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For Media, 'Border Crisis' Means Migrants Coming—Not Migrants Dying Julie Hollar ([link removed])


As the pandemic-era border policy known as Title 42 ([link removed]) ended last month, news outlets spent a great deal of time caterwauling about a "border crisis" and a "surge" that never materialized. But when an actual migrant child died in custody at the border, media concern was conspicuously muted, demonstrating once again that centrist media's definition of a "border crisis" has less to do with human lives and more to do with partisan politics.

Title 42, an ostensible public health measure initially invoked under President Donald Trump, allowed the US government to expel migrants without due process or access to asylum (AP, 5/12/23 ([link removed]) ). Though experts and even some judges declared it both illegal and inhumane, the Biden administration had continued the policy for all migrants except for unaccompanied youth (FAIR.org, 3/25/21 ([link removed]) ). But when President Joe Biden announced an official end date to the federal Covid-19 public health emergency—May 11 ([link removed]) —Title 42 was scheduled to end with it.


** 'Mobs and even rioters'
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Time: Why the U.S. May Be Days Away From a Border Crisis

Time (5/8/23 ([link removed]) ) reported that "on Thursday, May 11, one emergency will officially end and another may begin"—but what that new emergency might be was never spelled out.

The nativist right was predictably apocalyptic about the coming border policy change. Fox News, which mainstreamed the Great Replacement Theory with its regularly scheduled fearmongering about invading migrants (FAIR.org, 5/20/22 ([link removed]) ), even put a doomsday clock ([link removed]) on the lower-right corner of its screen for maximum effect.

The New York Post (5/12/23 ([link removed]) ) ran a lengthy piece promoting frenzied warnings about potential "mobs and even rioters," including the Border Patrol union's assessment that without Trump's border policies in place, "the American public is going to suffer," and its prediction that “nobody except the cartel thugs is prepared for what’s about to hit us.”

But some centrist outlets played up a looming "surge" as well. On May 11 ([link removed]) , CBS Evening News warned that "the clock is ticking." Time (5/8/23 ([link removed]) ) offered the headline "Why the US May Be Days Away From a Border Crisis." The article began, "At 11:59 pm on Thursday, May 11, one emergency will officially end and another may begin." The emergency that's officially ending, of course, would be the Covid-19 public health emergency; the one that "may begin" was an imagined border emergency precipitated by the US removing one controversial tool from its immigration policy toolkit.

The Time piece never quite spelled out exactly what that "emergency" might be beyond "a surge of people" attempting to cross the border, though it did quote a press release from Republican Sen. Thom Tillis warning of “catastrophic fallout at the border” without a Title 42–like policy in place.


** 'Going to be chaotic'
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NY Post: DHS chief expects ‘surge’ at the border next month when Title 42 ends

Right-wing outlets like the New York Post (4/18/23 ([link removed]) ) were delighted to hear Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas repeating their language.

Such coverage was due in no small part to the Biden administration's own framing of the situation. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas described the federal government's sending of troops to the border with the same "surge" language media used (ABC, 5/5/23): "What we are seeing is an operation that was stood up in 72 hours by the United States Border Patrol to address a surge." Biden himself ([link removed]) prepared the public for the worst: "It’s going to be chaotic for a while."

But, while no one could have predicted exactly what would happen when Title 42 ended, the policies Biden had announced to replace Title 42 certainly appeared draconian enough to prevent the kind of migration apocalypse that media outlets anticipated (WOLA, 5/9/23 ([link removed]) ). Biden planned to return to Title 8—normal US immigration law—but also introduced several new policies to make seeking asylum more difficult.

For instance, migrants now must show that they sought and were denied asylum in every country they passed through on their way to the US (a slightly modified version of Trump's transit ban ([link removed]) ). They also must book an elusive appointment through the glitchy new CBPOne app, or be blocked ([link removed]) from entering the US for five years.

While border apprehensions did increase in the days leading up to May 12, there was no massive "surge" after Fox's clock reached zero. Instead, border encounters actually dropped.


** 'Barbaric and cruel'
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Source NM: Asylum officers rushing migrants through screenings, advocates say

Title 42 "is being replaced with restrictive and harsh policies that are going to make it very difficult for asylum seekers to be able to have a fair chance at seeking asylum in the United States,” an immigrant advocate told Source NM (5/12/23 ([link removed]) ).

While the Post's "mobs and rioters" never materialized, it's clear there continues to be a crisis at the border—a humanitarian crisis that will not be resolved by the end of Title 42 (FAIR.org, 3/25/21 ([link removed]) , 5/24/21 ([link removed]) ). Source NM (5/12/23 ([link removed]) ) reported that immigration rights advocates expected due process to continue to be subverted for those seeking asylum, "sacrificing protection in the name of speed."

A delegation of rights groups (Human Rights First, 5/18/23 ([link removed]) ) that visited the border as the new policies were implemented called them "barbaric and cruel" and expressed "grave concerns" that they

will endanger the lives of people seeking asylum, discriminate against many of the most vulnerable people seeking asylum, and vastly complicate asylum adjudications down the road.

Human Rights Watch (5/11/23 ([link removed]) ) similarly warned that Biden's new set of policies

will almost certainly lead to a rise in the already record number of migrants dying ([link removed]) at the United States ([link removed]) southern border, enrich criminal cartels, and return refugees to likely harm.


** 'Crisis' defined
------------------------------------------------------------

One aspect of the humanitarian crisis continues to be the inhumane conditions at CBP detention centers. In one extreme example, eight-year-old Anadith Tanay Reyes Alvarez died in Border Patrol custody in Texas on May 17.
CBS: Migrant mother requested aid three times the day her 8-year-old daughter died in U.S. border custody

"She cried and begged for her life and they ignored her," Anadith Reyes' mother said of Border Patrol agents (CBS, 5/22/23 ([link removed]) ).

The girl had been taken into CBP custody, along with her parents and siblings, eight days earlier after crossing the border, and had been diagnosed with influenza a few days later. (Migrants are not supposed to be held more than 72 hours.) The day of her death, her mother brought her to a medical unit three times, where she said agents refused to take Anadith to a hospital (Newsweek, 5/20/23 ([link removed]) ).

This happened only a week after 17-year-old Ángel Eduardo Maradiaga Espinoza died on May 10, in CBP custody in Florida.

A search of the Nexis news database found Anadith's name mentioned on air twice across all major outlets: once on MSNBC (All In, 5/23/23) and once on the CBS Evening News (5/22/23 ([link removed]) ). A search of Time's website for "Anadith" turns up no results.

The New York Times put border stories on its front page eight times in the three weeks starting May 5, the day Mayorkas warned of a "surge," but the story of Anadith's death never made it to the paper's front page. At the Washington Post, border stories made front-page news six times during that period; as at the Times, the child's death was not among them.

That lack of concern reveals corporate media's true priorities. What is the "crisis" at the border if not the death of a child?
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