Mayorkas Tells Migrants How to Get Through Title 42 Border Barrier
Alejandro Mayorkas, the nation’s border security chief, used his White House press conference on Friday to tell migrants how to get through the Title 42 coronavirus emergency rules.
Federal law allows border officers to exclude migrants because of the Title 42 emergency rules for the coronavirus epidemic.
But Mayorkas spotlighted some of the Title 42 exceptions that he grants — including the little-known exception for people who claim to be afraid of torture in their home country.
Number one [exception] is if an individual has an acute vulnerability, such as an urgent medical care. And [number] two, if, in fact, our operational capacity is such that we are not able to execute the Title 42 authority … I should also say that there is a [third] Convention Against Torture exception if someone claims torture.
In case any cellphone-linked migrants do not hear the torture exception, Mayorkas repeated it:
If someone is not subject to Title 42 expulsion for the three reasons that I explained — acute vulnerability, operational capacity limitations, or a Convention Against Torture exception — then the individual is placed in immigration proceedings. That means they [can stay and work in the United States] until [they] go before an immigration judge in an immigration court.
Mayorkas’ advice will be a useful guide to the many economic migrants from Chile, Brazil, and other stable countries who are trying to get Americans’ jobs and housing.
Under Mayorkas, migrants do not need to persuade a judge that their fear of torture is true. Merely making the claim to Mayorkas’s officers gives them the opportunity to walk through the Title 42 barrier, get jobs, and stay in the United States.
Once in the United States, migrants also do not need to persuade the judge that their claim is valid because Mayorkas has barred enforcement officers from deporting migrants who do not commit violent crimes.
The key issue is the level of credibility that Mayorkas sets for the torture claim to be accepted by the border officers, said Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who now works with the Center for Immigration Studies.
If the burden of proof is too low, many migrants will claim torture to get through the Title 42 rule, he said. “Depending on how little has to be done to trigger the [torture] exception [at the border], the exception will swallow the [Title 42] rule,” he told Breitbart News.
Few migrants actually win their torture claims. In 2000, judges granted just 529 requests from 12,452 people who applied for Convention Against Torture protections. In 2019, judges approved just 1,157 requests after 66,000 people applied.
“Everyone’s dream is to know the United States,” a migrant from the Dominican Republic, Salvador Pena, told the Houston Chronicle, which added “He said the tough, life-threatening and expensive journey is worth it.”
Mayorkas, a child refugee from Cuba, has already helped at least 12,400 of the 30,000 migrants who crossed the border at Del Rio stay in the United States.
Mayorkas told the reporters on Friday that he had admitted 12,400 migrants, nearly all of whom have already been released to get jobs and housing in the United States.
He released the economic migrants despite the widespread homelessness, drug addiction, and joblessness among the Americans who are not needed anymore by cost-cutting employers — or diversity-seeking journalists — amid the large flow of Mayorkas’s desperate, hard-working, cheap migrants.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/09/25/mayorkas-tells-migrants-how-to-get-through-title-42-border-barrier/