Biden’s Trumpian turn on the border isn’t new: new boss same as the old boss
New US 'asylum ban' proposal draws fire from civil rights and migration groups
Ahoy Piratas!
Happy Friday!
Daniela has set out again into the wild unknowns of Colombia, leaving Joshua in Bogotá to man our vessel alone.
Both of us are soon headed to Chocó, in the northwestern coast of the country to accompany Doctors Without Borders on a humanitarian mission to communities who live in conflict zones controlled by criminal armed groups.
Joshua is very excited about this, so doesn’t mind battening down the hatches until then.
Our usual newsletter was all edited and ready to go out this week, but then on Tuesday afternoon, a bombshell announcement on migration from US president Joe Biden sent us back to the drawing board.
The decision will affect all of Latin America, and critics are comparing the proposed policy to ideas that Trump tried, and failed to implement.
Biden’s Trumpian turn on the border isn’t new: new boss same as the old boss
New US 'asylum ban' proposal draws fire from civil rights and migration groups
As Democrats in 2020 seethed over Trump migration policy, US president Joe Biden promised on the campaign trail to expand and protect the right to asylum in the United States. But now, just over halfway through his term, it seems clear he intends to dismantle it instead.
This week the administration announced a proposal that would even further restrict asylum claims at the border Under the new rules, the US would deny asylum to virtually all migrants who show up at the southern border without first seeking protection in a country they passed through, a near policy clone of Trump administration “asylum bans” that never took effect because they were blocked twice in court.
The new policy would take effect on May 11, the same day that Title 42, which was passed under the guise of public health policy, will be withdrawn by the Center for Disease Control, against the wishes of the Biden administration.
The proposed changes would exempt unaccompanied minors.
Last October, he announced a massive expansion of Title 42, the Trump-era policy that has resulted in over two million deportations— a policy change his team tried to spin as an “expansion of asylum rights”. It wasn’t.
Though the policy did expand the number of asylum claims among Haitians, Cubans, and Venezuelans in theory, it also set up considerable legal roadblocks that made many applicants ineligible, and made asylum claims at the border all but impossible for anyone else in the Americas— a policy that despite administration claims of being enacted for humanitarian reasons, seems eerily similar to ideas of Trump adviser Stephen Miller himself, who could never get the measure approved.
Civil rights groups vow to fight the “travel ban”
“Our courts have long recognized that a person’s decision not to seek asylum while in transit to the US does not override their need for protection here,” said the ACLU in a public statement on Tuesday. The civil rights organization has vowed to sue if the new proposal is implemented.
“We successfully fought President Trump on a similar ban in the courts — President Biden’s [policy] should not move forward,” said the organization.
Migration advocates have referred to Biden’s proposal as a “travel ban” and an “asylum ban”. The measure imposes severe limitations on asylum for people of any nationality except Mexicans, who don’t have to travel through a third country to reach the US. In practice, it targets migrants from Latin America and the Caribbean specifically.
The proposed policy also “would violate long-established US law regarding the right to asylum,” said Adam Isacson, of the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), “and it would require Mexico to take back thousands — tens of thousands — of rejected asylum seekers.”
Biden, who has faced months of attack from Republican politicians who falsely claim the border has been “overrun”, has in recent weeks bragged about how his policy changes have reduced border crossings by 80% since January.
Critics of his Title 42 expansions however, pointed out that many migrants are simply more likely to cross at less monitored locations rather than turn themselves into officials as they did previously— a theory that seems to be backed up by data. In the Miami area, the number of Cuban migrants apprehended in January after taking boats and rafts from the island nation jumped 260%, according to Border Patrol data.
Asylum seekers aren’t “illegals”
Both Republican and Democratic politicians have called those who turn themselves into Border Patrol “illegals” in recent weeks. This is flatly misleading.
The right to seek asylum was incorporated into international law following the atrocities of World War II. Congress adopted key provisions of the Geneva Refugee Convention (including the international definition of a refugee) into U.S. immigration law when it passed the Refugee Act of 1980.
Biden has said that Congress has “refused to act” in reforming migration, but he has been ignoring laws that body passed in favor of dismantling the US asylum system, which was enshrined into law over 40 years ago.
“This is very disheartening,” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of the Bipartisan Policy Institute. “The Biden administration believes that arriving at the border to seek asylum is not lawful, when it explicitly is.”
Nonetheless, the Biden administration has vowed to move forward with their Byzantine restrictions following a 30 day period of public comments (to see exactly how Kafkaesque the new policy is, we recommend this excellent piece by Dara Lind).
Dem. Senators Cory Booker, Bob Menendez, Ben Ray Luján and Alex Padilla have called on Biden to reconsider his policy limiting asylum at the border.
“We are deeply disappointed the Administration has chosen to move forward with this proposed rule which perpetuates the myth that asylum seekers are a threat to this nation,” they said in a joint public statement. ”When in reality, they are pursuing a legal pathway in the United States.”
Other Democrats who strongly condemned nearly identical policies during the Trump administration have been strangely silent.
THE HEADLINES IN LATAM
We begin our news tour in Colombia where last February 21 women celebrated the anniversary of the ruling that decriminalized abortion up to 24 weeks in the country. A year ago, This policy is the most progressive in the region.
The Peruvian Congress announced that President Gustavo Petro is now persona non grata in their country. The motion passed after president Petro compared the Peruvian National Police (PNP) to Nazis amidst ongoing protests in which security forces have killed 50 people. "They march like Nazis, against their own people, breaking the American Convention on Human Rights," he said.
The decision prevents the president from entering Peruvian territory and was approved in Congress with 72 votes in favor, 29 against and 7 abstentions.
In Nicaragua, the news about Daniel Ortega's dictatorial measures continues. The most recent has to do with the withdrawal of the nationality of 92 people, among them, two renowned writers: Gioconda Belli - who, like Ortega, were participants in the Sandinista revolution - and Sergio Ramirez. With this decision, almost a hundred people lose "their citizenship rights in perpetuity".
In the government statement stripping their nationality, they are accused of treason and "crimes of conspiracy to undermine national integrity". The writer responded to the decision with a poem on Twitter that it reads:
"(...) I love you homeland of my dreams and my sorrows
and I take you with me to wash your stains in secret
whisper hopes to you
and promise you cures and charms to save you".
What we’re writing
Daniela wrote a heartbreaking article this week about how feminists in Colombia are demanding that Gustavo Petro's government declare a humanitarian emergency in Colombia due to an increase in violence against women. So far in 2023 there are more than 30 femicides, in 2022 there were about 500 victims.
Spanish phrase of the week
Comer moscas
The literal translation is “to eat flies”, but the closest English equivalent would probably be “to speak aimlessly”
We all have a friend that will start a simple story about going to the grocery store, but somehow manages turn it into an hour long autobiography.
A person who comer moscas is a person who often goes off on tangents or speaks aimlessly.
This phrase is also used in both Latin America and Spain.
Sara siempre come moscas. (Sara always goes off on a tangent.)
And before we start eating any flies, we’re signing off piratas! Thank you as always for reading!