 My name is Cynthia Gordigua. I'm ProPublica's Marketing Director. Welcome to Biden's border policy, who gets in, who shut out. Today's event is co-presented by the Texas Tribune and brought to you with support from McKinsey and Company. ProPublica and the Texas Tribune recently reported on convoluted and unevenly enforced immigration policies from the Biden administration and the Mexican government that have caused confusion at the border. So to help clarify the situation, we have an excellent panel with us today and I'll introduce them right now. First, we have Teresa Brown. She is the Managing Director of Immigration and Cross-Border Policy at Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, DC-based think tank that aims to combine ideas from both the Republican and Democratic parties to address challenges in the US. Among other roles, she's held leadership positions on immigration and border policy at the US Chamber of Commerce, the American Immigration Lawyers Association, and the Office of the Commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. Alex Nerasta is the Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank headquartered in DC. He previously worked as immigration policy analyst at the Think Tank Competitive Enterprise Institute and has published a number of peer-reviewed studies on immigration that have appeared in the World Bank Economic Review, the Journal of Economic Behavior, and other publications. Ursula Ojeda is a policy advisor in the Migrant Rights and Justice Program at the Women's Refugee Commission, where she advocates for the rights of women, children, and families seeking protection. Ursula is an expert on policies governing the treatment of asylum seekers and other vulnerable populations at international borders with a particular focus on the US-Mexico border. She conducts regular monitoring trips to the border region and advocates nationally on these issues. Andrew Seely is President of the Migration Policy Institute, a global nonpartisan institution that seeks to improve immigration policies through fact-based research. He also chairs MPI Europe's Administrative Council. Dr. Seely's research focuses on migration globally with a special emphasis on immigration policies in the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean. And moderating our panel today is Laume Creel, a reporter covering immigration for the ProPublica Texas Tribune Investigative Initiative. She's also the author of the piece that we'll be basing our discussion on. So I'll be back in a bit for the audience Q&A, but first I'll throw it over to our moderator. Laume? Thanks, Cynthia, and hi, everyone. Thanks for joining us. The number of people detained after crossing the US-Mexico border reached a 21-year high in April, continuing an increase that has risen since President Biden took office. Migrants were taken into custody by US Customs and Border Protection, a total of 178,622 times last month. Although the data is a bit deceptive as it includes people who have crossed multiple times and such recidivism has been on the rise in the past year. Unlike almost any other period in modern American history, most migrants apprehended at the border are immediately turned back under a pandemic health order instituted by former President Trump last March and largely continued by Biden. That process last about 90 minutes with no asylum screenings or court hearings. Biden has made some exceptions to such blanket expulsions. So in April, about 67,000 people, mostly families and children crossing alone, were allowed to stay in the US while they seek protection from deportation. The automatic expulsions and the growing list of exemptions to them have made policies at the border extremely confusing. Migrants hear from smugglers and friends and relatives that some are getting in. So they often decide they might as well try to. Experts say that some of these policies that are so convoluted are contributing to the chaotic situation at the border where years of Trump era programs forcing migrants to wait in Mexico to ask for asylum had already created a significant buildup. And that of course has been made worse by the pandemic which aggravated endemic violence in Parvy and Central America and spurred more migrants to come here. In addition to that, a lack of any real immigration reform in three decades means there are very few legal pathways for Central Americans in particular to come here and work or seek protections. So requesting asylum at the Southern border has become almost the primary avenue for many trying to stay in the US. I'm really glad to be with these excellent panelists today and hope we can answer some of your questions on what is happening and some of the confusion. So Andrew, let's start with you. There's so many directives in place right now at the border but maybe tell us about two of the most significant ones. The automatic expulsions of most single adults whereas Biden has made an exception for unaccompanied children and so is permitting them in and not applying that policy to them. Tell us about these policies and perhaps the unintended consequences of sort of these two disparate initiatives. Well, thank you, Lomi. I think, thank you, Cynthia. I think we're at a moment of transformation. The administration inherited Title 42. They clearly want to get rid of it. They would eventually like to stop applying it. They've kept it in place in the meanwhile because they weren't sure what to put in place and there was no functioning asylum system. And I think they are, I think we will probably hear soon. I don't know if soon is two weeks or two months or four months or I don't know how long is. I think they are trying to turn on the asylum system again and trying to get rid of Title 42 and the health emergency seems to be subsiding. So I think things may change but as you said, this is a period of flux. And so on one hand, all adults are being sent back to or almost all adults are being sent back to Mexico under the Title 42, at least Central Americans and Mexicans which has created unintended consequence of high recidivism, people who try multiple times. Before if you were from Central America, you'd be sent back to Central America. It was very hard to try again. Clearly people did, but I mean, it was a long journey to try again. Now you're dropped off in the Mexican border community and many people try. So you see these large numbers. When you see large numbers of adults, you have to figure that probably 40 or 50% of them are second, third, fourth, fifth drives as people try and get across. And then with unaccompanied minors, they made the decision to let all unaccompanied minors in even though a court and appeals court allowed them to expel minors back to Mexico. But they decided that that was not appropriate. And so they stuck with that. And then you've seen with families. I don't know if you want me to dive into families the other you want me to wait on that. But families has been the other issue. Families in theory are being expelled back to Mexico. But in reality, what we've seen is that in South Texas, in the area around Tamalipas in Mexico, for a combination of reasons that are not entirely clear to me or there's no one else. The Mexican government decided that they did not have the capacity to take back more than a certain number of families a day. And in the end, what happened is the US was admitting a number of those people. And so that's now become the primary place where at least Central Americans come through and they're coming through fairly large numbers in South Texas. And so that's been, and then the final piece in all this is it looks like third country nationals were not from Mexico or Central America. At least certain nationalities are being allowed in because they don't at this point, given the health concerns, want to put people on the airplanes and deport them back to their home countries or hold them in detention. And so Mexico won't take back people who are not Central Americans or Mexicans. And so the option has been largely to admit people sometimes with, most times we think within order to appear in an immigration court of the future, what they call notice to appear, but it's a patchwork, right? And as you said, and you say in the article, one of the questions is, we can analyze this sort of having looked at the data, but for any given day, someone who gets to the border from one of these countries trying to get across is facing a series of rules that's changing all the time. It isn't particularly clear for them. And so it is, what you're seeing is a lot of people are following whatever the best information they get over WhatsApp or from Facebook, but it is incomplete. And it is creating a confusing situation for people who are trying to cross as well, because I suspect a confusing situation for people in border communities on both the US and the Mexican side. Yeah, and then in addition to that, we have this Mexican law that was implemented in January that now prevents the US from returning some families with children younger than seven in the state of Thamelipas, which is the state that has most, the busiest border crossing points into Texas. So can you tell us a little bit about how that's also added to the confusion here? I mean, families entering there are being allowed to stay, whereas in other points, they're not and there's been some flights by ICE from families entering there to different points of the border. How is that kind of adding to this? I mean, that has been one of the biggest stories, I think, that has probably gotten less reporting. But it is, the Mexican government, the law says that the Mexican government has to provide bed space for people who are coming through and who they take back. It's been interpreted to understand they can't take back people if they aren't bed space. And there are many interpretations you could give them what's happening in Thamelipas across from South Texas. But it is, I think the official accounting is that there aren't enough beds and the state government which controls the shelters, the majority of the shelters doesn't have the capacity and they and the federal government are on different pages. That may or may not be the case, but there is something going on there. Either way, the Mexican government has felt and that they could not take more than a certain number a day, about 200 a day, but the number may have gone up or down a little bit. And so originally the US government was trying to, DHS, CBP was trying to take some people who were then they were not able to send back and laterally move them to either El Paso or to Mexicali, to Mexico, California or San Diego, California and then return them to Mexico under the Title 42. That seems to have stopped. Although again, one of the disadvantages of not being at the border right now is it's hard to know for sure but when we hear that seems to have stopped for now. And so they are allowing most people to come in. But what that's done, Lomi, is that it means that families from Central America now know that that's the place you should try and cross in order to get into the United States. And so the numbers have gone up and went up considerably in March. Now they've kind of leveled off, even found out gently a little bit in April, but it is a much larger number than we've seen in the past, at least for the past couple of years. And it is a, I think there's an open question about what happens as they transition out of Title 42. And I suspect one reason that the U.S. government has not, I mean, I suspect there are two reasons why they haven't wanted to send families back. One is, you know, isn't the Mexican government is not taking them back, that's certainly one, but they also don't want to deport them because there's no asylum system. And so I think there is a sense, and we can talk about that later in the conversation, but I think that is also a major concern for the Biden administration of, you know, as they look at what their options are, Mexico won't take the families back. They don't want to deport them to Central America without giving them access to asylum. And they don't necessarily want to put people also in congregated settings and airplanes and detention centers. And so the result has been to release them with a notice to appear at a later date in the U.S. immigration court. Obviously an imperfect system because, you know, when people say, you know, it creates an incentive for people to say, look, if I'm ever going to go to the United States, I'm going to go now because it seems, I know someone who got in already, you know, I've heard of someone because, in fact, people are getting in. Not everyone's getting in everywhere, but in that particular place, there does seem to be a large percentage chance of getting in if you try. It's certainly not certain, but it is, you know, more than at other moments. And so people are taking the risk in doing it. Right. And so it just sort of adds to what we're explaining here, that there's kind of these varying policies of when you get in and when you don't. And so migrants are legitimately confused and often think that they should try. Because as you said, some are being permitted to come and stay. And so Ursula kind of adding to that, maybe you can tell us a little bit more about the migrant protection protocols, which is a different initiative that was started by Trump and this may be better known as Remain in Mexico, that forced more than 71,000 migrants to stay in Mexico and wait for their asylum cases in US immigration courts. Biden made that dismantling or pausing that program of priority during his campaign. And so far has led in or has begun the process of letting in about 25,000 people with pending cases under the MPP program. But of course the majority of people in that program have already had their cases denied. How has sort of that disparity just within this one bucket we're talking about maybe added to this confusion? And why should, I think a lot of people would say, people with denied cases, like their cases were denied by immigration courts or dismissed. Why should the majority of people in this program perhaps be given another shot at asking for asylum? Well, thanks so much, Lami. I'm so happy to be here today. I'm really happy to be talking about the wind down of this awful program remain in Mexico or MPP. And I think as of right now, of course the wind down started in February, there have been about 11,000 of those people who had open cases remaining who have been led into the country and welcomed and allowed to seek protection in safety in the United States. Now, when we're talking about people in MPP getting another shot at asylum, it's a little bit weird to talk about that because for most people, they never really had a shot at asylum in the first place in the program. MPP made an absolute mockery of due process protections for asylum seekers. It's definitely reflected in the fact that I think less than 2% of the cases that have been decided in the program have been affirmative grants of protection. A big chunk of those decided cases, nearly 30,000 of more than 70,000 that you talked about were people who were placed into the program who were ordered removed in absentia. That means they lost their cases because they didn't show up for immigration court, but that number really doesn't get at the full story of why this happened and why that number is so big. Under MPP, as you mentioned, folks were sent back to extremely dangerous border towns in Mexico and many people ended up missing their court dates because they were kidnapped, raped or tortured and suffered some sort of violent attack that physically prevented them from showing up to hearings. There have been more than 1500 publicly documented cases of violent crimes of people subjected to MPP that I think just represent the tip of the iceberg of what happened to those in the program and why so many missed immigration court. In addition to the dangers that those in the program face, others missed court because of inaccurate paperwork issued by the government under the previous administration, including paperwork that had inaccurate or fake court dates. Others were unable to travel from a port of entry where they were returned, which was maybe hundreds of miles away from where they were asked to return and come back to immigration court and just couldn't make it. Even others couldn't get into the port if they managed to show up on time and were blocked from entering by CBP. I remember talking to individuals who had shown up two minutes late for their 3.30 AM arrival time at the port of entry and were not allowed in and others who had gotten into the wrong line for anybody that's been at a port of entry can be a little bit confusing for any of us trying to figure out where you're going, but imagine it, 3.30 in the morning and you're worried and trying to get to court really missing that opportunity just because you don't know what to do. So a lot of people missed court and were ordered to remove because of that. For the lucky folks that managed to overcome these obstacles and get to immigration court, the vast majority were still denied protection. They maybe didn't have a chance to find an attorney because they were returned to these dangerous border towns in Tamulipas, for example, where attorneys are not willing to go and cross to meet with clients. Others didn't have a chance to prepare for immigration at court with their attorneys and even others were banned due to the now enjoying third country asylum ban under the Trump administration. Basically, MPP created a process that just stacked up against asylum seekers and the only fair way for the Biden administration to unwind it is to give everyone that was subjected to the program a second chance or really that first chance to pursue their asylum claim safely from within the United States. Now, I think the good news is that this program is winding down and we do expect there will be additional eligibility announced for the wind down, which I think reportedly would include these individuals that nearly 30,000 individuals who had in absentia removal orders, but the Biden administration really needs to include everyone else whose cases were unfairly, unfairly decided, terminated or otherwise closed as a part of the program. Now, to get to your point about the chaos that's existing now and the second phase does happen, it's gonna be vitally important for the government to clearly and publicly communicate the plan as soon as it is decided to avoid a repeat of some of the chaos and confusion that we saw in the initial days of the MPP wind down. I'm talking particularly about what happened in Tijuana. That was the first port of entry in February where individuals were allowed back in and others who maybe weren't eligible for the first phase of the program or who were new asylum seekers looking to figure out how to seek protection came to the port. And now we have a nearly 2000 person refugee encampment in Tijuana due to the confusion about how to access protection. So it's really going to be important for this to be publicly and clearly communicated not just to avoid kind of a little bit of chaos there, but also for attorneys understand how to advise their clients and for the asylum seekers themselves who have been subject to all of this chaos to understand how to participate in the process and come into the United States to continue with their cases. So while this MPP wind down is happening and as Andrew mentioned, it seems like the Biden administration is becoming a certain under increased pressure to end the Title 42 health order. And as sort of a part of that process, this month announced it would allow in about 250 migrants who were expelled under that order a day to ask for protection. But the UN High Commissioner this month actually gave what seemed a sort of unusual critique saying that this wasn't enough and actually allowing in a small number of people a day to ask for humanitarian exception while maintaining the border order is carries a number of risks and is not an adequate response. Can you explain why he might have said that? And also if and when the Biden administration does sort of more broadly wind down Title 42, the health order, what are alternatives to create sort of an orderly process? Yeah, thank you for that question. I have to say it was really positive and unusual to see the High Commissioner call so unequivocally for the end of the Title 42 expulsions and the restarting of asylum processing. I will also quickly note that it's positive that the administration is allowing some folks into the country. I don't think we're nearly at 250 a day but I hope we get there soon. It's been life-saving for people that have been waiting in indefinite limbo and dangerous conditions while asylum has continued to be shut down now five months into this new administration for some people to be able to get in. Now, I have to say, I have to agree really that exempting a small number of people from expulsions is not an adequate response from a protection standpoint. US law is really unambiguous in providing that anyone who is arriving to the United States at a port of entry between a port of entry or who is already in the United States has the right to seek asylum. Exempting individuals in small numbers from these expulsions falls far short from meeting our legal obligations for people seeking protection. I think it's for this reason that back at the beginning of the pandemic, UNHCR issued legal guidance warning against blanket measures to block asylum seekers for protection which is really what we have with Title 42 in the United States. The fact is of course, and I will just stress this it's absolutely possible to protect public health and preserve access to protection for people fleeing persecution and danger at the same time. That was true a year ago at the start of the pandemic and is undeniable now, a year after these restrictions have gone into effect in our understanding of COVID-19 as a disease and how to prevent its transmission spread and tests for it have radically improved. What we're seeing now and what I think we see reflected in the High Commissioner's comments is a real frustration and a sense that the US government is dragging its feet on restarting asylum. And I hope that Andrew's right and we're gonna see something moving in the next few weeks and that we're gonna start seeing access at ports of entry restart for asylum seekers in a meaningful way that is not just this exemption process. But right now, it's hard to hear the current administration argue and continue to try to posit that these exemptions and expulsions are necessary from a public health perspective. Just given the CDC opposition to Title 42 when the policy was first put into place, the whistleblowers who are talking about how it contributes to family separations at the border, that would be the families where children are exempted from Title 42. So parents send them across in the hopes that they will be safe while parents themselves are stuck in Mexico without any sort of recourse and risk expulsion. It's also really difficult to see the serious humanitarian consequences that this has created south of the border and abroad. I know we talked about the lateral expulsion flights that have since stopped, but those really contributed to a lot of chaos and a lot of problems in these Mexican border cities where we have these multiple processes coming through at the same time and a lot of confusion for advocates that are trying to help work with the US government to wind down Title 42, to wind down MPP and help asylum seekers get into the US in an orderly way. I think more than anything else without a clearly articulated plan from the United States for restarting asylum and moving to a post Title 42 world, I worry about exemptions and small numerical limits on asylum seekers becoming entrenched and leading to longer-term artificial limits on that access to protection which must be universal and not limited. I know you asked what else the administration could be doing to maintain an orderly process, but it's just important to underscore that expulsions have been anything but. And instead of contending with the expulsions, I think the administration should really work to reopen ports of asylum to asylum processing in particular and implement common sense public health measures such as masking and social distancing at the ports of entry to allow people to be processed in safely and quickly. They need to continue to work with border shelters and border NGOs as they have through the MPP wind down process and through these expulsions and excuse me, through the exemptions that are starting to ensure that people are rapidly released from CBP custody, avoid prolonged detention, avoid congregate settings and help people transit to end destinations in the United States where they can continue with their asylum cases. Now with these border NGOs, the work that they are doing now and work that they've been doing for many years is something that government can lean into when it's restarting asylum. These NGOs help individuals understand their rights and responsibilities to legal orientations. They help them get stabilized after what may have been a dangerous journey or time in still problematic CBP custody and then help them transition and travel to those final destinations for their immigration cases. As with the MPP policy, in order to restart asylum and restart access to protection in an orderly way, the administration must ensure that any process that puts into place is going to be clearly articulated in public, which is not what we have now where as Andrea laid out earlier, it's really hard to know who can gain access to asylum at the border and how and where. So we need to ensure that the process is public and migrants, their attorneys and advocates working with them know how to know how to access it and can understand it. Thanks, Ursula. Teresa, maybe you can give us just that. We've talked about some of these policies, some letting people in, some not, the broader Title 42 health order, but the broader picture, maybe you can give our listeners and viewers an understanding of this is the third border crisis in the last eight years that kind of started, even peaked in 2014 with unaccompanied migrant children from Central America. There was second wave in 2019 with mostly Central American families. And now, what we're seeing now, which is largely still driven by people from Central America, but of course is growing number of people from other countries, such as Brazil, et cetera. So tell us about how this sort of, what we've seen in the last decade is different from what we've seen at the US Southern border previously and how that's kind of added, made it more difficult for the US government in some ways. Yeah, thank you so much, Lorie. And thank you, Cynthia and ProPublica and Texas Tribune. I'm happy to be here. I think it's important to understand that the situation we're seeing at the border is not the situation that we had say 20 or 30 years ago when we had 1.6 million apprehensions a year because the majority of encounters that border patrol had and CBP had at the US Mexico border then were Mexicans. They were adult Mexicans, much, much lower numbers of unaccompanied children and family members, much, much lower numbers of people who were other than Mexican, so much so that that's how the border patrol reported. It was Mexicans and OTMs, everything else. They didn't bother separating out of their countries because the numbers were so tiny in the data. But as you said, beginning in the mid-2010s, all of that changed. And the reason that's important to understand why we are where we are now is that all of our border facilities, all of our border processes for immigration, for asylum, for everything we do at the border was designed when the vast majority of people encountered were single adults and were Mexicans. Why is that relevant? Because they could be honestly set back to Mexico relatively quickly. Very, very few people were actually applying for asylum through the procedures that we have in place now and that were in place then, which is I have a fear of going back and then they would have be allowed to present their case and deportation defense before an immigration court. That changed a little bit in the early 2000s when we started initiating something called expedited removal for people who are apprehended between ports of entry, that if you were expressed fear of returning, you would be first given a threshold interview, a credible fear interview. And if you pass that, then you could go to immigration court, but otherwise you might be deported. All of those processes though, again, were relatively quick. Voluntary returns of Mexicans, which were the norm up until probably the mid 2000s took place in a matter of hours. Very similar to what we're seeing about the expulsions in under title 42 today. As a consequence of that, we did see a lot of repeat people, repetitive people coming, trying again and again and again, so-called recidivists. We're seeing that pattern emerge again right now. Not just with Central American adults and families, but with Mexicans, an increasing number of Mexicans again. When we started seeing children in 2014, children from Mexico could be returned to Mexico, but children not from Mexico could not be returned to Mexico. And so suddenly the appearance of unaccompanied children from countries other than Mexico, mainly the Northern Triangle countries of Central America, overwhelmed the facilities, overwhelmed the processes that were designed for a much smaller number. And so we saw the overcrowding in the CBP facilities. We saw the backup in trying to get people to HHS care and subsequent efforts to address that under the Obama administration. That was followed by the arrival of families that resulted initially in family detention, that the Obama administration in early days of the Trump administration did until courts said they couldn't do that. As you said, we saw families again in 2019. Again, starting about 2015, 2016, we started seeing the majority of people encountered by Border Patrol were not Mexican. They were these other countries, mainly Central American. And so all of our processes broke down. All of our infrastructure, all the facilities we had designed were not appropriate for this population, nor were our systems, the asylum system, able to address that significant increase in cases coming in. And we're seeing that again now, but it is now coupled with a repeat of single adults, many people trying now to evade detection in addition to those presenting themselves for protection and all of it's broken down. And I think you saw what the Trump administration did was try to do layer upon layer of policy and operational impediments to people coming to the border to entering into that system. They didn't make efforts to expand the capacity of the system or change how the system was run to address this now eight year transition away from the traditional migrant flows and to this new population. The Biden administration came in inherited that. And as difficult as it is, they are trying to manage designing something new and different, which they say they wanna do, and maybe we'll see. Without the existing system being completely overrun again and limiting their ability to implement new things. And so they are balancing that humanitarian desire with frankly, it just a straight out logistical management desire. And it's not satisfactory for anybody probably at the moment. And that's one of the reasons why it's so confusing for migrants, for the public, for the attorneys involved to try to figure out what's happening. Because we're left still with a patchwork of policies, some that Trump put in place that are remaining, some that the Biden administration is poking some holes in, but it's inconsistent at different places because they're trying to manage operationally what's happening at locations around the border while they figure out essentially how they restart asylum in a process that won't just add thousands, tens of thousands more people to a system that's already backlogged in the United States. And as Andrew said, frankly is one of the reasons why people might come now and more people may be coming. So that's the challenge for the Biden administration at the moment. And one of these components of speaking of backlogs, is the immigration courts. So normally people asking for asylum, would in many cases be before some of these policies be allowed to stay in the US while they make that protection claim in the US immigration court. But we know these courts backlog with more than 1.3 million cases. It can take an average of two years to resolve a case. What can the Biden administration do to fix up that issue? And what can they do sort of outside of immigration courts to fairly adjudicate asylum claims at the border? So a number of years ago, a decision was made that cases at the border would not be decided first by asylum officers but would go all to immigration judges. And I think that again, when the numbers are relatively small, that was a good way of ensuring that people had a chance to put together an asylum claim to make it before an immigration judge who could have more time and ability to look at that case. Cases that were denied by asylum officers previously would be appealed to immigration court. So many of these cases ended up there anyway and it was seen as a streamlining process, honestly, to just send everything to immigration court. Again, that was manageable when the numbers were small. We now have a backlog, as you said, that's well over a million cases and growing. And off a lot of that is border cases from the last eight years. And that backlog is just growing. There were decisions made under the last administration that haven't yet been changed by this administration as to how those cases were managed. They're combined with all of the cases that arrive from inside the United States by arrests and encounters from immigration customs enforcement. And it's just adding to a growing backlog. I think that there are ways to streamline that process and I think it's imperative that the government has, we have to rethink how we process asylum cases at the border, not to deny access or to deny due process, but lumping them in and throwing them into the same system that is already growing in backlog is just moving the problem further down the line and creating more problems. So I think it's imperative that we rethink some of this. I think asylum officers should have ability to adjudicate cases at the border in the first instance. Even if it's a small number of clearly approvable cases at the get-go, that's a number of cases that don't have to go to immigration court. I then think we need to have essentially a separate system for deciding border asylum claims. Not that the system would have different standards or due process, but it would be separated out from the remainder of the immigration system so that we don't further backlog cases in the interior and we can more rapidly expand capacity and deal with cases at the border. So we need to rethink all of these processes. Last but not least, I wanna go back to something Andrew said. It's important to understand that these may all be people who are asking for asylum, but not all of them are going to get asylum. As a matter of fact, probably the majority of them may not qualify. But they're seeking reunification with family members who are already in the United States. They're seeking better economic prospects. We need to have ways to provide other legal avenues for migration that can be regularized and managed appropriately rather than people deciding that their only chance of getting United States is the asylum system. That's not what the asylum system was designed for. And frankly, it's a disservice for those cases that really need the protection when the system is overrun essentially by everybody trying to use it. So we need to find other ways so that people who may still need to migrate but don't have asylum cases have other ways, whether that's expanding legal work visas from the region, things like the Central American Asylum Program, we need to find opportunities for protection in other places and other ways in the United States or applying before people have to make that long trip to the border. There's lots of ways that we can do that if we think creatively, but the one thing we can't do is think that this is a temporary blip and that we will go back to a more traditional, if you will, border migration that we saw up until the mid 2010s, I think that time has gone away. And the idea that we can somehow go back in time and make things more under control that I think that's by more enforcement, I think is not the answer. Thank you. Alex, maybe you can tell us more about, you know, as Teresa mentioned, why can't people just apply for work visas and refugee protection from their home country, particularly from Central America? What's preventing them from doing that right now and what should be done or what could be done to widen those opportunities? Well, the number one reason why people don't apply is because the visas are not available for them. Furthermore, the way that the US immigration system works, they're an American employer has to sponsor them and apply for them to come in on a work visa. Now, realistically, the two work visas available for people from Central America to come to the United States to work is the same for basically every country south of the border are the H2A and H2B visas. And these are low-skilled temporary work visas. The H2B is for non-agricultural work that's seasonal. The H2B is for seasonal agricultural laborers. And the big problem is that if you are Central American and you wanna come to the United States to work, there is essentially very small chance that you would ever be able to get any of these visas to be able to come into the United States. The way that the systems are structured right now relies upon American companies to do a lot of labor recruiting. And the thing is because of that sort of system, the way it's set up, labor recruiters have been incentive to basically go to one place in these countries to do their labor recruiting. What they have settled upon in most cases is a few towns or a few states in Mexico where they do the vast majority of their recruiting. So when you take a look at say the H2A visas, 91% of those go to Mexicans, that's the agricultural visas. For the H2B, the non-ag, 74% go to Mexicans. And the rest of them really come from people all over the world. A lot of Jamaicans, some Guatemalans, a lot of South Africans and some others. So the number one reason why people come unlawfully or they show up at the border to try to get in through other means or they're by asking for asylum. Some of them do have, of course, legitimate asylum claims, a lot of them don't, is because they do not have another way to enter the United States lawfully. So we hear a lot of talk, I think, from the Biden administration and from others about trying to resolve the root causes of migration. Why are people coming to the United States in the first place? Well, I mean, it's pretty easy. It's because the wages for people who are high school dropouts in the United States is three to six times higher than it is in Central America and that's adjusted for the cost of living. So if all it took was moving a few thousand miles to have a radical improvement in your standard of living for yourself, for your family, for your children, then a lot of people are gonna try to do that. And if they can't do it lawfully, they're gonna try to do it unlawfully or they're gonna try any kind of other way to try to get here to be able to work. So when people talk about root causes, they really talk about, you know, they wanna sort of like Vice President Harris recently had an initiative, they are trying to get American companies to invest down in these countries. Even if that were to work and it were to increase the wages for people in those countries, those countries are at such a level of income were actually increasing their income down there would lead to more of them coming to the United States because they would have higher discretionary income to be able to do so. So all the sort of ideas that people are talking about is a joke. And I must say like it's a pretty easy thing to fix if we really wanted to fix it, it would just be allowing more of these folks to come lawfully to be able to work. I would love it if they could come permanently to work but that's probably, you know, too far a goal that's too far to take seriously but allowing them to come temporarily. Research that we've done at Kato or taken a look specifically at Mexico shows that over time an additional three visas issued to low skilled Mexican workers that come to the US lawfully reduces the number of apprehensions of Mexicans coming across the border by two. So if that were, so three visas, you get two fewer apprehensions because we channel people into the legal market. So the Biden administration is trying to do some of this. They have basically the discretion to increase the number of H2B visas by 64,000. They've done just 22,000 of those, 6,000 for Central America. It's not nearly enough. There need to be tens of thousands more for these folks every year to be able to come to the United States lawfully to be able to work to meaningfully reduce the flow of people showing up on the border. Thank you. And that's only speaking to sort of the work part of it. And of course, as we know, it's very difficult to see refugee protection from Central America. I think the Biden administration's ultimate cap or allocation for all of Central and South America was 5,000 for this year. So that means not a lot of people can see security protection from the home countries. I think that we are kind of running short in time here and we wanna get some audience questions in. So Cynthia, if you maybe wanna collapse some of those. Great, thank you so much, Lonnie. So yeah, we're gonna get some audience questions. I'm gonna direct them to one speaker and I just ask if you can try to keep your answers brief because we do wanna get to as many as possible. Our first question is how much of current immigration to the US is driven by events and factors that are direct or indirect results of US foreign policy? And what can you tell us about those policies? So it's a big question. And Andrew, I'm gonna start with you. Yeah, I mean, I think you can go from the small to the big on this. I mean, the small is what Alex just said. I mean, for example, the lack of legal pathways. We know we keep seeing this is actually by our count, I think the fourth in, you know, big migration surge at the border and people from across it becomes a huge story. And we still haven't created legal pathways for people to comment. So that, you know, so that's sort of the small side of sort of just not adapting to reality. You know, you need to be able to manage with migration policy, your neighborhood in a way that it, you know, if you know something is gonna cause disruption every few years, I mean, at a minimum, forget the humanitarian side, forget the, you know, what benefits the economy, simply from a migration management standpoint, you wanna make sure that that's not gonna keep happening, right? And so creating the legal pathways is really important, right? We know that there are protection demands coming out of Central America and other parts of the hemisphere we haven't created. You know, not only we not created an effective and efficient and fair asylum system, but we got rid of the poorly operating one that we had and did not replace it. And, you know, there's a sign, these are things we should do. Now, going to the bigger picture, which is I think where the question really was. So, but I mean, I would start there because I think those things are important, right? I mean, we know there's protection needs. We know there's labor demands. We should be responding to this in a way that's responsible. And by the way, then you use enforcement. I mean, enforcement will exist, but you use enforcement to make sure people are using the channels you've created, right? I mean, those channels become the way and they've got to be big enough, realistic enough, fair enough that people know that they have a chance. You know, if they're going to get in a line or they're going to apply for asylum, that they feel they have a fair shot. Otherwise they're going to come, they're going to find their way around enforcement, one way or the other. The larger question I'll be brief on this is, you know, obviously the US has not always played a constructive role in particularly in Central America. I mean, the US did for a long time prop up regimes that were extremely authoritarian, that engaged in, you know, human rights abuses against populations there. And I would say even in recent years, I mean, there were real attempts driven by civil society and by change makers inside and outside government. And we should recognize in Central America, there are people who are struggling for change. Some of them are actually inside government and some of them are outside government. There have been some institutions created to try and protect rule of law, to strengthen rule of law. We really stepped back from supporting that. And I think there's a huge opportunity, now you see an attempt. And I think it's bipartisan. It's on both sides of the aisle. People really saying we need to actually make sure there's good governance and rule of law in Central America. But we have played a role, both of you go back to the 80s, you know, and look at sort of authoritarian regimes, but even more recently in letting some of the gains that were made by Central Americans themselves slip away and not saying anything about it and not protecting it. And so we do have a bit of a death there. And hopefully we're at a moment where we really do have bipartisan understanding that helping countries in the region do better and empowering change makers in those countries is also in our interest. Thank you, Andrew. Our next question I'm going to direct to Ursula. What is the policy for reuniting families? What is the policy for reuniting families where a parent was deported? So can the parents stay in the US if they were brought here to reunify? Sure, I think that's a great question. And it gets a lot of complicated bits of immigration law. So I guess we could take the example of a family that is separated. Let's take the example of a child who comes with a parent and the parent is expelled or deported back and the child is in the United States. Under current US law, when a parent and child are separated and hopefully that's never the case, right? Hopefully parents and children stay together. The child will go to the ORR system under the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is under the Department of Health and Human Services. They will be placed into the care and custody of the system until they can find someone who will take care and custody of that child. Now, if a parent is deported, what's going to happen in the United States is that the child is either going to be given a chance to reunify with another sponsor, perhaps another immediate relative, such as grandma, aunt, or uncle, or somebody that's a family friend who they may have known. And then that child can be released from government custody to continue with their immigration case there. Otherwise, if the child does not want to reunify there, still in removal proceedings, meaning they could choose to take voluntary departure and be reunited with their parent back wherever the parent is. There's not an affirmative procedure in place for children to have their parents come back and join them if the parent has been deported or as we're seeing a lot right now, parents being expelled. So we see these separations happening in some cases without a real way to get the parent and the child back together. Thank you. So we're getting a lot of questions about Vice President Harris' role in all this. I'm gonna direct this one to Theresa. Can you tell us about what is Vice President Harris' position? What role does she play in the management of asylum seekers and US detention centers? So the President Biden directed Vice President Harris to work on the foreign policy aspect of migration, to work with Mexico, the country's essential America and Latin America more broadly on addressing the root causes. She was not given a direct role in addressing what's happening at the border specifically. So the placement of children still falls to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Javier Becerra and the Office of Refugee Resettlement within that department. Obviously Department of Homeland Security, Secretary Allen New Yorkus is in charge of the Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and US Citizenship and Immigration Services, all of which have a part to play. So the border activities are still under the purview of the cabinet secretaries in the United States. What Vice President Harris was tasked with was working with Mexico and the governments of Central America and US foreign policy and aid apparatus on the root causes issue. So she has been, as Alex mentioned today, announcing today, US companies willing to invest in those countries to try to create more economic opportunity to reduce some of the push factors that drive migrants to come the United States. Talking with Mexico about how migrants in Mexico are transiting through Mexico might be treated by Mexico and or seek asylum in Mexico. Talking with the government of Guatemala about its own borders and understanding who's crossing through its own borders, as well as reintegration of migrants that are sent back home. So there's a lot of different things that she is working on and I think we'll see trickles of these as we see bilateral and multilateral visits, but it's important to understand that as of right now, her task is all about what's happening in the sending countries and the transit countries and addressing those root causes and she does not have an active role in what's happening at the border right now. Thank you. So the next question I'm gonna direct to Alex. We're getting a theme that keeps coming up and the questions we're getting is that, we'll never get any reform going on because Republicans and Democrats can never agree on anything. So what is one thing, if anything, that Republicans and Democrats agree on about immigration reform? Well, you really saved the hardest question for me. What do they agree on? I mean, a lot of them don't even agree that there's a big crisis right now, right? Like I don't even know what they really agree on. I mean, they're both obsessed with rhetoric and they're both obsessed with trying to use this issue through for political gains in the short term. I would say there's probably most agreement on folks on both sides of the political aisle to try to find some way for some number of dreamers to be able to stay in the US lawfully. But I would doubt, and by, I mean, most agreement, like maybe like in some polls, like a majority of Republicans say yes, but that's probably an exaggeration. In terms of what's going on in the border right now, I mean, there's really not much agreement about anything at all. Both sides seem to be very interested in enforcement first. Both sides don't seem to have understood. I guess they agree in this way, right? The both sides do seem to be more interested in enforcement first. They don't seem to understand the fact that black markets exist when legal activity is not allowed. They sort of have not learned that lesson from prohibition or drugs or any other prohibitions that we've had in this country or across history. And a lot of folks I think are beginning to realize that what the United States does by itself in a vacuum is probably not the most important thing in order to affect migration to the United States. I mean, folks face loss of pressure in the home countries that have very little to do with anything the United States does here in any kind of way. We're in a world where people have much more information than they ever did before, much cheaper to be able to fly or to be able to move than ever before. And so I think there's sort of a sense amongst Republicans and Democrats and everybody that things are changing. And we're probably gonna have to try some new things like say liberalization going forward. But people on both sides have not really come to the conclusion that that is exactly what they need to do to try to fix this problem in the long term. Thanks, Alex. So, Loamie, I'm gonna ask you this next question. So I think you know something about this. I mean, you know something about all of this, but I wanna get you in the conversation as well as an expert. So the question is, this readers heard from a few NGOs about migrants citing actual newscasts and reports that they saw on social media, most likely faked giving information that President Biden was opening the border. How has social media contributed to this false narrative and where is this misinformation coming from? Yeah, so I mean, there's definitely a ton of Facebook groups for people. I mean, Facebook has been a huge avenue, both just connecting with people, but Facebook groups in and of themselves in which even smugglers post information for migrants who are trying to come here. And then WhatsApp groups in particular has been huge, but that's often sort of coordinated versus a friend of a friend who knows someone, who knows someone and sort of getting information about how to come here, where to go as the policies are kind of changing. But I do think sort of to, and then of course there's smugglers who, this is their business. So they manipulate information about what's going on in the US to convince people to try to come here. But as Andrew and I have discussed, that manipulation can't be done in a vacuum, right? I mean, like they can say stuff, but it has to, that's false, but like it has to have some truth to it. Otherwise it doesn't work. So they are manipulating kind of this confusion. But then like as Alex says, people, I think there's this idea in the US that people in particular in Central America are paying extremely close attention to every move Biden or Trump made. And I don't think that's really the case. I mean, people are making decisions based on their own situation. And then largely based on like what other people they know and trust, whether that's a friend of a friend of an uncle who's in Miami or a smuggler who has been doing this business for a very long time and lives in their hometown is telling them that much more so I think is sort of driving these decisions than every minute policy change that the US is making. Can I add one thing to that too? Just a little flavor detail on that. Is a lot of smugglers now are offering guarantees that they guarantee that the migrant will get into the United States. And that's because of Title 42. That's because of the expulsion policy. It's like they can keep trying again and again and again until they get in. That's something they never did before. And that means that the migrant doesn't need to know what Biden has done or said or had harassed it or anything. A whole lot of information is condensed into one little guarantee that is included within the price of coming to the United States. So Lomi is totally, totally right. They don't need to pay attention to everything that we write about in DC or Biden says. They guys take a look at the small bit of information available to them, which is a lot of people are offering them a deal guaranteed to get in first time ever for a price. And that contains everything they really need to know. And I just want to tack on there that anything that happens at the border, anything the smuggler tells somebody, the very first decision a migrant makes is I have to leave where I am. And we have very, very little to do with that decision. Everything else comes later. Migrants decide they cannot stay where they are, whether that's for safety, security, family unification, economic, whatever. And the idea that we influence that decision is that's everything else comes later. So all of the smugglers and treaties, all of the narratives about what happens at the border would fall on deaf ears if people didn't already believe that they had to leave where they were at. And so I think that's the piece that we continue to forget about when we talk about US policies here. Well, that's our time for today. I'd like to thank our panel for this excellent conversation. We could have obviously gone on another hour, but I wanna respect the time. Also special thanks to McKinsey and Company for their support and thank you and the audience for joining us today and for your great questions. Again, this event has been recorded and will be posted to propublica.org and texastribune.org.