Protester confronts Biden with "Not 1 More Deportation" at townhall meeting in South Carolina. Photo: AP
On April 26, Alejandro Mayorkas, the head of the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced a six-point “whole of government plan” for an expected “surge” of immigrants attempting to seek entry to the U.S. The DHS calls this "a plan to prepare for and manage increased encounters of noncitizens at our Southwest Border."
The plan calls for fortifying and intensifying the U.S.’s already obscene militarization of the border, and putting in place even more personnel and facilities to administer "consequences for unlawful entry, including removal, detention, and prosecution” of tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of desperate, impoverished immigrants.
“Expedited Removal”—and other “Pillars” of Biden’s Plan
Biden’s plan carries forward, and in some cases escalates, many of Trump’s policies on “controlling the border.” The essential difference—Trump spoke with flagrant racism and boasted of his sadistic cruelty. His insulting language and calls for violence inflamed and further emboldened his fascist social base. Biden’s rhetoric, and even some secondary components of his six-point plan, are designed and intended to sedate people and keep them passive—especially people who have supported him and the Democrats, and who hoped for something better than Trump’s hateful bigotry.
The “core” of this plan, in its own bland, deliberately obscuring “bureaucratese,” is to “… strictly enforce … immigration laws. This includes increased use of Expedited Removal, detaining single adults when appropriate, referring for prosecution those whose conduct warrants it, and accelerating asylum adjudications that enable us to more quickly process and remove from the United States those who do not qualify for relief under our laws.”
Its enforcement—“Border Security Pillar 1”—requires a boost in “… resources, including personnel, transportation, medical support, and facilities to support border operations.” The plan states that by May 23, DHS “will be prepared to hold approximately 18,000 noncitizens in CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] custody at any given time, up from 13,000 at the beginning of 2021” and double its ability to “transport noncitizens on a daily basis, with flexibility to increase further.”
In short—more brutalizing Border Patrol enforcers, much more jail space for immigrants.
Other “pillars” include:
- Measures to improve “processing efficiency” of arrested immigrants and reduce waiting times for hearings. Translation: Forcible removal of people from the U.S. as quickly as possible, covered by a facade of legality and due process.
- Arrangements with Mexico and other countries to ensure they “share the responsibility [of controlling immigration] to the U.S….” Translation: Squeezing dependent regimes to use their military and police forces to violently prevent people throughout Latin America from making the journey to the U.S. at all.
- Establishing “a new intelligence unit to coordinate and strengthen the capability for early warning of migrant movements.” Translation: Spying on and disrupting potential “caravans” of migrants as and before they form.
And, this being a plan of the “humane” Democrats, who, after all, claimed to be appalled by Trump’s openly racist brutality against immigrants—it includes expanding the ability of non-governmental organizations in “communication and coordination” with federal authorities to provide basic life needs and support to desperate immigrants.
Title 42, Title 8—Same Rotten System
As revcom.us reported recently, on May 23 “Title 42” is set to expire. This is a section of U.S. legal code that both Trump and Biden have used to “expel” immigrants. “Expel” means forcibly driving people out of the U.S. without any legal hearing or appeal. About 1.8 million people taken into custody at the U.S.-Mexico border have been expelled by Trump and Biden with Title 42 as legal “justification.”
People fleeing murder, arson, rape, torture, and kidnapping have routinely been denied asylum hearings and forced into Mexico. The organization Human Rights Watch reported that “Under the Biden administration, CBP [Customs and Border Patrol] has expelled pregnant women who were in labor, and under the Trump administration, it expelled women immediately after they gave birth, including to U.S. citizen children.”
Mother holds her 9-year-old as they wait for Border Patrol to take them into custody. Photo: Border Report/Sandra Sanchez
The rulers of the U.S., Democrat and Republi-fascist alike, fear that the possible end of Title 42 could set off an unprecedented number of people trying to get to the U.S. According to a Reuters report, “DHS officials told congressional offices … that tens of thousands of migrants who are already near the border could arrive within hours of Title 42 being lifted and more than one million in southern Mexico and other countries could come within weeks, according to an aide briefed on the matter.”
Mayorkas announced that when Title 42 expires, the U.S. will rely on another part of federal code—“Title 8”—as its “legal authority for enforcing our border security and immigration laws … Title 8 provides that individuals who cross the border without legal authorization are processed for removal and, if unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the United States, promptly removed from the country.”
In fact, border authorities under both Trump and Biden have used Title 42 and Title 8 to remove people arrested at the border. Title 8 allows some immigrants to seek asylum. But after May 23, Title 8 enforcement will not necessarily mean that immigrants who apply for asylum will be able to remain in the U.S. until their cases are heard. Under another still-intact Trump era policy called “Remain in Mexico,” many asylum seekers would be forced to wait in foul, disease- and crime-ridden camps in Mexico until their cases are heard.
A Tidal Wave of Human Suffering
U.S. agents at the U.S.-Mexico border force asylum seekers not from Mexico back into Mexico, violating international law on asylum. Here in an encampment in Reynosa, Mexico, a woman wakens amid hundreds of migrants expelled from the U.S. Photo: AP
Conditions in these camps have deteriorated during Biden’s presidency. As Associated Press reported late last year, “Crowding and unsanitary conditions are getting worse at informal camps set up in northern Mexico by asylum seekers waiting to make asylum claims in the United States.” Entire families live “… under plastic tarps, without bathrooms and at the mercy of the elements and the vicious gangs that roam the area.”
A woman at a camp with over 2,000 people told a reporter that she had fled the Mexican state of Guerrero after a gang killed one of her sons and threatened to kill her. She said, “The children are getting sick with diarrhea; they’re getting fevers and infections because there are a lot of flies around. There is no sanitation, there is garbage around, excrement, urine. I came blindly, fleeing what had happened to me.”
A tidal wave of human suffering, degradation, and oppression is about to hit the U.S. The U.S. government is not preparing a humanitarian response to the anticipated upheaval. It is marshalling and concentrating brutal forces and equipment of repression, while expanding its use of farcical legal procedures, and assembling a core of non-governmental organizations to provide pretenses of “legitimacy” and “humaneness.” It is doing this within the laws of the criminal system that causes such misery.
As Bob Avakian said in a recent interview:
The laws in force are the laws of the imperialist dominators of the world: regulating and militarizing borders to safeguard imperial interests, and super-exploiting immigrants that do cross into the imperialist heartlands and are forced to “live in the shadows” without rights. It is a statement of our times that the U.S.-Mexico border and the Mediterranean have become burial grounds for migrants and refugees, that refugee camps become recruiting grounds for the global “sex trade.”