What’s behind record border encounters
The Biden administration recently released the final border numbers for fiscal year
2022, revealing a record 2.2 million migrant apprehensions. But as many elected officials and campaigns politicize their responses, they miss the context for this new record. In a time of rising migration and record displacement globally, there is no simple solution to the challenges we face at the border, and we need bipartisan solutions to address the issue over the long term. No president, Democratic or Republican, can unilaterally shut a 2,000-mile border to refugees fleeing regimes hostile to the United States.
This isn’t the first time that we have experienced a significant increase in migration, but the border looks much different today. Until 1995, the Border Patrol had fewer than 4,000 agents across the southern border and little permanent infrastructure. The government estimates that until 2012, most people crossing irregularly were not taken into custody. For example, in FY 2000, DHS believes that there were 3.8 million total crossings, with only 1.7 million leading to an arrest.
Beginning in 1994, the United States formally adopted a strategy of “prevention through deterrence,” building up infrastructure and increasing penalties for crossing. Border Patrol agents have since installed hidden cameras along the border, deployed stationary blimps and drones in the air, and built camera towers whose feeds are constantly monitored by artificial intelligence.
Today, nearly all irregular crossings are detected and recorded, and “gotaways” are the exception, not the rule. In FY 2000, for every person taken into custody, 1.3 people successfully made it past Border Patrol. Today, for every person taken into custody, around 0.3 people make it past Border Patrol.
Thus, even though FY 2022 set a record for apprehensions, we know that total border crossings are still below the early 2000s.
Crucially, the expansion of border infrastructure focused on one group: those trying to avoid arrest. But today, many migrants actually seek to present themselves to authorities to make their claims for protection. That’s because, once on U.S. soil, according to U.S. and international law, migrants have a right to seek asylum — no matter how they got there — and must be afforded an opportunity to defend their claim. No wall can stop a person from wading across the Rio Grande and flagging down a Border Patrol agent.
Even if there was no right to seek asylum, the United States would still be limited in its ability to turn away all who arrive because we can only deport people to a country willing to take them. If no such country exists, the government has little choice but to release migrants. This is one of the main reasons why so many migrants have been released at the border under President Joe Biden.
This is not a new phenomenon. Since 1965, Cuba has steadfastly refused to accept most deportations from the United States. Faced with this reality, the Clinton administration negotiated a compromise with Cuba in 1995 allowing any Cuban who made it onto U.S. soil to remain, but permitting deportations of those stopped in territorial waters. When Barack Obama ended Wet Foot/Dry Foot in 2017, it cut off a quasilegal pathway for Cubans, forcing them into the crowded asylum system.
Over the past two years, over 700,000 people from Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua have arrived at the border. Venezuela and Nicaragua, like Cuba, refuse to accept deportations from the U.S., meaning that nationals of those countries can neither be deported nor expelled to their home countries under Title 42, the Trump-era pandemic health rule that Biden recently expanded.
If a person can’t be expelled to their home country, they might still be expelled to a third country willing to accept them. This is why Mexico, not the United States, has largely dictated the use of Title 42. In March 2020, the Mexican government agreed that the United States could expel people to Mexico under Title 42 — but only those from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador. Because the United States has limited capacity to expel people by airplane, migrants from other countries are largely immune to Title 42.
Two weeks ago this changed, when the Biden administration convinced Mexico to take Venezuelans under Title 42. Thousands have since been expelled to Mexico, leaving would-be refugees in desperate straits, stranded south of the border.
However, enforcement-only policies have their limits. That’s why Biden seems to be taking the lead from Clinton by pairing increased enforcement with the creation of alternative legal pathways to enter. As part of its crackdown on Venezuelans, the administration pledged to admit at least 24,000 Venezuelans through “humanitarian parole,” a program similar to the one used to bring 70,000 Ukrainians to the U.S. through registered sponsors.
Although many are skeptical about whether this number is sufficient, there is strong evidence that expanding access to legal pathways can reduce border crossings. Do you remember the thousands of Haitians who arrived in Del Rio in September last year? Back then, if a migrant wanted to make an asylum claim, they couldn’t do so at a port of entry, since Title 42 blocked them from even starting the process. For them, the only way to seek asylum was to cross the Rio Grande and turn themselves in to the Border Patrol. This spring, however, the Biden administration gradually began expanding humanitarian exemptions to Title 42 at ports of entry and Haitians began taking advantage of this process, making their asylum claims at ports of entry instead. The resulting shift is dramatic. In the first five months of 2022, 19,166 Haitian migrants were taken into custody by Border Patrol after crossing between ports of entry. That number has since dropped 95 percent, with just 863 Haitian migrants taken into Border Patrol custody in the last four months.
If we want to reduce irregular migration, we must recognize that it begins far beyond any actions taken by a single president at the border. We must also remember that migrants are people, often fueled by desperation but with the same hopes and dreams of a better life as many of our ancestors. When the only way to seek safety is to cross the border irregularly and surrender to Border Patrol, that’s what people will do until offered a legal, efficient and safe way to seek protection.
The last decade has shown us that enforcement alone will not work. Until we work hard to engage other countries and offer people alternate pathways to come here legally, migrants will continue to drag themselves through danger to find the American Dream.