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Mexican prosecutors will be looking hard at video filmed inside a migrant detention center in Ciudad Jurez this month. Security cameras captured the origins of a smoky fire on March 27 that in the end consumed the lives of 40 men.

The apparent lack of reaction to the impending catastrophe by the centers minders as the fire began has provoked global outrage. Guards can be seen milling about in indecision as flames quickly spread and smoke envelops detainees. The centers security guards and other staff quickly evacuated, leaving the doomed men behind bars.

The fire was allegedly started by a migrant furious to hear that his struggle to reach the U.S. border was about to end in deportation. According to press reports, that suspect survived the fire and has been released from hospital care, where many of his fellow detainees remain.

His culpability may eventually be established, likewise that of the staff who did not respond in a moment of crisis, but this appalling loss of life in Ciudad Jurez has many more authors than the people likely to be punished for it.

Surely the Mexican government and its immigration bureaucracy bear some responsibility. Mexican officials have been regularly intercepting migrants, primarily from Venezuela, Haiti, and politically and economically unstable states in Central America like Honduras and Nicaragua, at the border, diverting them into migrant camps or into poorly maintained and over-capacity detention centers just inside Mexico, like the facility in Ciudad Jurez.

According to The Associated Press, complaints about poor conditions and human rights violations at migrant detention facilities in Mexicoincluding inadequate ventilation, food and water, and overflowing toiletshave been accumulating for years. An A.P. investigation discovered evidence of endemic corruption throughout Mexicos immigration system. It reports that everyone from lawyers and immigration officials to guards have taken bribes to allow migrants out of detention and that little has been done to address any of these capacity and corruption problems.

But bad migration policy and practices in Mexico derive from escalating pressure from U.S. officials desperate to tamp down the numbers seeking to cross the border. The Biden administration is regularly accused by low-information critics of pursuing an open-border policy. In truth, the administration has merely carried on, even more aggressively at times, some of the same Trump administration enforcement and deterrence-first policies deplored by candidate Joe Biden during the 2020 elections.

According to local media, at least some of the men who died in Jurez had been expelled from the United States under Title 42, an emergency provision under the U.S. health code weaponized against asylum seekers by the Trump administration during the Covid-19 crisis. The administration plans to end Title 42 in May but will replace it with a sweeping new policy that largely bans asylum for anyone who travels through Mexico without first seeking protection there, ignoring the reality that essentially all migrating people consider Mexico a transit state and the United States the ultimate destination.

While those charged in Ciudad Jurez will be the only people facing jail time, we all participate in a murderous hypocrisy about immigration. Gallup surveys find that most Americans want to see less immigration at the same time that they have come to rely on the labor of millions of immigrant and often undocumented workers living precariously in the United States.

They are invisible in plain sight, working on our farms and factories, in meat processing and service industries, in our suburban yards and in food delivery service. Do we all just pretend not to see them?

The bounty on our dinner tables this Easter would not be possible without the labor of immigrant workers. Eighty-six percent of agricultural workers in the United States are foreign-born; nearly half of that vast workforce are undocumented immigrants.

In the same states where undocumented labor has been a crucial component of the local economy, politicians regularly deplore immigrants as thieves or drug runners, spread lunatic lies about the great replacement, and issue demands for the erection of a magically impenetrable wall that will stop them from coming.

Its a lie. All of it. Build a wall as tall as you want; the people will keep coming. And most immigrants to the United States have no ambition to replace anyone; they want to save their farms, save some money and return home.

The United States is engaged in an expensive and futile arms race with migrants, seeking to thwart entry with legalistic barriers where it can and physical barriers when all else fails. But nothing will stop hemispheric migration until root causes are addresseda much tricker proposition than throwing up a bigger wall for migrants to dig under or crawl over. People fleeing gang and government violence, hunger, and climate change will not be deterred by higher barriers. Too many of them literally have nothing to lose. More of them will die trying to reach the United States, of course, the harder North Americans make it.

So what will work? Well, nothing will work perfectly, and politicians should cease pretending that any one approach will neatly resolve the crisis at the U.S. border. It would help if U.S. politicians stopped treating migration as red meat for their political base and more like a policy challenge that can actually be addressed through analysis, negotiation and an attention to human dignity.

People have a legitimate right to migrate, the church teaches, when conditions in their home countries become an affront to human dignity and self- and family preservation requires it. Church teaching also acknowledges a nations responsibility to govern its borders and manage immigration. A tension inevitably exists between those two propositions that must be balanced with justice and wisdom and, above all, with mercya sense of a common good that transcends abstractions like national borders. In a nation largely peopled by descendants of immigrants who escaped political and economic oppression in the 19th and 20th centuries, is it so hard for North Americans today to imagine the plight of people fleeing the same conditions in our neighboring states?

And while North Americans grouse about migrants as a liability to deflect, many of the immigrants themselves seek only to work and support families back home. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports that the U.S. labor force is only able to produce 68 workers for every 100 job opportunities U.S. businesses and industry are hoping to fill. There seems to be an obvious fix to work out both ends of these related dilemmas.

U.S. and Mexican officials insist that migrants should cease using irregular pathways to the border like the various off-roads that brought these men from Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras and other states to their terrible fate in Jurez. That admonishment presumes that an adequate legal path exists as an alternative. It does not. While U.S. officials bob and weave to avoid obligations established by both U.S. and international law to migrants and asylum seekers, the migrants themselves have few options but to accept these perilous and irregular entries into the United States.

The president took a tentative step toward a more rational approach to hemispheric migration when his administration stopped pretending that migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba were better off in their home countries, stablishing humanitarian parole for applicants from those designated states with a quota that allowed 30,000 monthly admissions. By the administrations own assessment, the new policy has significantly reduced the pile-up of humanity at the borderat least from those four states.

What might happen if those numbers were doubled or even tripled and the humanitarian parole extended to the other deeply troubled nations of the Americas? Broadening legal pathways into the United States with new or expanded humanitarian and work visas is the only realistic way out of life-threatening troubles at the border.

It may be that in the current nativist climate this idea appears a political non-starter. That persistent xenophobia is part of the reason comprehensive immigration reform failed in 2013 and why common-sense legislation like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals consistently fails to get through Congress, despite its broad support among the U.S. public.

But someone in Washington has to have the courage to speak sensibly about the so-called border crisis and to propose fact-based legislation that has a realistic shot at unraveling it. Its worth recalling that the last time large-scale immigration reform passed in 1986, signed into law by a Republican Ronald Reagan no less, the U.S. public was even more skeptical about the value of more immigration.

Last year, at least 890 people died trying to reach the United States via the irregular path deplored by humanitarian and politician alike; on March 24, two men suffocated in a train car near El Paso, just a few days before these 40 men choked to death in Jurez. How many more will die this year before North Americans acknowledge our hypocrisy and complicity and do something, in solidarity with our hemispheric neighbors, about it?

Original post:
How many more migrants have to die for the U.S. to fix its ... - America: The Jesuit Review

Short of immigration reform, it matters who occupies the White House

Re In Maine undocumented workers case, what about the Mass. company that employed them? (Opinion, March 28): Marcela Garca is quite right to recognize that the government should focus its immigration enforcement resources not on non-citizen workers who often perform difficult, essential jobs that US citizens stay away from but rather on unscrupulous employers who exploit non-citizen workers vulnerable status, cheating them out of hard-earned wages, exposing them to treacherous conditions, and threatening and harassing them. These are, as Garca recognizes, daily occurrences in workplaces from northern Maine to Southern California. The only real solution is immigration reform that provides a path to citizenship for the many millions of workers and their families who arent legally authorized to be in this country.

Short of that elusive prize, it does matter who occupies the White House and, hence, controls the focus of the Department of Homeland Security. In fact, unlike that of his predecessor, President Bidens stated immigration policy is highly supportive of labor agency investigations targeting employers who exploit non-citizen workers, such as the as-yet-unnamed Massachusetts company operating in Lisbon, Maine.

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To advance that policy, DHS recently rolled out a streamlined process for victims of or witnesses to such labor abuse to access immigration relief. Its a smart, humane policy that lifts all workers by encouraging and protecting those willing to speak out against exploitation. It should be widely deployed by DHS, including, it certainly appears, in the case Garca has spotlighted.

Michael Felsen

Jamaica Plain

The writer was the US Department of Labors New England regional solicitor from 2010 to 2018 and currently serves as an adviser and consultant on a range of worker protection issues.

US employers are desperate for workers, but our laws lag

Marcela Garcas March 28 Opinion column highlights only some of the issues surrounding the relationship between US employers and undocumented workers.

The workers in the story were living in horrible conditions in Lisbon, Maine. Similar stories and labor violations occur across the country. The current law-enforcement response focuses on the detention and removal of the individual undocumented worker. On occasion, the secondary focus becomes the business that hired them.

However, both of those approaches miss the target. The reaction should not be about who Immigration and Customs Enforcement or the US attorney should be prosecuting, detaining, or penalizing. As Garca rightly notes, there are as many as two and a half open jobs for every unemployed worker in Maine. The Maine economy relies upon immigrant workers to keep its tourism and agriculture engines running. US employers are desperate for workers, especially in landscaping, hospitality, construction, and agriculture, yet our countrys immigration laws and regulations fail to adapt. What will it take for Congress and the Biden administration to address this? Do we have to wait for entire industries to fail?

We cannot continue this stale approach and expect the root issues to be resolved. We are all losing out.

Matt Maiona

Boston

The writer is an immigration attorney and an adjunct professor of business immigration law at Suffolk University Law School.

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Undocumented workers, unscrupulous employers, woeful policy gaps - The Boston Globe

When Martha Escutia was elected to the Assembly in 1992, she was one of seven Latinos in the 120-member California Legislature, part of the small but growing Latino Caucus that would eventually become a powerful force in the state Capitol.

Escutia came in during the Year of the Woman, when U.S. Senate victories by California Democrats Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer highlighted the wave of women winning seats in Congress. She was one of only three Latinas who held office in the Legislature.

We would always tease each other saying that [the Latino Caucus] could probably fit in a phone booth, she said.

By 1996, the California Latino Legislative Caucus had doubled to 14. Today, there are 38 members, 21 of whom are women.

Formed in 1973 as a group that welcomes only Democrats, the Latino Caucus has championed policies to improve healthcare access for immigrants, allow college students without documentation to pay in-state tuition and create an ethnic studies requirement to graduate high school, among other groundbreaking policies in its 50 years of existence.

Now, an established force in the Legislature, the caucus is facing pressure to refocus its priorities to appeal to a new generation of voters. Escutia, who pushed immigration policy amid anti-immigrant sentiment in the 1990s, said the caucus priorities should shift to establish stability and generational wealth, and promote education and health for the people hit hardest by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Looking ahead, we really have got to start thinking about other issues, Escutia said. Immigration reform still remains an elusive goal in the federal government, but there are other problems that we have too.

Mike Madrid, a Latino Republican political consultant, agreed and said immigration and farmworker policies were a strength of the Latino Caucus decades ago, but now it seems like theres this inability to get beyond those issues.

A Public Policy Institute of California poll released in February found that far more Latino Californians were concerned about jobs and the economy, as well as homelessness, than they were about immigration.

Fernando Guerra, a political science professor at Loyola Marymount University, said its a mistake to believe that the caucus was ever a political monolith focused on just immigration policy.

Latinos have always thought that education, health, public safety, the economy and jobs were all more important than immigration, he said. The idea that immigration was the No. 1 issue that Latinos pursued just isnt true.

The caucus last week celebrated its 50th anniversary by reflecting on political accomplishments and introducing a package of 14 bills intended to strengthen Latinos access to health, housing and education.

Sept. 2019 photo of Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes during floor session at the state Capitol. Cervantes is the current Latino Caucus Chair.

(Robert Gourley/Los Angeles Times)

The issues that they fought for are the same issues were fighting for today, said current Latino Caucus Chair Sabrina Cervantes. At the end of the day, we want to make sure that were fighting on behalf of the nearly 15.6 million Latinos in the state of California, where were providing that beacon of hope for them in Sacramento.

The proposed legislation includes efforts to expand social services to immigrants without documentation: Assembly Bill 311 by Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles) would provide access to food stamps for all eligible people regardless of citizenship status; Senate Bill 227 by Sen. Mara Elena Durazo (D-Los Angeles) would establish an unemployment fund for workers without documentation; and AB 4 by Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula (D-Fresno) would expand healthcare through Covered California for immigrants without documentation.

The immense success weve had over the last several years expanding healthcare coverage to millions of our undocumented Californians and farmworkers is a product of the hard work of the Latino Caucus, Arambula said last week during a caucus celebration at the Capitol. We will continue to make sure that our communities have their needs addressed.

Other bills would expand resources for English-language learners and cultural education. AB 393 by Assemblymember Luz Rivas (DNorth Hollywood) would require the state to identify dual-language learners in early learning programs.

Assemblymember Wendy Carrillos AB 1255 would create a statewide task force to help develop an ethnic studies credential for K-12 teachers. This bill supports the 2021 law that requires all California high school students to take an ethnic studies course to graduate.

Were not asking for history teachers to become ethnic studies teachers, were asking that the state of California create the pathway to credentialing teachers to teach ethnic studies to make this a reality, Carrillo (D-Los Angeles) said.

AB 470 by Assemblymember Avelino Valencia (D-Anaheim) would expand access to language and cultural education for practicing doctors in California to fulfill their continuing medical education requirements. Ten million Californians speak Spanish, but there are only 60 Spanish-speaking physicians per 100,000 people in the state, Valencia said.

Other bills in the package not related to immigration include increasing voter registration access and passing a bond for climate-related projects such as safe drinking water, and wildfire and drought prevention.

It didnt seem like there were people of color in the conversations around the environment, Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia (D-Coachella) said. The folks working on these issues didnt look like us or come from places like us. It makes a difference when you have someone from the community.

Latino Caucus Vice Chair Sen. Lena Gonzalez filed legislation that would increase the number of paid sick leave days from three to seven for Californians who work 30 days or more per year.

The Long Beach Democrat said the three-day sick leave policy was groundbreaking in 2014, but nearly 10 years later and amid the reverberating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is outdated and insufficient to meet the needs of our diverse workforce.

Sen. Alex Padilla, right, greets Trinity Alps Unified School District Superintendent Jamie Green and other Rural California school district superintendents in his office on Capitol Hill ahead of their meeting with a staffer from his office in Washington, DC.

(Kent Nishimura/Los Angeles Times)

Over the last half-century, the Latino Caucus has produced some of Californias most influential political leaders, including former Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina, the first Latina elected to the state Legislature; Alex Padilla, Californias first Latino U.S. senator; Antonio Villaraigosa, the first Latino elected as Los Angeles mayor in over 100 years; and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, the states first Latino attorney general.

But the group also weathered a major storm a few years back. Former Latino Caucus executive board member Sen. Ron Calderon was sent to prison in 2016 after pleading guilty to a federal corruption charge of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes from undercover FBI agents and a hospital executive.

The California Latino Legislative Caucus also has faced criticism for excluding Republicans.

There are four Republican Latinos in the Legislature. Kate A. Sanchez (R-Trabuco Canyon), Josh Hoover (R-Folsom) and Juan Alanis (R-Modesto) are in the Assembly. Rosilicie Ochoa Bogh (R-Yucaipa) was elected to the Senate in 2020.

Alanis congratulated the Latino Caucus anniversary in an email statement, but said, It is unfortunate that Latino members remain excluded because of party affiliation.

Madrid, the GOP political consultant, said the continuing partisan nature of the caucus hindered its growth over the last 20 years. Its really a relic of the past, he said. They shouldnt be afraid of having discussions and ideas; they control the legislative agenda anyway.

Diversity in the Latino Caucus has increased through the years. This is the second time in its 50 years that two women lead. Cervantes is the first openly LGBTQ female chair. Latinos of different cultural backgrounds, including Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and Salvadorans, represent people all across the state.

Our diverse experiences, our perspectives and our voices at every leadership level allow us to understand better and respond to the needs of the people that we represent daily, Cervantes said.

Madrid said the caucus does not do enough to define a Latino economic agenda that is appealing enough to get voters out to the polls. According to data from the Public Policy Institute of California, Latinos represent the largest ethnic group in the state at 35%, but only 21% of that group are likely to vote.

Have they realized that theyre no longer a small niche part of one party? he said.

Cervantes said representation in government is essential to future prosperity and that caucus members are mindful about elevating Latinos to higher positions.

We have to continue utilizing our collective voice because it is powerful, Cervantes said. We will continue to ensure that we are elevating names so that we can get more representation.

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At 50, California Latino Caucus looks to evolve past historic issues - The San Diego Union-Tribune

New partnership focuses on helping farmers transition to climate-smart crops.

Agriculture is not everyones favorite industry. Local governments have problems with its tax revenue vs. its needs for government resources (roads, utilities, public safety, and education). Non-farm neighbors object to organic odors. There is also the unkind and incorrect social stigma applied to rural residents.

However, agriculture is essential to human survival.

The Soviet Union took over the agricultural industries as its priority. The centuries-old notions of property rights and serfdom were overturned, but the government met the need for an effective system to supply food to its citizens, in theory.

Democracies went toward co-ops, granges, and university extension agents as ways to stabilize the agriculture industry. At the very least, our answers allowed more creative problem-solving while retaining the pride of individual ownership. Todays agricultural sector must keep personal flexibility in the broadest range of possible actions.

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Government must justly regulate an industry to allow fair access to the resources it needs. The 3/27 Times-News article about the Oregon Legislatures bill to open agricultural land to the chip industry began my thought process. Later, the Idaho Legislature debated a joint resolution urging our national representatives to work toward immigration reform guaranteeing enough farm workers to meet the demand in Idaho.

Idaho shares a border with Canada. But its another border, and one that doesnt physically touch Idaho, that has brought grief for the states Republican congressional delegation and the Legislature.

The bills governing water and other agricultural needs were lost in the babble of social legislation pushed forward in the Legislature this year. These subjects are critical to Idahos economic well-being. They are also essential to preserving a way of life no one should be forced to abandon. Connection with the land, nature, and creation has become a progressive agenda for urban areas that rural residents have little need for.

In the 1960s, a drive down Highway 99 through the San Joaquin Valley in California featured signs saying, Industry Welcome Here. Soon, the nations most significant swath of fertile soil became covered in concrete for industrial jobs and homes for industrial workers. An innovative strategy could have mitigated the harmful effects. Its an example of thinking about short over long-term gain.

We have discovered that quality soil captures carbon. We can all do our part in our garden and lawn. All we need is skill and information. We created the structure in the nineteen thirties: University extension services and community organization. Landowners in rural areas have the same opportunity and responsibilities.

In semi-arid regions like our Intermountain West, it is wise to consider the available land with the eye toward the best reasonable use. Can it be claimed or reclaimed to support farming or grazing? Is it a wildlife habitat? If we build industries or homes, is it possibly a good use of land less well suited for living things?

Everything depends on available water. Anything living needs it, and Idaho is leading the country in attention to water management. Our basalt aquifers (thank you, volcanoes) are renewable. Sand aquifers are harder to recharge, and the well-known Ogallala aquifer, which supports mid-American agriculture, is running dry. We may now be the Gem State, but there is a future where we are the Water State.

GUEST EDITORIAL: Immigration reform should not be used as a divisive political tool, writes Rep. Jack Nelsen, R-Jerome.

This leaves us with the people who enjoy growing things. Machines will always be expensive, and they can lead us away from the soul satisfaction of life on the land. Animal husbandry is labor intensive. Domestic animals dont thrive without the care of the human they agreed to depend on eons ago. Even if we could convince urban dwellers to work on the land, there are not enough workers to fill the jobs.

Crime or illegal status is not a logical reason to ignore willing farmworkers. There are criminals in the United States, but not all of them were ever farm workers. People with Hispanic roots are on track to be a majority in the United States, but only a few are criminals or undocumented. A temporary status will sometimes work, and removing birth to any temporary resident as automatic citizenship is the answer to another objection. Amnesty will not add to our unemployment figures.

Government is paying attention to agricultures need for soil and water. Now it needs to solve the employee challenge.

Linda Brugger of Twin Falls is retired from the Air Force Reserve and a leaning Democrat. She can be reached at IdahoAuthor@outlook.com.

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BRUGGER: Agriculture needs soil, water and people - Times-News

MIAMI Ten years ago this month, Sen. Chuck Schumer declared, "We all know that our immigration system is broken, and it's time to get to work on fixing it." Sen. John McCain quoted Winston Churchill. But it was Lindsey Graham who offered the boldest prediction.

"I think 2013 is the year of immigration reform," the South Carolina Republican said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., center, speaks about immigration reform legislation outlined by the Senate's bipartisan "Gang of Eight" that would create a path for the nation's 11 million unauthorized immigrants to apply for U.S. citizenship on April 18, 2013, on Capitol Hill in Washington. From left are, Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Sen. Charles Schumer, Graham, R-S.C., Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., and Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin, D-Ill.

It wasn't. And neither has any year since those "Gang of Eight" senators from both parties gathered in a Washington auditorium to offer hopeful pronouncements. In fact, today's political landscape has shifted so dramatically that immigrant advocates and top architects of key policies over the years fear that any hope of an immigration overhaul seems further away than ever.

Many Republicans now see calling for zero tolerance on the border as a way to animate their base supporters. Democrats have spent the last decade vacillating between stiffer border restrictions and efforts to soften and humanize immigration policy exposing deep rifts on how best to address broader problems.

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"There are big questions about whether or not anything in the immigration family anything at all has the votes to pass," said Cecilia Muoz, who served as President Barack Obama's top immigration adviser and was a senior member of Joe Biden's transition team before he entered the White House.

The last extensive package came under President Ronald Reagan in 1986, and President George H.W. Bush signed a more limited effort four years later. That means federal agents guarding the border today with tools like drones and artificial intelligence are enforcing laws written back when cellphones and the internet were novelties. Laying the problem bare in the deadliest of terms was a fire last month at a detention center on the Mexican side of the border that killed 39 migrants.

Congress came the closest to a breakthrough on immigration in 2013 with the Gang of Eight, which included Schumer, a New York Democrat who is now Senate majority leader, and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Their proposal cleared the Senate that June and sought a pathway to citizenship for millions of people in the country illegally and expanded work visas while tightening border security and mandating that employers verify workers' legal status.

Democrats cheered a modernized approach to immigration. Republicans were looking for goodwill within the Latino community after Obama enjoyed strong support from Hispanic voters while being reelected in 2012.

Prominent supporters of the proposal were as diverse as the powerful AFL-CIO labor union and the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There was more momentum than there had been for large immigration changes that fizzled in 2006 and 2007 under President George W. Bush.

Migrants wait along a border wall Aug. 23 after crossing from Mexico near Yuma, Ariz. President Joe Biden's administration announced in early January that it would admit up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela for two years with authorization to work when they apply online.

Still, Republican House Speaker John Boehner gauged support for the Gang of Eight bill in the GOP-controlled chamber in January 2014 and said too many lawmakers distrusted the Obama administration. By that summer, the bill was dead.

Obama then created a program protecting from deportation migrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children. The Supreme Court has previously upheld it, but the court's relatively recent 6-3 conservative majority could pose long-term threats.

Years after the creation of Obama's program, President Donald Trump called for walling off all of the nation's 2,000-mile southern border, and his administration separated migrant children from their parents and made migrants wait in Mexico while seeking U.S. asylum.

Biden endorsed a sweeping immigration package on his Inauguration Day, but it went nowhere in Congress. His administration has since loosened some Trump immigration policies and tightened others, even as his party has seen Republican support rise among Hispanic voters.

Officials have continued to enforce Title 42 pandemic-era health restrictions that allowed for migrants seeking U.S. asylum to be quickly expelled, though they are set to expire May 11. The Biden White House is also considering placing migrant families in detention centers while they wait for their asylum cases, something the Obama and Trump administrations did.

Children lie inside a pod at the main detention center for unaccompanied children in the Rio Grande Valley run by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on March 30, 2021, in Donna, Texas.

Gil Kerlikowske, who was commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection under Obama, said "a lot of things are coming together at once," including Title 42 possibly ending, a spike in the number of South American migrants crossing through the treacherous rainforests of the Darian Gap between Colombia and Panama, and a 2024 presidential election ratcheting up the political pressure.

"Two and a half years into the administration, there really hasn't been any announcement of what is our immigration policy," Kerlikowske said. "Getting laws passed is almost impossible. But what's been the policy?"

The League of United LatinAmerican Citizens is so desperate for meaningful progress that it has begun advocating for a full moratorium of up to six months on U.S. asylum as a way of calming things at the border. Its president, Domingo Garcia, said that migrants know they are processed and allowed to remain in the U.S. for years fighting for asylum in court, and that authorities need to "turn off the faucet" to help strained border cities.

"We need a total reset," said Garcia, whose group is the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organization. "I think that people on the far left are just as wrong as those who believe they should close the border and let no one in."

Biden's administration announced in early January that it would admit up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela for two years with authorization to work and make it easier to apply online. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas argues that the new rules are designed to weaken cartels who help migrants cross into the U.S. illegally.

It appears to be working, for now. After federal authorities detained migrants more than 2.5 million times at the southern border in 2022 including more than 250,000 in December, the highest monthly total on record the number of encounters with migrants plummeted during the first two months of this year.

A migrant cries leaning on an ambulance as a person she knows is attended by medics after a fire broke out at the Mexican Immigration Detention center in Juarez on Monday, March, 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

A migrant is rushed to the hospital after a fire broke out a Mexican immigration detention center in Juarez on Monday, March 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

Medics give aid to a migrant who survived a fire that broke out at a Mexican immigration detention center in Juarez on Monday, March 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

Medics give aid to a migrant who survived a fire that broke out at a Mexican immigration detention center in Juarez on Monday, March 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

A migrant cries leaning on an ambulance as a person she knows is attended by medics after a fire broke out at the Mexican Immigration Detention center in Juarez on Monday, March, 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas/The El Paso Times via AP)

Forensic investigators begin the task of transporting the bodies of migrants that died after a fire broke out at a Mexican immigration detention center in Juarez on Monday, March 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas/The El Paso Times via AP)

The bodies of dead migrants are covered with "space blankets" in the parking lot of a Mexican immigration detention in Juarez on Monday, March 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

The bodies of dead migrants are covered with "space blankets" in the parking lot of a Mexican immigration detention center where doezens of migrants died after a fire broke out at a Mexican immigration detention center in Juarez on Monday, March 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

A Mexican immigration officer is seen by bodies laying on the floor after a fire broke out at the Mexican Immigration Detention center in Juarez on Monday, March, 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

Forensic investigators begin the task of transporting the bodies of migrants that died after a fire broke out at a Mexican immigration detention center in Juarez on Monday, March 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

Forensic investigators begin the task of transporting the bodies of migrants that died after a fire broke out at a Mexican immigration detention center in Juarez on Monday, March 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

A Mexican immigration officer is seen by bodies laying on the floor after a fire broke out at the Mexican Immigration Detention center in Juarez on Monday, March, 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

Forensic investigators begin the task of transporting the bodies of migrants that died after a fire broke out at a Mexican immigration detention center in Juarez on Monday, March 27, 2023. A fire in a dormitory at a Mexican immigration detention center near the U.S. border left more than three dozen migrants dead. It was one of the deadliest incidents ever at an immigration lockup in the country. (Omar Ornelas /The El Paso Times via AP)

The bodies of migrants lay covered after a deadly fire broke out at an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)

Paramedics carry a migrant who was wounded in a deadly fire at an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)

A soldier guards the entrance of an immigration detention center where a deadly fire broke out in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)

Paramedics and security forces work amid the covered bodies of migrants who died in a fire at an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez)

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