Why Biden faces legal challenges over the border

WASHINGTON —  Biden administration officials worried for months that the end of Title 42, the pandemic-era rule that allowed immigration officers to easily turn away migrants, would lead to a dramatic increase in unauthorized border crossings.

Proponents of the policy, which former President Trump enacted at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, claimed it deterred unlawful crossings and warned of possible chaos at the southern border after it lifted. But although the policy expired just before midnight eastern time on Thursday, the feared-for surge never came. In fact, border crossings dropped dramatically over the weekend after increasing early last week, Biden administration officials told The Times.

In the absence of Title 42, President Biden has implemented his own border policies. The American Civil Liberties Union and conservative activists have filed separate lawsuits against elements of his plan. How could this all play out?

Hello, my name is Erin B. Logan. I cover national politics for the L.A. Times. Today, we are going to discuss immigration policy.

An end and a new beginning

Trump faced harsh criticism when he first implemented Title 42. Trump used emergency health powers to block migrants at the southern border from applying for asylum in the United States. He claimed their entry would exacerbate the spread of the deadly virus.

The policy was a dramatic departure from the old process, which allowed many migrants whose asylum claims were deemed likely to succeed to stay in the United States while they awaited decisions on their cases.

Advocates and liberals lamented the policy, arguing that it violated international law. But Republican-led states successfully sued to blocked Biden from ending the policy after he became president.

Now that the pandemic is over, the Biden administration has ended the Trump-era policy and replaced it with its own asylum plan.

The Biden policy will make it extremely difficult for migrants who fail to apply for asylum in another country before crossing the southern border to win asylum in the U.S. But migrants still have legal options to come to the U.S.: As Times writer Hamed Aleaziz reported, the Biden administration also continued a program that allows migrants from Nicaragua, Cuba, Venezuela and Haiti to fly into the U.S. if they have a financial sponsor and can pass certain background checks.

The policy already faces legal challenges.

What will the courts do?

The ACLU has already tried to block the Department of Homeland Security from implementing Biden’s policy, saying it closely resembles a Trump administration’s policy that a court blocked several years ago.

In a lawsuit, which was jointly filed with the UC Hastings Center for Gender and Refugee Studies and the National Immigrant Justice Center, the group claimed that the “rule operates just as the Trump administration’s prior asylum bans did: Asylum seekers subject to the Rule — all non-Mexicans — are categorically barred unless they satisfy one of the enumerated and limited conditions or exceptions,” Aleaziz reported.

The groups added: “That’s a simple ban with narrow exemptions, and it turns the asylum process on its head.”

DHS officials have said that the Biden administration has dramatically expanded lawful pathways.

The administration also faces lawsuits from the right. A suit filed by Florida Atty. Gen. Ashley Moody seeks to block officials from releasing migrants from custody without court notices, Aleaziz reported. A Trump-appointed judge in District Court issued a two-week, temporary restraining order, which U.S. Customs and Border Protection said would result in overcrowding in facilities and dangerous conditions for both agents and migrants.

The Biden administration previously said it would appeal the decision.

The latest from the southern border

—A San Diego-area Border Patrol agent was charged Thursday with federal crimes related to on-duty corruption, including moving what he believed was 23 pounds of methamphetamine and opening a border gate to allow the passage of an immigrant without documentation, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

—Just 1,000 appointments are granted daily through Customs and Border Protection’s CBP One app, but some migrants say they’ve recently noticed fewer glitches and more appointments being granted to those who have been waiting the longest, part of an update the Department of Homeland Security had promised, Times writers Andrea Castillo and Patrick J. McDonnell reported. The app was intended to reduce the number of crossings between ports of entry.

The view from Washington

—Questions about Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s future have been swirling for quite some time over concerns about declining mental and physical capabilities, Times writers Seema Mehta and Benjamin Oreskes reported. Concerns grew after she was briefly hospitalized earlier this year and, while recuperating at home in San Francisco, missed votes that resulted in a holdup for confirming some of Biden’s judicial nominees. She responded to questions about her absence from Washington in a brief interview this week.

—The last time the U.S. government went to the brink of defaulting on its debt — in 2011 — the stock market tumbled and there was something close to a panic across the economy before Washington came to its senses and cut a deal, Times writer Don Lee reported. Much the same scenario is unfolding now, with potentially even more dire consequences, and there are major differences between then and now that would make a bad outcome far more likely. But the political climate is more vexed.

—The Constitution gives Congress the power to impose taxes, to spend the revenue through appropriations and to “borrow money on the credit of the United States” to pay the government’s debts, Times writer David G. Savage reported. To maintain control over its borrowing, Congress has also imposed by law a debt ceiling, now set at about $31.4 trillion. For a long time, raising that debt ceiling was bipartisan, perfunctory and non-controversial. But amid deepening partisanship in Washington, Republicans in particular have used the debt ceiling under Democratic presidents to seek budget cuts or other priorities.

The view from California

— A developer’s proposal for a luxury hotel in the leafy enclave of Benedict Canyon can proceed, for now, after the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday deadlocked on a council member’s attempt to block the project.

—California farmworkers can now unionize more easily after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation Monday in the final step of an unusual compromise struck last year between the Democratic leader and union advocates, Times writer Taryn Luna reported. The rare agreement allows farmworkers to unionize by signing cards under a process known as “card-check” instead of being required to vote in-person at a polling place, but removed their ability to unionize through mail-in ballots as the original bill would have allowed.

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