The Day Title 42 Ended

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From The New York Times I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily.

Today.

And we are counting down to chaos. Title 42 will officially expire in less than 18 hours. The pandemic-era policy allowed the U.S government to quickly expel migrants who crossed into the U.S illegally.

For weeks, officials have feared that the end of Title 42 would create a crisis at the U.

Title 42 goes away on Thursday. And migrants will be in crisis as soon as next week. It will be a humanitarian crisis because we are not prepared.

My colleague Natalie Kitchoeff has been at the border and describes what actually happened when the milestone policy came to an end.

Okay, can you hear me?

I can hear you.

Okay, great, we're just pulling up to this part of the border that I'm trying to get to. I'm sorry, it's super dusty.

So Natalie, just by way of context, it's Thursday, May 11th. you're right at the U.S..-Mexico border, it's the middle of the day. Can you just describe exactly where you are geographically and what you're seeing?

First of all, I'm seeing the group of migrants, maybe three or four hundred people that have gathered. On the other side of the Rio Grande, crossing the Rio Grande, which, by the way, is not that grand at this particular part of Ciudad Juarez, it's like a shallow and very crossable, stream-like body of water, almost. And they just have walked across the other side, which means they're on U.S soil.

Natalie What does it mean for the people on the other side of this river who are successfully crossing to some degree to do that today?

Yeah, we're hours away from this border restriction being lifted. And what that means for folks is that the migration landscape in the United States is about to radically change. They're going to be the first people, we think, depending on when border agents start processing them, to really test out. What is this new system, you know before? Under the measure, which is called Title 42, the U.S government could summarily expel people when they crossed illegally.

Natalie The Biden administration has said very clearly over the past couple of days, I think as recently as earlier today. On Thursday, the border is not open and we will not let you in. And yet, from what you're describing, that's not really the issue people are getting in, they are there. So how do you reconcile all that?

Yeah, I mean, you know, it's true that the border isn't open. I mean, it's not as if the gates were just flung wide open and people are walking through. But folks are getting on U.s soil right now. And the reality is that when Title 42 lifts later tonight, the administration is going to have to process these people one by one.

But if the policy right in this moment before midnight is to summarily expel migrants who come to the border, why is this group crossing now?

Honestly, it's impossible to know exactly why any group of migrants is crossing. Right now. We don't have any really clear sense and there's just a lot of mixed messaging, so it's difficult to parse. You know, the individual rationale of each person. But what we know is that over the last several days, we have seen a rush to the border.

Right? But as we've said on the show for weeks, there have been reports of a surge of people coming to the border in anticipation of this change. Do you have any sense of how many people are at or just inside of the border right now?

We've been hearing that there's going to be this massive surge today, on the day that this pandemic rule lifts. But the reality is the numbers show that the surge is already here. The number of encounters at the border has gone up to 11,000 a day. That's up from 6,000 a day just a few weeks ago, so that's a huge increase.

Natalie, you have been where you are for the past week, so describe what you have been seeing as all these migrants have arrived at the border.

Well, you're seeing people coming in on buses, you're seeing them coming in on planes. And one of the most dangerous ways that they're getting here is on this train. That's known as the beast. It's also known as the Train of death. Because it's a really dangerous method for people to be traveling. It's this massive cargo train that people risk their lives, just getting on.

We're sitting here among construction material looks like steel rebar.

And I got into a car that was full of steel. Rebar and about 40 migrants who had been traveling, some of them for four days.

The guys that I'm talking to said they've seen people killed when they've gotten off it and the train has run over them.

There's not much water, there's barely any food, They're hungry, They're scared. It gets so cold at night.

So Jonathan has heard, basically that when the measure lifts, he really could just be deported. I think there's a couple of mixed messages happening here.

And so he had been on this train trying to make it one last time for several days. And he basically said, I'm going to walk to the border if I can.

We're coming from the south up until the north.

But when you're on the train, as soon as they catch a glimpse of the Juarez city limits, a cheer will go up. People are also still really hopeful, and when they start to arrive to this city, you can feel the kind of spirit lift. And people are looking at each other and they're saying, You know, we finally made it. Of course, for many of them, this is, they hope, the last leg of a very long journey. But I think they know, and we know that there's no guarantee that this is really the end of it.

Well, Natalie, thank you for now and we will check back in with you once Title 42 is lifted. And everything is different.

Sounds good, thanks, Michael.

We'll be right back.

I'm Susan Lee, I'm a researcher and fact checker with the Daily. What I do is make sure details in our episodes are accurate. I also spend a lot of time reviewing pretty much anything a guest on the show says. Let's say they're describing the color of someone's sweater.

So, Natalie, when we talked to you on Thursday during that afternoon, things were looking to be at kind of a fever pitch. There was this sudden wave of migrants at the border, the shelters on the U.S side were full. Everyone had this question in their mind.

Well, it didn't break the system and it turned out that what we'd been seeing over the last few days, that was kind of the peak. And so when the clock struck midnight eastern time, I was sitting there watching the border. I was looking at the Rio Grande and looking at this group of migrants waiting to try to get in. It wasn't getting any bigger.

How do you explain that, Natalie? That the worst case scenario for the U.

Well, yeah, I think a lot of people on both sides of the border think that. Biden and his administration were very clear that the new rules being put in place were not going to mean open doors at the border. And there's some sense that that message filtered down into the migrant WhatsApp groups, the Facebook groups, the chats that are constantly spreading that information. And I was talking to migrants in Juarez who were telling me that, you know, they had heard this message from the Biden administration.

Right, because so much of the information that these migrants were receiving and spreading seemed to be that. This wasn't a good time to come because of these new rules that you just referenced and Natalie, we talked about these rules last week with our colleague Miriam Jordan. But just briefly remind us why these new rules would have this cumulative effect of making people pause, wait, not rush to the border.

So remember that under Title 42, there was a benefit for migrants, there was a built-in incentive to cross the border illegally. Because if you cross the border illegally and got caught, you would probably be expelled immediately from the country. But there was no black mark on your record. As soon as Title 42 lifts, that's over. If you are caught crossing illegally, migrants know that you could be subject to criminal proceedings. And, most importantly, there's a five-year ban on re-entering the United States. And so the migrants that I talked to are terrified of this.

Right?

And the other issue that they're talking about is this new set of rules. That makes it really hard to qualify for asylum, which is this legal status that gives you protection from persecution in your home country? If migrants tried to claim asylum under these new restrictions, Biden put in place, You have to prove that you requested and were rejected for asylum in Mexico or another country that you passed through. On the way to the United States, there were some exceptions baked into these new rules. But all of the migrants that I talked to felt that these new rules made it essentially impossible for many of them to qualify for this kind of protected status. So, you know, the overwhelming sense, or the fear, really was that the new system being put in place was bad.

Right, which is exactly what the president and those around him hoped would be the message that reached these migrants. And as you have just explained, Natalie, it seemed it did reach them. And it resulted in the averting of a momentary surge. Perhaps even a crisis at the border over the past few days, when this three-year-old emergency rule came to an end.

Yeah, it does seem that that may have happened, at least in the short term. But honestly, the border is an extremely dynamic place and people are making decisions based on information that changes daily. And, you know, the slightest sign that this new system actually isn't so bad, that people are getting in when migrants start getting those messages, that is going to change their decision, that is going to impact the flows. People are not static for long, they are in wait-and-see mode for now, but that can change really quickly.

Well, so what do we know about that, Natalie, specifically, what do we know about the people that you saw crossing into the U.S late last week? What ended up happening to them? And what kind of signal might that be to everyone else about whether this is in fact a good or bad moment to try to come into the U.S.?

Well, we don't really know yet, there's not a lot of information, but here's what migrants are watching and really what everybody's watching. How successful is the Biden administration going to be at implementing its own policy? And essentially, the question is how quickly is the Biden administration going to be able to deport large numbers of people? If the Biden administration can quickly deport large numbers of migrants? That is going to send the message that it is not a good time to cross, it remains a bad time to cross, and migrants may sit back and wait.

Right, so you're saying that in this dynamic situation where migrants are looking for any sign that actually maybe it is a good time to go to the border. Even a failure to execute these scary new policies might end up undermining this entire program, designed to replace Title 42 for the Biden administration.

Oh, it definitely would. And on top of that, there's this other threat to the new system, which is that Biden's new policies are facing a bunch of legal challenges.

So, tell us about this.

So the administration is facing a couple of legal challenges to its new policies. The first legal challenge comes from Florida. And it really targets the way the Biden administration is letting migrants out of custody and into the United States. The argument is that this is happening in an unlawful way that puts an undue burden on the local government and the systems in the state. If the lawsuit works, if it's successful, that wouldn't be great for the administration. But it's not really clear what's going to happen with that one.

To migrants waiting.

That now is a good time to try to cross.

So at any moment, a judge could just throw this entire system into chaos. And all these signals that the White House has been sending not to come could be turned on their head, and the Biden administration will be back to square one.

That's a real possibility, I think, and it really speaks to this moment that we're in at the border right now, which is just uncertainty. We really don't know what's going to happen. There are a lot of people waiting in Mexico. And there's an administration that is looking at how this is playing out in the courts and how well they're able to execute their own new rules. And things are really in flux.

NELLie, I'm curious, Do you know what happened to all the people that you met last week? Especially on the beast? That terrifying train that so many of them take to try to get to the border.

Yeah, so remember Jonathan Arevalo, the 33-year-old Venezuelan guy that I met on the train?

Natalie, thank you.

Very much thanks, Michael.

We'll be right back.

See you tomorrow.