President Joe Biden’s response to the arrival of Haitian migrants at the border has angered top lawmakers in both parties, who aired a cascade of condemnations just as top officials are descending on Mexico City for a major dialogue with the southern neighbor.
“We write to add our names to the groundswell of voices expressing outrage and disappointment over the cruel treatment of Haitians at our border, and their summary deportations,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, wrote in a letter co-signed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn and more than three dozen other Senate Republicans issued an equal and opposite rebuke. “The Administration’s response to the ongoing border crisis only makes it more likely that we will continue to experience surges like the one in Del Rio,” they wrote.
Menendez and his allies directed their criticism at Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The DHS chief received their missive and Cornyn’s letter on Thursday, but both sides publicized their protests on Friday, as Blinken, Mayorkas, and Attorney General Merrick Garland met with Mexican officials to coordinate migration policies and an array of other U.S.-Mexico issues.
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“When they finally arrived at Del Rio, Texas, many Haitians, including family groups with children who had never even been to Haiti, were summarily expelled and deported without best interest determinations for children or screenings for international protection concerns,” the Democratic lawmakers wrote.
Their dueling rebukes center on the Biden administration’s stated continuation of a policy employed by former President Donald Trump’s team, which invoked a provision of public health law known as Title 42 to deport incoming migrants without giving them a chance to make the case for long-term residency in the U.S. This practice, which has been justified as a way to prevent an influx of migrants whose arrival might worsen the coronavirus pandemic, turned into a political grenade in recent weeks, as two senior U.S. officials resigned over the measure, while Republicans accuse Biden of failing to carry it out.
“We are concerned that DHS did not actually carry out this plan, deployed resources in a manner that weakened border security, and undermined the deterrent effect of any future statements that the Biden Administration will enforce our immigration laws at the border,” Cornyn and the Senate Republicans wrote.
Blinken has faced substantial internal pressure to scuttle the Title 42 plan. Two senior State Department officials, including the diplomat tapped by Blinken to lead the U.S. engagement with Haiti following the assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moise, resigned in protest of the deportations.
State Department special envoy Daniel Foote described the deportation policy as “inhumane” in a scalding resignation letter. He was followed out the door by State Department legal adviser Harold Koh, who argued that the refusal to let incoming migrants make their case for residency in the United States “violate[s] our legal obligation not to expel or return … individuals who fear persecution, death, or torture, especially migrants fleeing from Haiti.”
Biden’s policy plans have come under further pressure from a federal judge who ordered the administration to reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” agreement on the grounds that the Biden team had not followed the proper legal process for scrapping it.
“DHS intends to comply with the court order in good faith, as we said we are going to do,” a senior administration official told reporters Thursday in a preview of the trip to Mexico City. “And we continue to have an open and robust dialogue with Mexico on that matter.”
The Democratic lawmakers, a group of 16 that includes Senate Budget Chairman Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Senate Appropriations Chairman Patrick Leahy, urged Biden to appoint a successor to Foote and abandon the policy that he and Koh criticized. Yet Republicans insisted that Title 42 remains necessary on public health grounds and as a signal to human traffickers.
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“It is vital that DHS preserve this important authority as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic,” Cornyn wrote. “And failing to follow through on a promise to expel or expeditiously remove migrants will only further convince them and the smuggling organizations that exploit them that the Biden Administration is not serious about enforcing our immigration laws at the southwest border.”
