10806
(5th Cir., Sept. 27, 2021), available at https://
static1.squarespace.com/static/597ab5f3bebafb0- a625aaf45/t/
61531cee91a6897acaf74c12/1632836847044/2021_09_27_00516031522-
+Amicus+Brief.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
2. Prioritize child well-being in the restoration of asylum
processing.--To fully realize the President's promise of a
fair, orderly, and humane immigration system, the Biden
administration must prioritize children's health, safety, and
well-being in the restoration of asylum processing. An asylum
process that prioritizes children means:
a. Children and their families can request protection at ports of
entry, as well as elsewhere at the border.--The denial of
access to ports of entry has resulted in severe harm and
even death as many families seeking protection at more
dangerous points at the border. Earlier this year, multiple
young children tragically died attempting to cross the Rio
Grande river.\15\ We urge the administration to ensure that
asylum seekers can access ports of entry to seek
protection.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\15\ Two Years of Suffering: Biden Administration Continues Use of
Discredited Title 42 Order to Flout Refugee Law, supra note 4, at 5.
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b. Children and their families are allowed to pursue their
immigration case in community.--Research shows that
detention is harmful to children's mental and physical
development.\16\ The use of technology to further monitor
asylum seekers as an ``alternative'' to detention is also
harmful. A survey of immigrants subject to electronic
monitoring like ankle monitors found that most respondents
experienced impacts on their physical and mental health and
social isolation as a result of such technology.\17\ These
technologies' effects on adults impact children--in the
same survey, respondents spoke of being unable to care for
their children, play with their children, or engage in
their children's education because of the ankle
monitor.\18\ Additionally, one parent noted that the stigma
and fear of electronic surveillance caused people to
distance themselves not only from her, but also from her
children.\19\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\16\ Julie Linton, et al, Detention of Immigrant Children, America
Academy of Pediatrics (May 2017) https://
pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/pediatrics/139/5/e20170483.full-
text.pdf.
\17\ Tosca Guistini, et al., Immigration Cyber Prisons: Ending the
Use of Electronic Ankle Shackles, Cardozo School of Law Immigration
Justice Clinic, Freedom for Immigrants, Immigration Defense Project 3
(July 2021), https://larc.cardozo.yu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=-
1002&context=faculty-online-pubs.
\18\ Id. at 20.
\19\ Id. at 21.
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The distance from parents and community that results from
electronic monitoring of immigrants has serious impacts on
children's well-being and development, and such technology
is unnecessary. Past programs providing case management for
asylum seekers have ensured that children and families have
access to services in the community and better understand
their responsibilities for their immigration case.\20\ We
urge the administration to allow families to pursue their
immigration case in their community with access to
community-based resources and free from surveillance. Once
again, a successful community-based support program will
require partnership with and resources for migrant-serving
non-profit organizations.
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\20\ The Family Case Management Program: Why Case Management Can
and Must Be Part of the US Approach to Immigration, Women's Refugee
Commission 8 (June 2019), https://s33660.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/
2020/04/The-Family-Case-Management-Program.pdf.
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c. Children and families have legal representation and support to
develop their claim for protection.--Immigration is a
complex and confusing area of law, with multiple forms of
protection which have different elements and standards of
proof. For families who have experienced traumatic
circumstances in their country of origin or on their
journey to the United States, it can take time to adjust to
the United States, find legal representation, and gather
evidence and testimony to support their case. Even when a
family finds counsel, they may need time to feel safe
recounting sensitive facts that would support their case.
For children whose claim to protection is tied to that of
their caregivers, denying their parent or legal guardian
the opportunity to fully develop their case risks denying a
child access to protection. While we support steps the
administration has taken to allow asylum seekers to present
their case in a non-adversarial setting before an asylum
officer, we urge that all asylum seekers have meaningful
access to legal representation by funding legal services
providers to build capacity. We also urge that asylum-
seeking families and individuals have sufficient time to
recover from their trauma and develop their immigration
case.
3. Establish a ``best interests of the child'' standard for all
policy decisions, including immigration.--A best interests
standard considers a policy's impact on a child's safety,
health, development, family unity, and identity.\21\ If such a
standard had been meaningfully applied to Title 42, it would
have been clear that the policy could not stand because of the
danger children and their families would experience. Such a
standard would also provide clear solutions for the fair,
orderly, and humane processing of asylum seekers. In a 2020
election eve poll by Lake Research Partners, an overwhelming
81-13 percent of voters--more than 6-1 margin across all
political persuasions--supported the establishment of such a
standard, with 64 percent in strong agreement.\22\ We urge both
Congress and the administration to adopt and apply such a
standard to all policies that impact children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\21\ Jennifer Nagda & Maria Woltjen, ``Best Interests of the Child
Standard: Bringing Common Sense to Immigration Decisions,'' Big Ideas
2015--Pioneering Change: Innovative Ideas for Children and Families,
11, March, 2015, https://firstfocus.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/
Best-Interests-of-the-Child-Standard.pdf.
\22\ Bruce Lesley, Voters Have Spoken and They Support Children,
First Focus on Children (Nov. 23, 2020), https://firstfocus.org/blog/
voters-have-spoken-and-they-support-children.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
We thank you again for this opportunity to submit written
testimony. We look forward to working with you to implement common-
sense policies that help immigrant children and families find safety
and thrive. Should you have any further questions please contact Miriam
Abaya, vice president for immigration and children's rights at
[email protected].
______
Statement of Daniella Burgi-Palomino, Co-director, Latin America
Working Group (LAWG)
April 6, 2022
The Latin America Working Group (LAWG) submits this statement for
the record for the Border, Security, Facilitation & Operations
Subcommittee (House Homeland Security Committee) hearing, ``Examining
Title 42 and the Need to Restore Asylum at the Border'' on April 6,
2022. As an organization that advocates for more just U.S. policies
toward Latin America & the Caribbean and that defends the rights of
migrants and refugees, LAWG has advocated for the end of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Title 42 border order since
its implementation in March 2020 under the Trump administration. The
calls to end the policy have also come from other NGO's, public health
experts, and Members of Congress, including Democratic leadership. To
date, the policy has resulted in over 1.7 million expulsions of
individuals without screening for protection, including via flights to
Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Mexico.
Human rights organizations have documented nearly 10,000 instances of
people being kidnapped, tortured, sexually assaulted, and murdered as
they were denied access to seek asylum at the border as a result of
Title 42, including families with small children and vulnerable people
fleeing violence and persecution. This policy also has a
disproportionate impact on Black people seeking asylum, especially
Haitians.
LAWG documented the impact of Title 42 expulsions from the U.S.-
Mexico border to Mexico's border with Guatemala from August-October
2021. Starting on Aug. 5, 2021, people were flown from the U.S.-Mexico
border to cities, such as Villahermosa and Tapachula, in southern
Mexico and bussed to locations along the Mexico-Guatemala border. At no
point throughout this process, from their expulsion at the U.S.-Mexico
border to their expulsion into Guatemala, did people have any chance to
request asylum with U.S. or Mexican authorities or to have any contact
with civil society or international organizations. There was no formal
registration of people expelled upon their arrival to the airports in
southern Mexico. They were taken directly off the planes, placed onto
Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) buses, and driven to points
along the border with Guatemala while being escorted by the Mexican
National Guard. Civil society organizations were unable to document the
full impact of these expulsions to southern Mexico due to the presence
of organized crime and because these are extremely isolated and remote
locations. However, the testimonies captured by organizations of
adults, families, and children, including very young children,
evidenced how people were left to fend for themselves upon arriving in
Guatemalan territory, including having to figure out how to travel to
their next destination without any means.
One such testimony of a Honduran man that was expelled under Title
42 in October 2021 from the U.S.-Mexico border to the city of
Villahermosa in southern Mexico, and from there bussed to Honduras,
reflects the suffering and human rights violations individuals were
exposed to, ``They put us on a bus from the border and took us to the
airport, but we didn't know what was going to happen with us. Soon
after boarding the plane, we saw a sign that said, `Welcome to
Villahermosa, Mexico.' That's when we said why are we being deported to
Mexico if we are not Mexican? They left us there in the middle of
nowhere until Mexican migration agents picked us up and brought us to
the Mexico-Guatemala border, where they put us on another bus all the
way to Honduras'' (from an interview conducted by the organization
Radio Progreso, Honduras and translated by LAWG). While it appears that
Title 42 flights to southern Mexico have stopped for the time being,
there were other instances of individuals being returned to countries
they were not from under this policy, including Venezuelans expelled to
Colombia in February 2022.
As LAWG, we are pleased to see the announcement of the termination
of this policy for May 23, 2022 as a first step toward restoring access
to asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. However, we urge the Biden
administration to begin the wind-down process in collaboration with
civil society organizations well ahead of May 23 to begin to establish
a fair, orderly, and humane asylum process. As Title 42 expulsions
continue through May 23, it is also crucial for the Biden
administration to utilize its discretion to exempt particularly
vulnerable populations from the Title 42 policy. While we welcome
reports of Ukrainians being exempted from Title 42 at the U.S.-Mexico
border, we believe that exemptions should apply to vulnerable
populations of all nationalities. Fully restoring access to asylum at
the U.S.-Mexico border entails a safe reception of people seeking
asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border that does not deny individuals the
right to make their claims heard, guarantees family unity, and does not
hold individuals in custody or detention for extended periods of time;
coordinating with non-governmental organizations and shelters for swift
transportation of asylum seekers to destination communities within the
United States, and establishing access to services, legal counsel, and
community-based case management as individuals undergo their
immigration proceedings in the United States. LAWG reiterates the
urgency of the full termination of this policy in a transparent and
swift manner. The decision to turn the page on this cruel policy is
well overdue. It is time, once again, for the United States to be a
beacon to those seeking refuge from around the world.
______
Statement of Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL)
Wednesday, April 6, 2022
The Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL) is a national,
non-partisan Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) organization that
lobbies to advance peace, justice, and environmental stewardship. FCNL
follows the faith-led principles of our policy document, The World We
Seek, which calls us to advocate for humane migration practices that
welcome the stranger and honor the Light of God in each individual.
FCNL has decried the operation of Title 42, a public health measure
weaponized against asylum seekers and misused to disincentivize
migration, and we applaud the Biden administration's decision to
rescind the policy on May 23, 2022. Thank you to this subcommittee for
highlighting the harms of Title 42. We urge you to continue to reject
Trump's anti-immigrant policy and instead uplift the right to seek
asylum.
As further discussed in this statement, Title 42 has proven
inefficient as a public health measure as well as a border management
policy. The policy has rejected rights-respecting border management,
perpetuated discriminatory treatment in our immigration enforcement
practices, and undermined the right to claim asylum in the United
States.
The public health facade of Title 42 should not be reinstated
through legislative action, nor should the administration's termination
be halted. The emergence of the novel COVID-19 virus petrified the
world, but also led to a spirit of solidarity, perseverance, and
humanity. However, during a season when society aimed to protect the
most vulnerable, the Trump administration's exclusionary instincts led
to the misuse of Title 42 of the Public Health and Welfare code in
order to expel noncitizens under the guise of deescalating a public
health emergency.
The efficacy of Title 42 was dubious from the onset as experts from
the Center for Disease Control and Prevention rejected a public health
rationale for the operation of Title 42. Throughout the pandemic, Dr.
Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease expert and Presidential advisor,
also made it clear that immigrants were not spreading COVID-19 in the
United States.
Over the last 2 years, public health experts have repeatedly called
for the termination of Title 42, citing its inefficiency and
exacerbation of public health risks. During times of tragedy and peril,
we must account for the well-being of all of humanity, and Congress
must rely on practical protocols that uplift both public health and the
lives of migrating communities.
Title 42 has functioned as an immigration enforcement wall that
risked the well-being and lives of children, families, and individuals.
Under Title 42, thousands suffered cruelties such as exploitation,
kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder. The travesty of Title 42 has
been notable as it operates alongside another harmful border policy
from the Trump administration, the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
MPP requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until the adjudication of
their U.S. asylum claims and has resulted in human tragedy and death as
people seek protection from humanitarian crises. It would be
unconscionable to strengthen or repackage harmful border policies such
as Title 42 or MPP.
When we look at the face of our migrating neighbors, we must see
the image of God as we are all made in His likeness. The United States
is well-equipped to simultaneously honor that of God in every human
being, while investing in policies that streamline migration and
prevent cruel practices. The challenge of this Nation and the
responsibility of the 117th session of Congress is to create a
migration scheme that recognizes that migration management prioritizes
generosity, mercy, and safety--safety for communities within the
interior and those seeking inclusion.
Migration initiatives should also address forced movement resulting
from generations of policies that have threatened human security.
Central to Quaker principles are the values of atonement, grace, and
restoration, values that the United States should account for in its
migration practices.
A history of U.S. militarism and interventionism has contributed to
the fragility of many nations grappling with humanitarian crises and
consequential migration flows. The United States should see its
response to migration as necessary to acknowledge its global legacy.
However, under Title 42, the world has observed the disparate treatment
of Black and Brown immigrants seeking safety at U.S. borders, most
notably with the forceful expulsion of Haitian natives. We implore
Congress to embrace policies that appreciate the conditions inducing
migration and uniformly uplift the dignity of all immigrants--
regardless of nation of origin or race.
It is essential that individuals, families, and children seeking
safety at our borders are given a full and fair opportunity to seek
asylum. If our Nation does not afford due process to those who are most
in need, we are failing in our basic duty to fellow children of God and
degrading our domestic and international legal obligations as well as
our global leadership on human rights protection.
Top advisors from the Biden administration, human rights advocates,
and legal scholars have stressed that Title 42 violates the fundamental
right to seek asylum. The winddown of Title 42 should not continue the
expulsion of vulnerable communities, and the United States should
immediately coordinate fair, orderly, and humane asylum processes. The
United States must restore and preserve the right to access to asylum,
as outlined in both international and U.S. law.
The United States is strengthened when we stand together and value
those most vulnerable who need protection. The repeal of Title 42
should not lead to alternative assaults on the right to seek asylum or
to migrate. The U.S. Government should invest in existing community-
based infrastructures across the United States, including borderlands,
to ensure custodial and abusive practices do not surge following the
termination of Title 42. Communities of faith have always been and will
continue to be at the forefront of providing care to the most
marginalized in our society. FCNL remains a partner in strengthening
the efficacy of the U.S. asylum system and welcoming, safe border
policies.
______
Statement of the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights
April 6, 2022
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recent announcement
to terminate the policy of expelling migrants under Title 42 of the
U.S. Code, effective May 23, 2022 is an important step forward in
ensuring children and families seeking protection at our borders can do
so safely while remaining together. Congress must wholeheartedly
support the termination of this illegal and inhumane policy. It must
reject fear-based talking points, reclaim its commitment to welcoming
asylum seekers, and acknowledge that as a Nation we have the resources
and capacity to manage the border while respecting human dignity.
The impact of Title 42 on children has been devastating.
Title 42 puts children directly in harm's way by allowing Federal
officials to send any child who arrives with a parent right back to the
very danger they just fled. Families nearing the border have been
forced to ``choose'' between remaining in dangerous conditions with
their children or separating from them in hopes that they will be taken
in as unaccompanied children and be safe. Migrant children who have
remained with their families in border towns are often targeted for
exploitation and some have been kidnapped or faced other forms of
violence. Black asylum seekers are at heightened risk of harm due to
racism.
The Young Center has been appointed to numerous children in Federal
custody separated from family because of Title 42.
Since 2004, the Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights has
been appointed independent Child Advocate for unaccompanied and
separated children in Federal custody. As Child Advocate, the Young
Center submits best interests recommendations grounded in Federal law
and the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child on behalf of
unaccompanied children to Federal agencies. In the last 2 years, the
Young Center has been appointed to numerous children who have separated
from their parents to avoid being expelled back to danger under Title
42. Separation is often a last resort after trying to seek protection
as a family. One child we were appointed to came to the border alone
after being kidnapped with his mother for 2 months. Others have fled
squalid conditions in makeshift camps. Once children make it across the
border, they not only face the trauma of the separation, but also on-
going fear for the safety of their parents and relatives left behind in
the camps. These children often have little information about when they
might reunify with family or the status of their legal case, which
causes additional stress.
As a result of Title 42, family separation continues, but largely
outside of public view.
Parents who send their children across the border alone hope that
relatives in the United States will be able to sponsor these children
out of Federal custody. But sometimes family members cannot care for
another child or do not qualify as sponsors. Others are scared to make
themselves known to U.S. immigration officials as they themselves do
not have legal status and may put themselves--and children they may
already be caring for--at risk if they were deported. If parents are
admitted later without their children, they could face expedited
removal and risk permanent separation from their children.
Congress must support the Biden administration's efforts to restore
asylum and prioritize the best interests of children seeking safety.
U.S. refugee and immigration law requires our Government to
guarantee people the right to seek asylum in the United States. Ending
Title 42 is the first step toward fulfilling our minimum obligations
under the law. It also provides an opportunity to build an immigration
system which prioritizes children's safety and well-being. Congress
must support these efforts and push for a Federally-mandated ``best
interests of the child standard,'' in which every immigration official
who makes decisions about a child considers the child's right to
safety, to express their own wishes for their future, to family unity,
to liberty, to identity, and to the ability to grow and develop. As a
part of this commitment, Congress must challenge the Government's
reliance on any policy or practice which results in family separation.
Chairwoman Barragan. The subcommittee may have additional
questions for the witnesses and we ask that you respond
expeditiously in writing. The Chair reminds Members that the
committee record remains open for 10 business days. Without
objection, the subcommittee stands adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 2:54 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[all]
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