United States announces legal pathway into country for Venezuelan migrants

Amna Nawaz:

The Biden administration announced a plan late yesterday to provide a legal pathway into the country for more than 20,000 Venezuelan migrants, but, at the same time, potentially thousands of others who enter the U.S. illegally will be sent back to Mexico.

"NewsHour" White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez is here to explain this shift in policy.

Laura, hi. Good to see you.

Laura Barrón-López:

Good to see you.

Amna Nawaz:

So, let's just start with the plan from the administration. What do we need to know?

Laura Barrón-López:

So, essentially, this is a joint action between the U.S. and Mexico. And it is supposed to, the administration says, help reduce the number of people arriving at the border, the number of Venezuelans arriving at the border.

And so the first part of this is a narrow — is providing a narrow legal pathway for Venezuelans that didn't exist before. Now, what this human parole program would do, the way Venezuelans would qualify for it is that it requires a financial sponsor in the United States. They have to pass a national security background check. They have to have complete vaccinations.

And this is also modeled after the Ukrainian humanitarian parole program which we saw the administration enact earlier this year. The big difference, though, is that it is much more narrow than that Ukrainian parole program.

Now, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas talked about it today. And he said that this new entire process is something that makes good on a promise that President Biden made during the campaign.

Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security: Our program is based on a core principle of the Biden administration, which is, when individuals are so desperate to leave the country that is their home, they are placing their life savings and their lives in the hands of smugglers, who exploit them for profit.

It is our responsibility to build safe, lawful and humane pathways that create opportunities for them, so they do not need to avail themselves of the more desperate and dangerous measures that the perilous journey involve.

Laura Barrón-López:

Now, Mayorkas also went on to say that this is a part of that joint agreement with Mexico.

And a piece of that, the second big piece of that, is that it expands the Title 42 deportation policy, which we know was first enacted under former President Donald Trump due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But the — President Biden expanded that for a very long time, to the dismay of a lot of Democrats.

And so, under that expansion of Title 42, Venezuelans will now be able to be sent back into Mexico. Mexico is saying that they will take them from the U.S. Now, Mexico had already been taking a lot of migrants from the U.S. who had come from the Northern Triangle countries, like Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador. So this is an expansion of the Title 42 deportation.

Amna Nawaz:

On that legal pathway that they're opening up, why are they providing it specifically for Venezuelans? And also, on the timing, why now?

Laura Barrón-López:

So Venezuelans are four times more likely to cross the border this year than other migrants — or than prior years, than last year.

So the Venezuelans encountered at the U.S. Mexico border, we have the numbers there. In 2021, there were 48,343. That jumped in 2022 to 152,938. And so now many of those Venezuelans who have made that journey already, either going into Mexico to try to get to the United States, they may now not qualify for this new humanitarian parole program.

And so what will make Venezuelans ineligible for the new program, the White House laid that out as well, the key points are that they — if they have been removed from the United States in the past five years, they will not qualify. And then also, going forward, if they, since the effective date, cross the border illegally, they won't be able to qualify.

And if they irregularly enter Mexico or Panama from this point forward, they will not be able to seek relief through that program. And, again, Homeland Security has stressed over and over that, if at any point, Mexico decides that they don't want to be part of this agreement, then the entire program goes away.

Amna Nawaz:

Laura, I think it's fair to say immigration for this administration, like many before it, has been a struggle to get under control. We are at record high encounters at the U.S. Southern border.

And President Biden has faced a lot of criticism for even keeping in place some of those policies that his predecessor put into place, like Title 42. What are people outside of the White House saying about this or the president's own party?

Laura Barrón-López:

You're right, Amna, I mean, because President Biden ran saying that he was going to take away Title 42.

And even Vice President Kamala Harris had long said that it was unconstitutional. But there's been mixed praise today, based on this announcement. On one hand, Democrats and immigrant rights advocates have been saying that they are glad that there is now this narrow legal pathway, this humanitarian parole pathway, but they aren't happy about the expansion of Title 42.

And I spoke to Angela Kelley, who's a former Homeland Security official under President Biden, and she said that she was really disappointed in the administration's decision.

Angela Kelley, Vice President for Immigration Policy and Advocacy, Center for American Progress: I give the administration an A for building on the successful program for Ukrainians and providing Venezuelans an opportunity to come to the U.S.

But it is two thumbs down, the fact that they're now applying Title 42, which is essentially an expedited expulsion, to the same population that they're also trying to protect. I think they got half the equation right. I think they should spent a lot more time building that out and up and recognize the limitations and the harm that come with Title 42.

Laura Barrón-López:

Now, in addition to that, a lot of immigrant advocates were also saying that they would love for a humanitarian parole program like this to be expanded not just to Venezuelans, but to other Western Hemisphere countries, because the issue is that, again, border migrations — migrations are up from not the Northern Triangle countries, but from countries like Haiti, from Cuba, from Nicaragua, and from countries where you're seeing a lot of communist regimes causing these migrants to flee.

Amna Nawaz:

And all this, of course, happening as we see record movement, migration across the entire planet, more so than any time in modern history.

Laura Barrón-López, our White House correspondent, thank you so much.

Laura Barrón-López:

Thank you.