Thread by @ddayen

Now that the political media's decided to rediscover the border, I want to highlight @Marcia_Brown9's story from last week, because the dominant narrative is missing some critical context.
prospect.org/justice/year-o…

First of all, the border really is closed unless you're an unaccompanied minor or you had an asylum claim prior to last March. The Biden administration has maintained Title 42, a CDC public health order used to deport anyone crossing on sight.

This includes sending asylum seekers back to home countries whee they could be persecuted or killed, an illegal action.
More commonly, Mexican and Central American migrants are sent back to Mexico, where they promptly try to cross again.

There's an exception in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, which isn't accepting deported families with young children, but many of those families get transported to other states in Mexico.

A substantial amount of the traffic at the border is counting Mexican and Central American asylum seekers desperately seeking refuge many multiple times. That accounts for much of the apprehension increases. As Marcia writes:

"It’s true there are high numbers of new arrivals at the border, hoping the new administration with more humane rhetoric might allow them to cross, but it’s also true that many of the apprehensions are people who are trying to cross 3, 4, 5 times and are summarily returned."

However, unaccompanied children seeking asylum are allowed to cross.
Because of the adoption of Title 42, parents are deliberately separating from their children at the border and sending them over. That's causing the surge, combined with the pandemic easing.

Title 42 is in place because Biden wanted "to create an artificial pause in migration, perhaps to allow for reconstruction of a system dismantled by Trump," Marcia writes. But exempting children has created a surge in that population.

Some of this might have been inevitable but it's being seized upon by a right wing with no answers except "violate international law more by closing the border fully."

Just to close this sorry chapter, during the Bush administration we passed a Central American Free Trade Agreement that surged US agricultural exports into the Northern Triangle & made life for rural citizens there impossible, & now we don't like the repercussions.