People camp out in line waiting to be processed by Border Patrol after crossing into the United States in El Paso, May 3, 2023.
Amid these events, smugglers and migrants alike have pushed powerful social media campaigns, many rife with misinformation, that have encouraged people to migrate to the United States. However, when Title 42 expires, migrants who enter the country illegally will have the opportunity to apply for asylum, something many were barred from doing during the three years the public-health restriction was in place.Qualifying won’t be easy — the Biden administration is rolling out new eligibility restrictions — and if the process works as intended, many will still be deported relatively quickly.
Many migrants are coming from places like Venezuela, which was suffering one of the worst economic crises in the world before the pandemic. Much of the country sank further into misery when the coronavirus shut the world down. A mass exit deepened, bringing the total number of Venezuelans who have fled since 2015 to 7.2 million — roughly a quarter of the population.
The Darién Gap, a treacherous 70-mile stretch of jungle that connects Central and South America, suddenly became a thoroughfare for people without the visas or money to make the journey any other way. They went because the American economy bounced back quickly from the coronavirus and then got hungry for workers.
“What on paper was in some ways the harshest border policy ever put into effect, like a complete and total ban on entry, never worked like that in practice,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a Washington-based immigrant advocacy organization.