Chris Lange, FISM News

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Faced with increasing numbers of Venezuelan migrants pouring into the U.S. through the southern border while the midterms are only weeks away, President Biden has quietly reinstated Title 42, the Trump-era migrant health policy he once said embodied “cruelty and exclusion at every turn.”

Biden’s move would deny Venezuelan migrants the opportunity to request asylum ahead of the general election at a time when Republicans have focused heavily on America’s historic border crisis that has emerged under the president’s leadership.

Two years ago, then-candidate Joe Biden denounced former President Trump’s pandemic-related immigration policy that allowed for the expulsion of millions of unauthorized migrants, including Venezuelans fleeing from what Biden referred to at the time as the “brutal” government of socialist Nicolas Maduro. In recent weeks, however, Venezuelans have rapidly emerged as the second-largest contingency of migrants flooding into the U.S. after Mexicans.

Under Biden’s new iteration of the policy, Venezuelans seeking entry into the U.S. by water or on foot will be expelled, and those who illegally enter through Mexico or Panama will be considered ineligible for asylum, according to the Associated Press. The administration will, however, accept up to 24,000 Venezuelans who arrive at U.S. airports. 

In a deal brokered with Mexico, the U.S. must admit one Venezuelan on humanitarian parole for every Venezuelan it expels to Mexico, according to a Mexican official who spoke on condition of anonymity. This essentially means that, if the Biden administration paroles 24,000 Venezuelans to the U.S., Mexico would take up to 24,000 Venezuelans the administration expels.

In an example of the kind of absurdity seldom seen outside of Beltway politics, Biden’s own Justice Department is currently appealing a court decision to uphold the very policy he just reinstated. 

The abrupt about-face from the White House comes just weeks after the administration excoriated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, both Republicans, for transporting Venezuelan migrants to Democratic-held migrant sanctuary cities.

“These were children, they were moms, they were fleeing communism,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the time, despite the fact that Biden officials have been engaging in the same activity for months, if not longer.

Biden’s reinstatement of the Trump policy has predictably drawn swift and sharp criticism from migrant activist groups.

“Rather than restore the right to asylum decimated by the Trump administration … the Biden administration has dangerously embraced the failures of the past and expanded upon them by explicitly enabling expulsions of Venezuelan migrants,” said Jennifer Nagda, policy director of the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.

“We are extremely disturbed by the apparent acceptance, codification, and expansion of the use of Title 42, an irrelevant health order, as a cornerstone of border policy,” said Thomas Cartwright of Witness at the Border. “One that expunges the legal right to asylum.”

The White House insists the policy is aimed at ensuring a “lawful and orderly” way for Venezuelans to enter the U.S., according to the AP report.

The administration announced at the beginning of April this year that it would end Title 42 restrictions on May 23 and instead only detain and deport migrants who did not qualify to remain in the U.S. Two days before the repeal was set to go into effect, U.S. District Judge Robert Summerhays in Lafayette, Louisiana, ordered that the restrictions must remain in place pending the outcome of a lawsuit led by Arizona and Louisiana that has been joined by 22 other states.