2/28/23

By Josh Rubin

Activist groups are scrambling, trying to line up arguments that might persuade an indifferent Biden administration to change course on how it might handle the end of the xenophobic policy known in shorthand as Title 42. Title 42 is an obscure part of the health code that was dredged up by Trump capo Stephen Miller, a line or two that has been relied on to expel migrants to our country on the basis of a health threat, namely the contagious disease of COVID.

While it was never medically justified, it was a convenient way to ignore all the other laws that apply to the treatment and handling of migrants seeking refuge here. And although the Biden folks criticized and worked against it, albeit superficially, they came to rely on it just as much. We have seen that the current administration fears the right wing demagoguery of the racist right more than the righteous indignation of immigrant rights groups, like this one here, for instance.

Now that the trauma of a pandemic subsides into the nation’s unconscious, there is pressure to call off the state of emergency, and with it the useful and cruel idiocy of Title 42. But how then to dull the attacks from the xenophobes who like underfed dogs wait at the gates to send up their snarling at the sight of pilgrims, and to howl about an “imminent invasion” as an excuse for bloodshed? Once again from the Trump playbook, and, for those who remember, reminiscent of Catch-22, Biden revives an idea that complicates the already impossible lives of people trying to save themselves.

Sometimes called a transit ban, it requires people who cannot come by plane to check the boxes in the countries they pass through, by applying for asylum there first, and then requiring them to wait for an answer, before ever getting to the place that became famous for its welcoming lady in the harbor. Effectively, since asylum is virtually nonexistent in those countries through which they must pass, this stops them dead.

All too often, we have to watch that happen literally, as this takes struggling migrants in more and more dangerous directions. Buses crash, ships sink, jungles and deserts choke their lives.

Activists, such as we are, struggle to order our arguments, to line up our lawsuits, and to sleep at night. We go down to the border, hoping by caring that we can turn the glaring looks of hatred, and the monumental indifference of our government into something that can feel love. We bang our heads against the wall.

We hope that, as we seem to lose this battle, there is still a way to win the war.