Report suggests Biden considering sending interdicted Haitians to third country, or Guantánamo—11-07-22
Immigration news, in context
This is the 144th edition of BORDER/LINES, a weekly newsletter by Felipe De La Hoz and Gaby Del Valle designed to get you up to speed on the big developments in immigration policy. Reach out with feedback, suggestions, tips, and ideas at BorderLines.News@protonmail.ch.
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This week’s edition:
In The Big Picture, we examine an NBC News report about the administration’s plans to potentially send Haitians interdicted at sea to another country, or warehouse them in Guantánamo Bay.
In Under the Radar, we look at the family separation impact of the government’s recent agreement with Mexico to begin Title 42 expulsions of Venezuelan migrants.
In Next Destination, we discuss a forthcoming probe into claims that CBP personnel are failing to return crucial documents to migrants taken into custody.
The Big Picture
The news: A recent NBC News report suggests that, given concerns of a large outflow from an increasingly unstable Haiti, the Biden administration is weighing a maritime interdiction program that would either send migrants to a third country or potentially even house them in the migrant detention facility on the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base.
As we explain in our subscriber version, there are actually long histories of every facet of these plans: maritime interdiction, the use of third countries to receive migrants that the federal government doesn’t want to deal with, and the detention of would-be asylum seekers and Haitians specifically on Guantánamo.
Many questions are left unanswered, but the existence of these plans in the first place point to an administration that remains concerned about the perception of disorder when it comes to humanitarian migration, and despite the more welcoming language is willing to mine the restrictive policies of the past for tools that can be used against migrants and to weasel out of the humanitarian obligations that would otherwise apply.
Under the Radar
Title 42 expansion leads to separation of Venezuelan families
Last month, the Biden administration expanded Title 42 to apply to Venezuelan nationals, who until that point had been largely exempted from the policy because Mexico was unwilling to accept their expulsions. These expulsions are already leading to Venezuelan families being separated at the U.S.-Mexico border, the New York Times reports.
This time around, it’s not an overt, explicit family separation policy like the one implemented by Trump in 2018, in which minor children were taken from their parents at border detention facilities. Instead, families are being separated in a more opaque procedural way. The Times reports of one instance in which a man, his wife, and their two children were segregated by gender after being apprehended by Border Patrol: the man and his 18-year-old son were released into Texas, while his wife and their 20-year-old daughter were expelled to Mexico. These separations appear to be the result of the limited scope of what immigration officials consider a “family.” Rather than processing the four Venezuelan migrants as a family unit, Customs and Border Protection appears to have processed them as four unrelated adults.
Next Destination
Federal government to review CBP practice of confiscating migrants’ documents
When Border Patrol agents apprehend migrants at the border, they often seize their personal property. Migrants are supposed to have their passports, birth certificates, and other important paperwork returned to them if they’re deemed to be legitimate, but CBS News recently reported that CBP often fails to return these items. DHS has since told CBS News that ICE and CBP “are reviewing their policies and practices to ensure that, once a migrant is released from their custody, their documents are returned to the migrant absent a security or law enforcement reason.”
Per a 2015 CBP policy, migrants’ personal property must be “safeguarded” and agents must “make every effort” to return it to them upon their release from detention. However, migrants apprehended at the border regularly report that their belongings—including paperwork they may need to help build an asylum case—are confiscated and not returned to them.