The crisis at the border

*** Check out the free America Explained newsletter for a few posts a month on American politics and foreign policy ***

There is a humanitarian crisis at the southern border, and Republicans in Congress will be working hard to make it a political crisis for the Biden administration in the coming year. But the dirty secret of Biden’s immigration policy is that it continued the use of a very repressive tool first used by Trump – so-called “Title 42” immediate expulsions. This episode traces the debate over the issue and how the situation at the border got so bad.

Correction: In the episode, Andy discussed a new “humanitarian parole” program created by the administration and stated there are only 30,000 places on it. That should have been “30,000 places a month”.

Follow Andy on Twitter for more.

Credits

Host – Andy Gawthorpe

Researcher, editorial assistant – Catherine Wood