Migration is a major challenge for the American government. Three of its officials, Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for the Los Angeles Declaration at the National Security Council Katie Tobin, Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Blas Nuñez-Neto and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Central America, Cuba and Migration at the State Department Eric Jacobstein, at a briefing hosted by the Foreign Press Centre, shed light on the Biden-Harris administration’s approach to tackling the challenge amid a broken immigration system, writes United States Bureau Chief OLUKOREDE YISHAU
America’s southwest border is a burden. It is a burden that the government has no choice but to humanely manage. In doing this, the U.S. has had to collaborate with its partners in the Western Hemisphere to address the root causes of migration. Ms. Katie Tobin, Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for the Los Angeles Declaration at the National Security Council, said America views migration as both a regional and global challenge and a shared responsibility.
“It’s for that reason that President Biden and Vice President Harris have really focused on investing in our partnerships with our neighbors across the Western Hemisphere really since day one. This has manifested in the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection that President Biden mobilized leaders to sign in June of 2022, 21 leaders total. And really this reflects, I think, the way that President Biden addressed all global and regional challenges through thoughtful diplomacy, by building partnerships, bringing people together. That is precisely the way that we’ve been approaching the challenge of migration,” Ms. Tobin.
She added that the National Security Council is leading some of the diplomatic efforts to realise the goals of the Los Angeles Declaration, which focuses on stabilising populations where they are and making it easier for them to rebuild their lives. In doing this, legal pathways are created across the region. Ms. Tobin said: “The first example I wanted to give, and something that we’re really proud of, is the launching of the Safe Mobility Offices initiative in June of last year. This is something that Secretary Mayorkas and Secretary Blinken jointly announced. And we announced it – this is important – alongside several other countries: Canada, Spain, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, and most recently Ecuador. This is a shared initiative because we have a shared goal of expanding legal pathways. My colleague, Eric, will speak more to how we’ve been implementing this initiative, which is to say that I think we’re actually setting – establishing a model that the rest of the world is looking at. And we’re proud of that and have every intention to grow it.
“We are also working closely with countries like Panama and Colombia to address the humanitarian challenge in the Darién Gap, really what’s been considered the most dangerous migratory corridor in the world. I had the opportunity to travel there, both in September of this past year and again in December, to work hand-in-hand with our partners in Colombia and Panama on how we can address this challenge together. Two concrete ways in which we’re approaching this is in Panama supporting the government there to increase repatriations of people that arrive to the Darién and don’t have a legal basis to remain. We applaud Panama stepping up and creating the consequence, and we are looking at ways that we can continue to support them.”
She continued: “In Colombia, we have a shared interest in giving people an alternative to go through the Darién Gap, and so we’ve been working hand-in-glove with the Colombians on the expansion of legal pathways. It’s a game-changer that Colombia has signed on to the SMO initiative, because the more we can encourage Venezuelans and other migrants in Colombia that have an intention to go north to go to a Safe Mobility Office instead of paying a smuggler to go through the jungle and potentially lose their life that, that’s something that we have a very common interest in doing.
“We have been, I think, doing really big and important things as partners with Mexico to address the challenge. We are two of the top destination countries for people that are displaced and fleeing their countries in the Western Hemisphere. Mexico has received over 2 million migrants just last year. So, this is truly something that Mexico and the U.S. are experiencing together. And so one of the initiatives that we launched in partnership with Mexico last year was the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan Initiative in – almost exactly one year today. And we saw tremendous results when you combine the expansion of lawful pathways with swift returns. We saw such an incredibly significant reduction in flows to our shared border.
“We have also partnered in new ways with Mexico in the last year on addressing the root causes of migration. It’s something both President Biden and President López Obrador have a real strong interest and conviction in the need to invest in root causes. And so we have signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding between our development agency, USAID, their development agency, AMEXCID, and we have continued to expand that partnership in Central America and hopefully elsewhere in the hemisphere.” The U.S. and Mexico, she added, have started repatriating Venezuelans without legal basis to remain in the countries.
Homeland Security
Blas Nuñez-Neto, who is the Assistant Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said the U.S. in December saw elevated flows across its southern border with Mexico that led to temporary closure of a number of border ports of entry. “Those are not decisions we take lightly. We do fully recognise and understand the economic impact that those decisions have on both countries as well as on border communities where people cross back and forth on a regular basis. We are pleased to have been able to reopen all of those ports of entry over the last two weeks in response to what had been a decrease in border encounters in the new year. That appears to be holding thus far. We deeply appreciate the Government of Mexico’s shared commitment to working to address these flows,” he said.
Nuñez-Neto said since May 12, 2023, America’s public health emergency was lifted in Title 42 allowing the public health emergency authority to stop being in place at the border. “We have undertaken more than 482,000 returns, repatriations, and removals since then. These are removals to countries all over the world, and it represents a record for the period of time that we are talking about here. It’s important to note as well that over the course of this administration we have actually removed, returned, or expelled the majority of the people that have been encountered on our southwest border. I think that’s a data point that often doesn’t get highlighted enough, and that reflects our ongoing commitment to strengthen the consequences in place at the border.
“We have been working night and day with our foreign partners to increase our ability to repatriate individuals who are encountered on our border and who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States. That includes a significant increase in charter flights to countries all over our hemisphere. It includes, as Katie noted, the resumption of direct repatriation flights from the United States to Venezuela – something that Mexico is currently doing as well. It also includes charter flights to countries throughout the world. We are in the midst of operating our first significant charter flight to India for Indian nationals who, again, have not established a legal basis to remain in the United States. We’ve operated flights to countries like Mauritania, Senegal, and other countries really all over the world,” he added.
He also explained that as America strengthens these consequences, it has demonstrated its commitment to providing lawful options for people to come. “That includes our CBP One mobile application at the border, which has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to schedule safe, orderly appointments to present at a port of entry. It includes some of our humanitarian parole programmes, including for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela that have shown to be effective in terms of channeling some of those flows into a legal and lawful, safe, orderly means,” he said.
It has also provided options throughout the region for individuals to access, again, legal pathways to protection.
“It is important to note that we are doing all of this in the context of an immigration system that is fundamentally broken. Congress has not updated our immigration laws and our asylum laws in decades. And we continue to call on our members of Congress to work on a bipartisan basis to update these statutes and address some of the infirmities in our immigration system that are contributing to what we are seeing on the border. We are encouraged by the bipartisan conversations that are taking place in the United States Senate, and we encourage our colleagues in the House to also come together, again, on a bipartisan basis, to resolve these issues.
“The bottom line here is that we have seen these surges in migration now taking place for more than a decade under administrations of presidents from both political parties. Presidents from both political parties, including our own President Biden, have sought to deal with these challenges using executive actions. But there’s a limit to what can be done via executive action, given the state of our immigration system and our immigration laws. And so we, again, reiterate our call on Congress to come together and help us once and for all address this challenge on our border in a bipartisan way, because this is not an issue that either party can tackle on its own,” he said.
Central America, Cuba and Migration
Eric Jacobstein, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Central America, Cuba, and Migration at the State Department, said the U.S. government has engaged in a comprehensive long-term effort to address the challenges of irregular migration and displacement in the Western Hemisphere. “From the State Department, we collaborate with our partners throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, civil society, with international organizations, to provide safe and lawful pathways for migrants to address the root causes of irregular migration, to advance safe, orderly, and humane migration management, to support integration efforts, and also to provide protection for those who need it.
“Late last year, President Biden announced nearly $485 million in additional humanitarian aid that responds to the needs of refugees, migrants, and other vulnerable populations. This funding advanced goals – advances the goals of the Los Angeles Declaration, which Katie discussed, and the idea is to foster responsibility sharing that addresses regional migration challenges, provides stability aid to affected communities, expands lawful pathways, and promotes humane migration policies, essentially addressing the root cause of these issues before individuals migrate in the first place,” he said.
The U.S., he said, is proudly the largest single donor of humanitarian assistance in the Western Hemisphere with more than 2.4 billion in humanitarian assistance in the region and nearly $3.7 billion in development, economic, security, and health assistance across the entire Western Hemisphere in the past two years. Through its Safe Mobility Offices, the U.S., he added, has facilitated expedited refugee processing via the U.S. Refugee Admissions Programme and provide information referrals to humanitarian parole, family reunification, and to labour programmes.
“The Safe Mobility initiative, which is really truly innovative, is one of the many ways that we’re facilitating access to lawful migration pathways, including the family reunification programme and our expansion of H-2B labour visas. We’re working with partners in Colombia, Costa Rica, in Ecuador and Guatemala who’ve stood up these innovative new Safe Mobility Offices. So, individuals who are seeking international protection and other lawful pathways into the U.S. have many options, including Safe Mobility Offices, but beyond these offices, including refugee resettlement, humanitarian parole, family reunification, labor pathways, and seeking asylum in host countries, as well as various support provided by international organisations and NGOs, many of which the U.S. is supporting. So together, these initiatives are truly the largest expansion of lawful pathways to the United States in decades. Our message is clear: Take advantage of lawful pathways rather than make a dangerous journey north, where we will continue to robustly enforce our border,” he said.
