talkingpointsmemo--2020-10-28--Trump Got What He Wanted at the Border. Would Biden Undo It?

This story first appeared at ProPublica .
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In early October , hundreds of migrants in Honduras set out in a “ caravan ” with plans to travel through Mexico to the United States .
The timing was similar to a caravan two years ago , which swelled to thousands of people , overwhelmed Guatemalan and Mexican border authorities and became the leading issue for President Donald Trump and Republicans going into the 2018 midterm election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of miles short of the U.S. border , hardly making a blip in the news cycle .
Shortly after entering Guatemala , police and migration authorities set up roadblocks and rounded up the group for deportation back to Honduras .
It was so routine that Trump , ill with COVID , didn ’ t even bother to bang out a celebratory tweet , much less talk about deploying the military to avert an invasion as he did in 2018 .
The fate of the caravan is a symbol of a larger success .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Trump and his relentlessly focused aide , Stephen Miller , have largely achieved their goal of choking off the flow of unauthorized immigrants into the United States — especially families from Central America , many of whom come with the intention of requesting asylum .
They have done so with a combination of policies that Tom Jawetz , a former Democratic aide to the House Judiciary Committee , describes as a “ waterproof fabric ” to repel migrants .
New U.S. regulations and legal precedents make it harder for someone to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few these days even get the chance to ask .
As much as possible , the Trump administration has simply expelled asylum-seekers .
The apprehension numbers , which officials say Trump is obsessed with , tell the story .
As the expulsion policies locked into place , arrests of families entering the U.S. fell from nearly 85,000 in May 2019 to less than 5,000 in February 2020 .
Then the COVID-19 pandemic finished the job , both suppressing border crossings even further and giving the Trump administration an opportunity to use an obscure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ border-crossers with no chance to make an asylum claim .
Critics , including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden , say the results have been achieved with a scale of callousness that is in contradiction with America ’ s fundamental values .
Biden has pledged to undo the longest-standing of Trump ’ s expulsion policies : the Migrant Protection Protocols , or “ Remain in Mexico ” program , under which tens of thousands of migrants were sent to Mexico to wait , sometimes in sub-refugee-camp conditions , for court dates in the U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shut in the face of families fleeing persecution and violence , ” Biden tweeted in January on the one-year anniversary of the program ’ s implementation .
“ On day one , I will eliminate President Trump ’ s decision to limit asylum and end the MPP program .
# RestoreAsylumNOW.
” But MPP is only one of the policies that make up the “ waterproof fabric ” of deterrence through expulsion .
Just how far Biden would go to unravel that fabric remains entirely unclear , even to campaign advisers who ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
Interviews with Democrats , advocates and policy experts in recent weeks have revealed that the Trump administration ’ s excesses have papered over , but not healed , an intra-Democratic rift on how to handle asylum-seekers from Central America .
The disagreement , which first erupted into view when the administration of President Barack Obama faced the 2014 border crisis , is essentially an argument about using deterrence as a strategy : whether it is appropriate to discourage people from making an often-dangerous journey to the U.S. where they might not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ punishing those who have already come .
One Democratic camp sees immigration as a national security matter and deterrence as a necessary border control strategy .
In this view , border policy should be a balance : The U.S. shouldn ’ t shut out victims of persecution , nor should it create “ pull factors ” that encourage too many people to come who may not ultimately qualify for full asylum .
The other camp , made up of those who see immigration as a humanitarian issue , believes it ’ s neither @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fleeing desperate circumstances to send a message to others .
The Biden campaign , like the Obama administration , has sought to de-emphasize the split by focusing on long-term solutions in Central America .
But no one is certain what that will mean if Biden is sworn in , especially if rising migration creates another “ border crisis.
” That ’ s a possibility during a second Trump term , too .
The expulsion policies that have effectively kept people from seeking asylum have their own unintended consequences , leading people to seek @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19-related travel restrictions lift , the economic crisis created by the pandemic may push ever more migrants northward .
“ When this pandemic ceases , ” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan told reporters in October , “ we ’ re anticipating it will be worse ” than 2019 — when Trump ’ s rage and tweeted-out threats ultimately cleared a path for the dispersal policies .
The United States may have reached the limits of deterrence .
No one knows what comes next .
Until the early 2010s , unauthorized @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by single adults seeking jobs .
Deterrence was an uncontroversial strategy .
Border enforcement had been ramped up along with punishments for those apprehended , a strategy the government euphemistically termed “ consequence delivery.
” Once informally turned back , migrants were increasingly subjected to criminal charges and formally deported , making it harder for them to legally immigrate to the U.S. in the future .
After the Great Recession , the population of people coming to the U.S. without papers fundamentally changed .
It included far more children traveling with or without @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) ; far more migrants from the Central American countries of Guatemala , Honduras and El Salvador ( referred to collectively as the “ Northern Triangle ” ) ; and far more who were seeking humanitarian protection .
The shift is not easily explained .
Both individually and collectively , the decision to migrate is driven by a mixture of need and opportunity .
Opportunity often comes from changes in smuggling operations , and the increase in families coming to the U.S. in late 2018 is generally attributed to the emergence in Mexico @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that would whisk travelers across the country in a couple of days .
Furthermore , the needs that drove people to emigrate from Central America in recent years don ’ t easily fit the distinction U.S. law draws between “ economic migrants , ” who aren ’ t allowed to come to the U.S. without papers , and asylees , who face persecution for their ethnicity or political views .
Starvation after repeated crop failures , gang vendettas , domestic violence — any of these might make fleeing to the U.S. the only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ categorically enshrined as “ persecution ” under U.S. law , although in some cases , under some circumstances , they did qualify .
The U.S. is committed , morally and by international treaty , not to turn away those facing persecution in their home countries .
Policies that deter migration are a blunt instrument ; it ’ s impossible to design one that discourages only would-be migrants who don ’ t qualify for asylum while welcoming those who do .
Would-be migrants themselves couldn ’ t know whether they ’ d ultimately qualify @ @ @ @ @ @ @ persecution ” is legally complex and arcane .
What they did know is what they ’ d heard from relatives , or former neighbors , who ’ d recently made the journey : that after a short while , they were released from detention and allowed to live in the United States while waiting for a court date years in the future .
The new pattern of migration created a new cycle of action and reaction that started under Trump ’ s predecessor , Obama .
The cycle began in spring 2014 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children arriving at the border began to overwhelm the U.S. government ’ s ability to receive them .
U.S. law obligates border agents to quickly send children who have arrived in the U.S. without papers or parents to the Department of Health and Human Services , which was responsible for finding suitable sponsors for them ( usually a relative ) and caring for them in the meantime .
As thousands of children started coming each month , the system bottlenecked , with children stuck at the border for days or weeks .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” — cagelike dormitories — to house children until they could be sent to HHS .
The resulting news coverage of a “ border crisis ” quickly piqued Americans ’ interest .
Immigration , rarely a top issue , soared to the top of Gallup polls and caused alarm within the Obama administration .
The administration had only recently started to address criticism from the left of its immigration record , particularly its deportations of undocumented immigrants who ’ d been living in the U.S .
It was weighing an expansion of “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created in 2012 ) that would use executive power to temporarily protect unauthorized immigrants from deportation .
The border crisis — which was seen as reinforcing a narrative of Democratic weakness — put the administration on the defensive again , causing it to wait until after the 2014 midterm elections to announce new enforcement policies .
Obama ’ s response to the crisis was twofold : a promise to address its “ root causes ” by working on economic development and security with Central American governments and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ migrants who had already arrived .
As Obama ’ s vice president , Biden became the point person for this “ regional ” approach , which involved a fair amount of tough talk .
“ Those who are pondering risking their lives to reach the United States should be aware of what awaits them , ” he told reporters at a regional summit in Guatemala in June 2014 .
“ It will not be open arms.
” The Obama administration framed deterrence as an effort to protect would-be migrants , particularly kids traveling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Putting children in the hands of smugglers and these thugs and drug traffickers is a reckless and dangerous undertaking for any parent to do , ” Biden said .
Internally , though , the argument was put in terms that would later be central in the Trump administration ’ s deliberations .
Amy Pope , a National Security Council adviser at the time who would later become deputy national security adviser , laid it out in a 2018 interview with PBS ’ “ Frontline ” : “ The truth is , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ends at 70,000 kids .
The question is : Is that the end of it ?
The population of Central America is in the millions .
… We didn ’ t think it was feasible , or consistent with what the American public would tolerate , to just say , ‘ OK , you get here , you ’ re in.
’ ” This wasn ’ t the consensus view within the administration — or the Democratic Party .
After pushback from congressional Democrats , the Obama White House dropped its request for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Central American children seeking asylum to be sent back without court hearings .
( The Trump administration has repeatedly demanded Congress make the very same changes . )
The fate of families traveling with children became another point of disagreement within the administration .
In that case , the security-minded advocates won out .
The Obama administration quickly built family detention centers in New Mexico and Texas , where families were often forced to appear before a judge without access to counsel or an opportunity to prepare their cases .
( Biden called @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but his pitch to Congress for emergency funds included no money for legal services . )
Arguably , the family detention policy was undone because the administration was too honest .
By acknowledging deterrence as its goal , it admitted it was punishing asylum-seekers to send a message .
A federal judge explicitly chided the Department of Homeland Security , saying that “ deterring future migration ” wasn ’ t an acceptable reason to detain a family already seeking asylum .
In spring 2015 , a federal judge , Dolly Gee , modified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long children can be held in immigration detention , so that it applied to children held with their parents as well as those traveling alone .
Because overall border apprehensions are a fraction of their pre-2008 levels , relatively small increases in numbers result in big swings in percentages .
And those newcomers , though fewer , strained U.S. border capacity because protections built into the law prevented children , families and asylum-seekers from simply being deported .
Those relative increases in apprehensions stirred panic on the U.S. side .
The panic would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ asylum-seekers when and after they arrived in the U.S .
The hope was to deter future migrants by changing what they heard , through word of mouth , from those who ’ d already come .
Numbers would drop for a couple of months , then slowly climb again — until U.S. officials imposed another crackdown .
After the first crackdown ebbed , in late 2015 , panic returned .
The Obama administration sought to deter asylum-seekers by rounding up those who ’ d previously been ordered deported but hadn ’ t left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first weekend of 2016 .
The courts again stepped in , preventing most deportations by ruling that asylum-seekers hadn ’ t been given a fair chance to make their cases .
Trump ’ s election was a deterrent all its own , bringing in its first months the quietest period the U.S.-Mexico border has ever seen .
It didn ’ t last .
The Making of the “ Waterproof Fabric ” The Trump administration adopted a simple solution to the tension between deterrence and humanitarianism : It maximized deterrence .
( In Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fixation on “ toughness ” at the border . )
Where U.S. law required some commitment to humanitarianism — most notably , by guaranteeing that anyone who arrived in the U.S. had the ability to request asylum and be screened for potential persecution — the administration looked for , and found , places where the law didn ’ t apply .
Trump ’ s public rhetoric took a while to adjust to the new border reality , after a campaign in which he ’ d blamed Mexico for “ sending ” murderers and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that most of those coming were now children , families and other asylum-seekers .
They were acutely aware of the extra protections built in for those groups in U.S. law , and the mismatch between the needs of children and families and a border infrastructure built to hold and deport single adults .
And as border arrest numbers climbed again in late 2017 and early 2018 , the White House , led by Miller , moved into crisis footing .
In spring 2018 , as Congress considered legislation to legalize unauthorized immigrants protected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which Trump had sought to end , a “ senior administration official ” briefed the press about a steep rise in “ inadmissibles ” at the border and the legal gaps that allowed them to stay .
In particular , the administration aimed its fire at the modified court agreement that required families to get released from detention after a few weeks — creating the possibility that they could “ abscond ” into the U.S. and skip their court hearings .
The administration has consistently exaggerated how often families actually disappeared ; the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , examining a separate immigration court docket created under Trump for families making asylum claims , found that over 85 % of families appeared at their first court hearing after release .
( Furthermore , there ’ s evidence that when families do miss court dates , it ’ s because they don ’ t know about them . )
But the objections of Trump advisers like Miller to what they called “ catch and release ” were fundamental : It was an intolerable risk that the U.S. had no obligation to take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ grave threat to America ’ s sovereignty , ” the official said , “ and a threat to , really , the foundations of American society itself.
” There were advantages to turning away people seeking asylum before they could cross the border .
People who do not formally enter the U.S. don ’ t count in the apprehension stats , which Trump wanted to keep low .
By simply refusing to allow asylum-seekers to set foot on U.S. soil , the administration could avoid the clear obligation in immigration law that requires @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who enters the country .
( The Trump administration attempted to undo this law via regulation in fall 2018 , but it was quickly stopped in court . )
If the administration couldn ’ t prevent their initial entry , it could at least get them quickly out of the U.S. and beyond the reach of American courts .
Where the asylum-seekers ended up , and in what conditions , was less important than where they weren ’ t : in American communities .
The administration needed for other countries to cooperate to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to take them off the U.S. ’ hands .
It wasn ’ t a new idea .
Getting Mexico to interdict migrants en route to the U.S. had been part of the 2014 crackdown .
In mid-2014 , according to a ProPublica analysis of U.S. and Mexican government data , the U.S. was apprehending six people at its southern border for every one apprehended in Mexico ; by the end of that year , Mexico had reached near-parity .
But when the diplomatic pressure eased , Mexico ’ s enforcement slackened .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never to let up on pressure — to treat migration as the central , indeed the only issue that mattered in the U.S. relationship with Mexico , Guatemala , Honduras and El Salvador .
Plan A was to sign a formal deal , known as a “ safe third country ” agreement , with Mexico , forcing migrants to seek asylum in whichever country they arrived in first .
The Mexican government , whose own refugee and asylum agency was already understaffed for the soaring number of applications , at first rejected the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to Mexico ’ s presidency , after he campaigned on a promise to stand up to Trump , changed Mexico ’ s position just as the number of families coming to the U.S. reached unprecedented levels .
Within days of Lopez Obrador ’ s inauguration , the U.S. announced that it would send some asylum-seekers back to Mexico to await hearings in U.S. courts , using an obscure legal provision .
Officially , it was a unilateral decision , allowing Lopez Obrador to say that he hadn ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ announced the same morning that it would accept people expelled by the U.S. with asylum claims .
While both countries signed an agreement outlining their respective responsibilities — the U.S. would give people speedy trials and due process ; Mexico would guarantee their safety — it soon became clear that neither side was accountable for complying with what it had promised .
Initially , the program was limited to certain areas of the border that Mexico considered safe enough for migrants to stay .
But apprehensions kept rising .
Trump ’ s patience @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump threatened to impose massive tariffs if Mexico didn ’ t do more to fix immigration .
The threat , issued via tweet , was fleshed out by other administration officials : They demanded more migrant interdiction on Mexico ’ s southern border , more crackdowns on migrant smugglers and a renewed demand for a formal “ safe third country ” agreement .
In the end , the two countries agreed on a border-wide expansion of the arrangement they already had : non-Mexicans would be sent to wait indefinitely in Mexico , even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Grande Valley , for asylum hearings in the U.S. Mexico moved quickly to show it was doing what Trump wanted .
Its newly constituted National Guard was deployed to its southern and northern borders , and migrant interdictions climbed at Mexico ’ s southern border while U.S. immigration officials reported a drop in arrival numbers .
The U.S. provided money to the International Organization for Migration for buses to ferry migrants home if they abandoned their asylum claims .
It offered no such support for housing or protecting migrants seeking asylum in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s capacity to process applications for those who viewed staying there as a possible alternative .
In theory , the Mexican government had guaranteed migrants services and safety , but Trump administration officials did nothing to enforce that pledge .
But by the time the governments reconvened in September , Trump was so pleased with Mexico ’ s performance that he was bragging about it in his rallies .
Mexico had gotten to Trump the most effective way : with “ the numbers.
” The Mexican government , in the September meeting , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ downward trend since May .
It reflected , in part , the very real decline over the summer and fall — not the 50 % drop that had been promised , but a stark decline nonetheless .
But the Mexican government had massaged the numbers : It subtracted out the asylum-seekers who ’ d made it to the U.S. but were being forced to wait in Mexico under the MPP program .
The chart essentially reflected only the migrants who were still the U.S. ’ responsibility .
The decline in those numbers was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ undercut those in his administration still trying to pressure Mexico to do more .
And it blunted internal concerns within DHS that the MPP program was being implemented carelessly , and that migrants waiting in Mexico were falling through the cracks .
A similar playbook — private negotiations interspersed with tariff threats — persuaded outgoing Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales to agree in August 2019 to allow the U.S. to ship asylum-seekers of other nationalities to Guatemala , on the theory that they could apply for asylum in that country instead of in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ El Salvador were inked that fall .
Only Guatemala ’ s agreement was implemented before the coronavirus pandemic hit , with 939 people being sent back ( only 20 of whom actually applied for asylum ) .
The Trump administration expects to start up the others after the pandemic .
And Miller hopes to expand the arrangement to countries on other continents that feed U.S. immigration .
But the coronavirus has given the U.S. its most robust tool yet for repelling asylum-seekers .
An order signed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House insistence and over the vehement objections of CDC career officials ) prohibited the entry of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico in the name of public health .
The order gave border agents the authority to simply expel them .
In the months since , 200,000 migrants have been expelled , either to Mexico or to their home countries .
None have been given the opportunity to request asylum or explain why they believed they would be persecuted if they returned to their homelands .
The combination of international agreements , health concerns and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
So far , none of the elements in the administration ’ s new “ waterproof fabric ” have been overturned in court or become the subject of public uproar , as family separation did in 2018 .
The Biden campaign hasn ’ t made specific commitments about which Trump policies it would and wouldn ’ t roll back .
Some changes ( such as those finalized in regulation ) will take years to undo ; some ( such as fully reinstating the DACA program , currently in limbo after Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down by the Supreme Court ) could be accomplished through executive order on Day 1 .
Border policies pose a more complicated question .
Biden promised to roll back the “ wait in Mexico ” program for asylum applicants within his first 100 days in office .
However , he has made no such promise about the CDC order , which also forces asylum-seekers to Mexico and doesn ’ t promise them U.S. court dates .
The domestic changes to asylum wrought by the Trump administration could be unraveled over time by a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though it could not happen instantly .
Even something as simple as reversing Trump ’ s changes to asylum officer training would take months .
Whether change will be a top priority of Biden appointees would depend on whether the humanitarian camp or the deterrence camp prevails in the administration .
Biden ’ s pre-transition planners appear to be keeping options open , drafting plans to reverse Trump policies but not committing to using them .
The consensus is that if migration rises again , the deterrence proponents would have the upper hand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s framework in place .
And the larger forces in the region — climate change , economic instability , the spread of the pandemic — makes that look increasingly likely .
Border apprehensions have already increased substantially since March , though they ’ re still quite low in historical context .
Agents made over 54,000 apprehensions in September , which is higher than any September since 2006 , but far below Septembers of the first half of the 2000s , when apprehensions averaged 80,000 .
Those numbers are somewhat inflated by a rise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” — migrants caught at the border , expelled , then caught as they try again .
Before the pandemic , only 7 % of migrants tried to reenter after getting caught ; now , over a third do .
Recidivism rates were high in the mid-2000s , too , which makes sense , since the CDC expulsion policy essentially replicates the old border policy of informal returns rather than formal deportations .
As Cristobal Ramon of the Bipartisan Policy Center put it , “ When you remove the consequences ” of getting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the disincentive .
What particularly worries analysts is the possibility that the 2000s will resurface in another way : large-scale emigration from Mexico .
For many years , Mexico was the largest of the world ’ s sending countries , but the movement of manufacturing jobs encouraged by the NAFTA treaty and the rise of a middle class lessened the incentives to come north for work .
In recent years , Mexico ’ s worsening security situation and softening economy made migration more appealing .
This year , Mexico has been hit harder @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country in the hemisphere , prompting more people to consider the U.S. as an option .
The reduction in Central American family migration might have been temporary , too .
There ’ s some evidence that smuggling networks deliberately stopped operating when COVID-19 became a crisis in the spring , which would have suppressed the number of travelers .
They ’ re now restarting them .
Restrictions on domestic travel due to the virus are temporary , but the long-term effects of the economic crisis it ’ s caused will last much longer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emigrate than before the pandemic will find themselves with the opportunity .
This is also likely to happen if Trump wins a second term .
A threat assessment by DHS analysts issued in October warns that “ the number of apprehensions at the border will significantly climb post-pandemic , ” with the potential for a return to “ unprecedented numbers of families and children.
” At the same time , however , senior Trump administration officials are preemptively blaming the promise of relaxed policies under a Democrat for any surge of migrants at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would likely respond to a migration rise by renewing pressure on other countries to interdict migrants , particularly Mexico .
A Biden administration might well do something similar , returning to the 2014 model put in place by Obama .
Whether they lean toward national security or humanitarian concerns , those closest to Biden on immigration agree on the need for a regional solution : for long-term development in Central America and a commitment to giving asylum-seekers a fair chance to state their case .
Doing so , they argue , can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ short run by maintaining the enforcement strategies deployed in the Obama years .
One vocal champion of Biden ’ s 2014 approach was Kevin McAleenan — who , as acting homeland security secretary under Trump , championed the Guatemalan asylum agreement .
In 2018 , McAleenan described enforcement as a pillar of Biden ’ s earlier initiative : “ We ’ ve talked to the leaders , and they don ’ t want to lose their youth and energy to this migration flow and don ’ t want to put their children in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could tempt a Biden administration to leave Trump ’ s agreements in place .
How the Mexican and Central American governments will respond isn ’ t clear .
Against expectations , the Trump-Lopez Obrador relationship is “ going pretty well , ” Roberto Suro , an immigration specialist who now teaches journalism at the University of Southern California , noted .
“ ‘ What is ( Biden ) going to give AMLO that Trump didn ’ t ?
’ is one way of looking at it.
” An advocate who ’ s conferred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this way : “ Long term , putting in place a refugee program for the Western Hemisphere has to be the goal .
And I believe that is where they ’ re going , which is great.
” “ Short term , ” the advocate continued , “ I ’ m not going to like the things they ’ re doing.
” Critics often describe the Trump administration ’ s approach to immigration with a line coined by The Atlantic ’ s Adam Serwer : “ The cruelty is the point.
” That @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the harm visited upon people serving as an example is justified if it prevents an even worse harm .
The Obama administration viewed that harm as the journey to the U.S. and the encouragement of further migration .
The Trump administration views it as a danger to American sovereignty , and to public safety , if asylum-seekers are allowed to come and stay in the U.S .
The former contended with internal advocates for a more humanitarian approach ; the latter , for all intents and purposes , did not .
To @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it achieved its goal .
That ’ s separate from the question of whether the harms inflicted were worth it .
The Trump administration will likely be remembered for the suffering it inflicted in spring 2018 when it adopted a “ zero tolerance ” policy that led to the separation of thousands of families who ’ d crossed into the U.S .
In the final weeks of the presidential campaign , reports that 545 children still not reunited with parents led to renewed attention to the policy , and to Trump being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ final debate .
But the successes of the “ waterproof fabric ” strategy mean that its harms aren ’ t as readily visible .
There ’ s the quiet despair of the hundreds of asylum-seekers remaining in the tent camp in Matamoros , who have no idea when they ’ ll have their asylum claims heard in the U.S .
There are migrants in Tijuana who have chosen to make their crossing through more remote and dangerous routes .
“ Prevention through deterrence is working , ” Paulina Olvera Canez , the director @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said this fall , “ because they ’ re abandoning their cases in Tijuana , but they ’ re crossing through the Sonoran Desert.
” The longest-standing effort to document deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border , based around Nogales , Arizona , has already catalogued more in the first nine months of 2020 than it has for any full year since 2013 .
In the months since the CDC order was issued , for every 1,000 migrants apprehended in the Yuma , Arizona , sector , five have died in the Nogales desert @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agents discovered over 300 cases , up nearly a third from 2019 , in which migrants were being smuggled in tractor-trailers — a method that can lead to mass suffocation .
With all of this , the Trump administration has been reluctant to declare victory at the border .
Officials acknowledge that 2020 has provided the best possible circumstances for deterrence , and even this year ’ s combination of the CDC order , unemployment in the U.S. and few prospects for asylum have failed to choke off the flow of migrants .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ and whether it could be any more successful , is no clearer than it was six years ago .
The choices remain the same as they were in 2014 , and the consequences no less wrenching .

This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
In early October, hundreds of migrants in Honduras set out in a “caravan” with plans to travel through Mexico to the United States.
The timing was similar to a caravan two years ago, which swelled to thousands of people, overwhelmed Guatemalan and Mexican border authorities and became the leading issue for President Donald Trump and Republicans going into the 2018 midterm election.
The latest caravan was stopped hundreds of miles short of the U.S. border, hardly making a blip in the news cycle. Shortly after entering Guatemala, police and migration authorities set up roadblocks and rounded up the group for deportation back to Honduras.
It was so routine that Trump, ill with COVID, didn’t even bother to bang out a celebratory tweet, much less talk about deploying the military to avert an invasion as he did in 2018.
The fate of the caravan is a symbol of a larger success. Over the past year and a half, Trump and his relentlessly focused aide, Stephen Miller, have largely achieved their goal of choking off the flow of unauthorized immigrants into the United States — especially families from Central America, many of whom come with the intention of requesting asylum. They have done so with a combination of policies that Tom Jawetz, a former Democratic aide to the House Judiciary Committee, describes as a “waterproof fabric” to repel migrants.
New U.S. regulations and legal precedents make it harder for someone to be granted asylum once they arrive. But few these days even get the chance to ask. As much as possible, the Trump administration has simply expelled asylum-seekers.
The apprehension numbers, which officials say Trump is obsessed with, tell the story. As the expulsion policies locked into place, arrests of families entering the U.S. fell from nearly 85,000 in May 2019 to less than 5,000 in February 2020.
Then the COVID-19 pandemic finished the job, both suppressing border crossings even further and giving the Trump administration an opportunity to use an obscure public health law to outright expel most border-crossers with no chance to make an asylum claim.
Critics, including Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, say the results have been achieved with a scale of callousness that is in contradiction with America’s fundamental values. Biden has pledged to undo the longest-standing of Trump’s expulsion policies: the Migrant Protection Protocols, or “Remain in Mexico” program, under which tens of thousands of migrants were sent to Mexico to wait, sometimes in sub-refugee-camp conditions, for court dates in the U.S.
“Donald Trump has slammed the door shut in the face of families fleeing persecution and violence,” Biden tweeted in January on the one-year anniversary of the program’s implementation. “On day one, I will eliminate President Trump’s decision to limit asylum and end the MPP program. #RestoreAsylumNOW.”
But MPP is only one of the policies that make up the “waterproof fabric” of deterrence through expulsion. Just how far Biden would go to unravel that fabric remains entirely unclear, even to campaign advisers who’ve helped develop policies that might do it.
Interviews with Democrats, advocates and policy experts in recent weeks have revealed that the Trump administration’s excesses have papered over, but not healed, an intra-Democratic rift on how to handle asylum-seekers from Central America. The disagreement, which first erupted into view when the administration of President Barack Obama faced the 2014 border crisis, is essentially an argument about using deterrence as a strategy: whether it is appropriate to discourage people from making an often-dangerous journey to the U.S. where they might not ultimately win legal relief by preventing or punishing those who have already come.
One Democratic camp sees immigration as a national security matter and deterrence as a necessary border control strategy. In this view, border policy should be a balance: The U.S. shouldn’t shut out victims of persecution, nor should it create “pull factors” that encourage too many people to come who may not ultimately qualify for full asylum.
The other camp, made up of those who see immigration as a humanitarian issue, believes it’s neither legally nor morally justifiable to punish people fleeing desperate circumstances to send a message to others.
The Biden campaign, like the Obama administration, has sought to de-emphasize the split by focusing on long-term solutions in Central America. But no one is certain what that will mean if Biden is sworn in, especially if rising migration creates another “border crisis.”
That’s a possibility during a second Trump term, too. The expulsion policies that have effectively kept people from seeking asylum have their own unintended consequences, leading people to seek new ways into the U.S. And as COVID-19-related travel restrictions lift, the economic crisis created by the pandemic may push ever more migrants northward. “When this pandemic ceases,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan told reporters in October, “we’re anticipating it will be worse” than 2019 — when Trump’s rage and tweeted-out threats ultimately cleared a path for the dispersal policies.
The United States may have reached the limits of deterrence. No one knows what comes next.
Policy as a Blunt Instrument
Until the early 2010s, unauthorized migration to the United States was dominated by single adults seeking jobs. Deterrence was an uncontroversial strategy. Border enforcement had been ramped up along with punishments for those apprehended, a strategy the government euphemistically termed “consequence delivery.” Once informally turned back, migrants were increasingly subjected to criminal charges and formally deported, making it harder for them to legally immigrate to the U.S. in the future.
After the Great Recession, the population of people coming to the U.S. without papers fundamentally changed. It included far more children traveling with or without their parents (or other family members); far more migrants from the Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador (referred to collectively as the “Northern Triangle”); and far more who were seeking humanitarian protection.
The shift is not easily explained. Both individually and collectively, the decision to migrate is driven by a mixture of need and opportunity.
Opportunity often comes from changes in smuggling operations, and the increase in families coming to the U.S. in late 2018 is generally attributed to the emergence in Mexico of long-haul, relatively cheap bus routes that would whisk travelers across the country in a couple of days.
Furthermore, the needs that drove people to emigrate from Central America in recent years don’t easily fit the distinction U.S. law draws between “economic migrants,” who aren’t allowed to come to the U.S. without papers, and asylees, who face persecution for their ethnicity or political views.
Starvation after repeated crop failures, gang vendettas, domestic violence — any of these might make fleeing to the U.S. the only viable option. None of these were categorically enshrined as “persecution” under U.S. law, although in some cases, under some circumstances, they did qualify.
The U.S. is committed, morally and by international treaty, not to turn away those facing persecution in their home countries. Policies that deter migration are a blunt instrument; it’s impossible to design one that discourages only would-be migrants who don’t qualify for asylum while welcoming those who do.
Would-be migrants themselves couldn’t know whether they’d ultimately qualify for asylum — the definition of “persecution” is legally complex and arcane. What they did know is what they’d heard from relatives, or former neighbors, who’d recently made the journey: that after a short while, they were released from detention and allowed to live in the United States while waiting for a court date years in the future.
The new pattern of migration created a new cycle of action and reaction that started under Trump’s predecessor, Obama.
The cycle began in spring 2014, when the number of unaccompanied Central American children arriving at the border began to overwhelm the U.S. government’s ability to receive them. U.S. law obligates border agents to quickly send children who have arrived in the U.S. without papers or parents to the Department of Health and Human Services, which was responsible for finding suitable sponsors for them (usually a relative) and caring for them in the meantime. As thousands of children started coming each month, the system bottlenecked, with children stuck at the border for days or weeks.
The administration set up temporary “holding facilities” — cagelike dormitories — to house children until they could be sent to HHS. The resulting news coverage of a “border crisis” quickly piqued Americans’ interest. Immigration, rarely a top issue, soared to the top of Gallup polls and caused alarm within the Obama administration.
The administration had only recently started to address criticism from the left of its immigration record, particularly its deportations of undocumented immigrants who’d been living in the U.S. It was weighing an expansion of “deferred action” programs (like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created in 2012) that would use executive power to temporarily protect unauthorized immigrants from deportation. The border crisis — which was seen as reinforcing a narrative of Democratic weakness — put the administration on the defensive again, causing it to wait until after the 2014 midterm elections to announce new enforcement policies.
Obama’s response to the crisis was twofold: a promise to address its “root causes” by working on economic development and security with Central American governments and a short-term effort to quickly send home migrants who had already arrived.
As Obama’s vice president, Biden became the point person for this “regional” approach, which involved a fair amount of tough talk. “Those who are pondering risking their lives to reach the United States should be aware of what awaits them,” he told reporters at a regional summit in Guatemala in June 2014. “It will not be open arms.”
The Obama administration framed deterrence as an effort to protect would-be migrants, particularly kids traveling on their own, from criminal smugglers. “Putting children in the hands of smugglers and these thugs and drug traffickers is a reckless and dangerous undertaking for any parent to do,” Biden said.
Internally, though, the argument was put in terms that would later be central in the Trump administration’s deliberations. Amy Pope, a National Security Council adviser at the time who would later become deputy national security adviser, laid it out in a 2018 interview with PBS’ “Frontline”: “The truth is, you can absorb 70,000 kids if it ends at 70,000 kids. The question is: Is that the end of it? The population of Central America is in the millions. … We didn’t think it was feasible, or consistent with what the American public would tolerate, to just say, ‘OK, you get here, you’re in.’”
This wasn’t the consensus view within the administration — or the Democratic Party. After pushback from congressional Democrats, the Obama White House dropped its request for Congress to change the law to allow Central American children seeking asylum to be sent back without court hearings. (The Trump administration has repeatedly demanded Congress make the very same changes.)
The fate of families traveling with children became another point of disagreement within the administration. In that case, the security-minded advocates won out. The Obama administration quickly built family detention centers in New Mexico and Texas, where families were often forced to appear before a judge without access to counsel or an opportunity to prepare their cases. (Biden called on lawyers to assist migrant families, but his pitch to Congress for emergency funds included no money for legal services.)
Arguably, the family detention policy was undone because the administration was too honest. By acknowledging deterrence as its goal, it admitted it was punishing asylum-seekers to send a message. A federal judge explicitly chided the Department of Homeland Security, saying that “deterring future migration” wasn’t an acceptable reason to detain a family already seeking asylum. In spring 2015, a federal judge, Dolly Gee, modified a long-standing court settlement that limits how long children can be held in immigration detention, so that it applied to children held with their parents as well as those traveling alone.
The crackdown cycle continued.
Because overall border apprehensions are a fraction of their pre-2008 levels, relatively small increases in numbers result in big swings in percentages. And those newcomers, though fewer, strained U.S. border capacity because protections built into the law prevented children, families and asylum-seekers from simply being deported.
Those relative increases in apprehensions stirred panic on the U.S. side. The panic would spur new efforts to detain and deport asylum-seekers when and after they arrived in the U.S. The hope was to deter future migrants by changing what they heard, through word of mouth, from those who’d already come. Numbers would drop for a couple of months, then slowly climb again — until U.S. officials imposed another crackdown.
After the first crackdown ebbed, in late 2015, panic returned. The Obama administration sought to deter asylum-seekers by rounding up those who’d previously been ordered deported but hadn’t left, sweeping through immigrant neighborhoods in the first weekend of 2016. The courts again stepped in, preventing most deportations by ruling that asylum-seekers hadn’t been given a fair chance to make their cases. Trump’s election was a deterrent all its own, bringing in its first months the quietest period the U.S.-Mexico border has ever seen. It didn’t last.
The Making of the “Waterproof Fabric”
The Trump administration adopted a simple solution to the tension between deterrence and humanitarianism: It maximized deterrence. (In Trump’s rhetoric, this became a fixation on “toughness” at the border.) Where U.S. law required some commitment to humanitarianism — most notably, by guaranteeing that anyone who arrived in the U.S. had the ability to request asylum and be screened for potential persecution — the administration looked for, and found, places where the law didn’t apply.
Trump’s public rhetoric took a while to adjust to the new border reality, after a campaign in which he’d blamed Mexico for “sending” murderers and rapists. Administration hardliners understood early on that most of those coming were now children, families and other asylum-seekers. They were acutely aware of the extra protections built in for those groups in U.S. law, and the mismatch between the needs of children and families and a border infrastructure built to hold and deport single adults. And as border arrest numbers climbed again in late 2017 and early 2018, the White House, led by Miller, moved into crisis footing.
In spring 2018, as Congress considered legislation to legalize unauthorized immigrants protected from deportation by the DACA program, which Trump had sought to end, a “senior administration official” briefed the press about a steep rise in “inadmissibles” at the border and the legal gaps that allowed them to stay. In particular, the administration aimed its fire at the modified court agreement that required families to get released from detention after a few weeks — creating the possibility that they could “abscond” into the U.S. and skip their court hearings.
The administration has consistently exaggerated how often families actually disappeared; the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, examining a separate immigration court docket created under Trump for families making asylum claims, found that over 85% of families appeared at their first court hearing after release. (Furthermore, there’s evidence that when families do miss court dates, it’s because they don’t know about them.) But the objections of Trump advisers like Miller to what they called “catch and release” were fundamental: It was an intolerable risk that the U.S. had no obligation to take on.
“These loopholes are a grave threat to America’s sovereignty,” the official said, “and a threat to, really, the foundations of American society itself.”
There were advantages to turning away people seeking asylum before they could cross the border. People who do not formally enter the U.S. don’t count in the apprehension stats, which Trump wanted to keep low.
By simply refusing to allow asylum-seekers to set foot on U.S. soil, the administration could avoid the clear obligation in immigration law that requires governments to weigh asylum claims from anyone who enters the country. (The Trump administration attempted to undo this law via regulation in fall 2018, but it was quickly stopped in court.)
If the administration couldn’t prevent their initial entry, it could at least get them quickly out of the U.S. and beyond the reach of American courts. Where the asylum-seekers ended up, and in what conditions, was less important than where they weren’t: in American communities.
The administration needed for other countries to cooperate to stop migrants en route or to agree to take them off the U.S.’ hands.
It wasn’t a new idea. Getting Mexico to interdict migrants en route to the U.S. had been part of the 2014 crackdown. In mid-2014, according to a ProPublica analysis of U.S. and Mexican government data, the U.S. was apprehending six people at its southern border for every one apprehended in Mexico; by the end of that year, Mexico had reached near-parity. But when the diplomatic pressure eased, Mexico’s enforcement slackened.
The Trump administration’s strategy was simply never to let up on pressure — to treat migration as the central, indeed the only issue that mattered in the U.S. relationship with Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Plan A was to sign a formal deal, known as a “safe third country” agreement, with Mexico, forcing migrants to seek asylum in whichever country they arrived in first. The Mexican government, whose own refugee and asylum agency was already understaffed for the soaring number of applications, at first rejected the agreement.
But the election of populist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador to Mexico’s presidency, after he campaigned on a promise to stand up to Trump, changed Mexico’s position just as the number of families coming to the U.S. reached unprecedented levels.
Within days of Lopez Obrador’s inauguration, the U.S. announced that it would send some asylum-seekers back to Mexico to await hearings in U.S. courts, using an obscure legal provision. Officially, it was a unilateral decision, allowing Lopez Obrador to say that he hadn’t buckled to U.S. demands. But Mexico announced the same morning that it would accept people expelled by the U.S. with asylum claims.
While both countries signed an agreement outlining their respective responsibilities — the U.S. would give people speedy trials and due process; Mexico would guarantee their safety — it soon became clear that neither side was accountable for complying with what it had promised.
Initially, the program was limited to certain areas of the border that Mexico considered safe enough for migrants to stay. But apprehensions kept rising. Trump’s patience ran out.
In May 2019, Trump threatened to impose massive tariffs if Mexico didn’t do more to fix immigration. The threat, issued via tweet, was fleshed out by other administration officials: They demanded more migrant interdiction on Mexico’s southern border, more crackdowns on migrant smugglers and a renewed demand for a formal “safe third country” agreement. In the end, the two countries agreed on a border-wide expansion of the arrangement they already had: non-Mexicans would be sent to wait indefinitely in Mexico, even to dangerous border regions like the Rio Grande Valley, for asylum hearings in the U.S.
Mexico moved quickly to show it was doing what Trump wanted. Its newly constituted National Guard was deployed to its southern and northern borders, and migrant interdictions climbed at Mexico’s southern border while U.S. immigration officials reported a drop in arrival numbers.
The U.S. provided money to the International Organization for Migration for buses to ferry migrants home if they abandoned their asylum claims. It offered no such support for housing or protecting migrants seeking asylum in the U.S, or for expanding Mexico’s capacity to process applications for those who viewed staying there as a possible alternative. In theory, the Mexican government had guaranteed migrants services and safety, but Trump administration officials did nothing to enforce that pledge.
But by the time the governments reconvened in September, Trump was so pleased with Mexico’s performance that he was bragging about it in his rallies. Mexico had gotten to Trump the most effective way: with “the numbers.”
The Mexican government, in the September meeting, showed Trump a chart with a stark downward trend since May. It reflected, in part, the very real decline over the summer and fall — not the 50% drop that had been promised, but a stark decline nonetheless.
But the Mexican government had massaged the numbers: It subtracted out the asylum-seekers who’d made it to the U.S. but were being forced to wait in Mexico under the MPP program. The chart essentially reflected only the migrants who were still the U.S.’ responsibility.
The decline in those numbers was enough to keep Trump satisfied. It undercut those in his administration still trying to pressure Mexico to do more. And it blunted internal concerns within DHS that the MPP program was being implemented carelessly, and that migrants waiting in Mexico were falling through the cracks.
A similar playbook — private negotiations interspersed with tariff threats — persuaded outgoing Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales to agree in August 2019 to allow the U.S. to ship asylum-seekers of other nationalities to Guatemala, on the theory that they could apply for asylum in that country instead of in the U.S. Similar deals with Honduras and El Salvador were inked that fall.
Only Guatemala’s agreement was implemented before the coronavirus pandemic hit, with 939 people being sent back (only 20 of whom actually applied for asylum). The Trump administration expects to start up the others after the pandemic. And Miller hopes to expand the arrangement to countries on other continents that feed U.S. immigration.
But the coronavirus has given the U.S. its most robust tool yet for repelling asylum-seekers. An order signed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March (at White House insistence and over the vehement objections of CDC career officials) prohibited the entry of unauthorized immigrants from Mexico in the name of public health. The order gave border agents the authority to simply expel them. In the months since, 200,000 migrants have been expelled, either to Mexico or to their home countries. None have been given the opportunity to request asylum or explain why they believed they would be persecuted if they returned to their homelands.
The combination of international agreements, health concerns and new tactics has effectively shut the border. So far, none of the elements in the administration’s new “waterproof fabric” have been overturned in court or become the subject of public uproar, as family separation did in 2018.
A Fragile Equilibrium — and an Uneasy Future
The Biden campaign hasn’t made specific commitments about which Trump policies it would and wouldn’t roll back. Some changes (such as those finalized in regulation) will take years to undo; some (such as fully reinstating the DACA program, currently in limbo after Trump’s first attempt to end it was struck down by the Supreme Court) could be accomplished through executive order on Day 1.
Border policies pose a more complicated question. Biden promised to roll back the “wait in Mexico” program for asylum applicants within his first 100 days in office. However, he has made no such promise about the CDC order, which also forces asylum-seekers to Mexico and doesn’t promise them U.S. court dates.
The domestic changes to asylum wrought by the Trump administration could be unraveled over time by a sufficiently motivated DHS and Justice Department, though it could not happen instantly. Even something as simple as reversing Trump’s changes to asylum officer training would take months.
Whether change will be a top priority of Biden appointees would depend on whether the humanitarian camp or the deterrence camp prevails in the administration.
Biden’s pre-transition planners appear to be keeping options open, drafting plans to reverse Trump policies but not committing to using them.
The consensus is that if migration rises again, the deterrence proponents would have the upper hand and would leave more of Trump’s framework in place.
And the larger forces in the region — climate change, economic instability, the spread of the pandemic — makes that look increasingly likely.
Border apprehensions have already increased substantially since March, though they’re still quite low in historical context. Agents made over 54,000 apprehensions in September, which is higher than any September since 2006, but far below Septembers of the first half of the 2000s, when apprehensions averaged 80,000.
Those numbers are somewhat inflated by a rise in what the government calls “recidivism” — migrants caught at the border, expelled, then caught as they try again. Before the pandemic, only 7% of migrants tried to reenter after getting caught; now, over a third do.
Recidivism rates were high in the mid-2000s, too, which makes sense, since the CDC expulsion policy essentially replicates the old border policy of informal returns rather than formal deportations. As Cristobal Ramon of the Bipartisan Policy Center put it, “When you remove the consequences” of getting caught, deportation proceedings, you remove the disincentive.
What particularly worries analysts is the possibility that the 2000s will resurface in another way: large-scale emigration from Mexico. For many years, Mexico was the largest of the world’s sending countries, but the movement of manufacturing jobs encouraged by the NAFTA treaty and the rise of a middle class lessened the incentives to come north for work. In recent years, Mexico’s worsening security situation and softening economy made migration more appealing. This year, Mexico has been hit harder by the pandemic than almost any other country in the hemisphere, prompting more people to consider the U.S. as an option.
The reduction in Central American family migration might have been temporary, too. There’s some evidence that smuggling networks deliberately stopped operating when COVID-19 became a crisis in the spring, which would have suppressed the number of travelers. They’re now restarting them. Restrictions on domestic travel due to the virus are temporary, but the long-term effects of the economic crisis it’s caused will last much longer; people with a greater need to emigrate than before the pandemic will find themselves with the opportunity.
This is also likely to happen if Trump wins a second term. A threat assessment by DHS analysts issued in October warns that “the number of apprehensions at the border will significantly climb post-pandemic,” with the potential for a return to “unprecedented numbers of families and children.”
At the same time, however, senior Trump administration officials are preemptively blaming the promise of relaxed policies under a Democrat for any surge of migrants at the border.
A second Trump administration would likely respond to a migration rise by renewing pressure on other countries to interdict migrants, particularly Mexico. A Biden administration might well do something similar, returning to the 2014 model put in place by Obama.
Whether they lean toward national security or humanitarian concerns, those closest to Biden on immigration agree on the need for a regional solution: for long-term development in Central America and a commitment to giving asylum-seekers a fair chance to state their case. Doing so, they argue, can be compatible with limiting undocumented migration in the short run by maintaining the enforcement strategies deployed in the Obama years.
One vocal champion of Biden’s 2014 approach was Kevin McAleenan — who, as acting homeland security secretary under Trump, championed the Guatemalan asylum agreement. In 2018, McAleenan described enforcement as a pillar of Biden’s earlier initiative: “We’ve talked to the leaders, and they don’t want to lose their youth and energy to this migration flow and don’t want to put their children in the hands of smugglers.”
That thinking could tempt a Biden administration to leave Trump’s agreements in place. How the Mexican and Central American governments will respond isn’t clear. Against expectations, the Trump-Lopez Obrador relationship is “going pretty well,” Roberto Suro, an immigration specialist who now teaches journalism at the University of Southern California, noted. “‘What is (Biden) going to give AMLO that Trump didn’t?’ is one way of looking at it.”
An advocate who’s conferred with Biden’s team put it this way: “Long term, putting in place a refugee program for the Western Hemisphere has to be the goal. And I believe that is where they’re going, which is great.”
“Short term,” the advocate continued, “I’m not going to like the things they’re doing.”
The Limits of Deterrence
Critics often describe the Trump administration’s approach to immigration with a line coined by The Atlantic’s Adam Serwer: “The cruelty is the point.”
That’s the logic of deterrence: that the harm visited upon people serving as an example is justified if it prevents an even worse harm.
The Obama administration viewed that harm as the journey to the U.S. and the encouragement of further migration. The Trump administration views it as a danger to American sovereignty, and to public safety, if asylum-seekers are allowed to come and stay in the U.S. The former contended with internal advocates for a more humanitarian approach; the latter, for all intents and purposes, did not.
To say that deterrence worked is to say that it achieved its goal. That’s separate from the question of whether the harms inflicted were worth it.
The Trump administration will likely be remembered for the suffering it inflicted in spring 2018 when it adopted a “zero tolerance” policy that led to the separation of thousands of families who’d crossed into the U.S. In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, reports that 545 children still not reunited with parents led to renewed attention to the policy, and to Trump being asked to account for it during the final debate.
But the successes of the “waterproof fabric” strategy mean that its harms aren’t as readily visible. There’s the quiet despair of the hundreds of asylum-seekers remaining in the tent camp in Matamoros, who have no idea when they’ll have their asylum claims heard in the U.S. There are migrants in Tijuana who have chosen to make their crossing through more remote and dangerous routes. “Prevention through deterrence is working,” Paulina Olvera Canez, the director of a migrant shelter in Tijuana, said this fall, “because they’re abandoning their cases in Tijuana, but they’re crossing through the Sonoran Desert.”
The longest-standing effort to document deaths along the U.S.-Mexico border, based around Nogales, Arizona, has already catalogued more in the first nine months of 2020 than it has for any full year since 2013. In the months since the CDC order was issued, for every 1,000 migrants apprehended in the Yuma, Arizona, sector, five have died in the Nogales desert. During fiscal year 2020, CBP agents discovered over 300 cases, up nearly a third from 2019, in which migrants were being smuggled in tractor-trailers — a method that can lead to mass suffocation.
With all of this, the Trump administration has been reluctant to declare victory at the border. Officials acknowledge that 2020 has provided the best possible circumstances for deterrence, and even this year’s combination of the CDC order, unemployment in the U.S. and few prospects for asylum have failed to choke off the flow of migrants.
What an alternate path would be, and whether it could be any more successful, is no clearer than it was six years ago. The choices remain the same as they were in 2014, and the consequences no less wrenching.


talkingpointsmemo--2020-10-28--White House Walks Back Declaration Of COVID Victory: ‘That Was Poorly Worded’

White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah said on Wednesday that the Science and Technology Policy Office had chosen its words poorly when it suggested in a news release on Tuesday that among President Donald Trump ’ s top achievements during his first term was “ ending the COVID-19 pandemic.
” When asked during a Fox News interview on Wednesday whether the Trump administration believed the baffling claim that the virus has been defeated , Farah replied : “ No absolutely not.
” Yet the communications official declined to acknowledge outright that the statement was false .
“ I think that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the press release , which announced in very plain language the issuing of a document touting victory over the coronavirus pandemic as one of Trump ’ s biggest accomplishments .
“ The intent was to say it is our goal to end the virus , ” Farah added , in a complete reframing of the wildly false statement .
While she acknowledged to Fox News ’ Sandra Smith on Wednesday that cases “ are still rising ” and urged the American public to “ remain vigilant , ” Farah also doubled down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump that the nation is “ rounding the corner ” on COVID-19 — a claim that she repeated throughout the interview in an apparent contradiction of earlier statements on rising cases .
The “ rounding the corner ” assertion , which has become a new Trump favorite at rallies , is a far cry from reality as the nation broke records for the number of new infections reported in a single day on Thursday — 77,000 — and then topped that record for a second day in a row on Friday with a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Human Services Assistant Secretary Adm. Brett Giroir seemed to contradict the White House narrative of any turns being rounded on the unchecked pandemic , suggesting during a “ Today ” Show interview on Wednesday morning that “ cases are actually going up , and we know that too because hospitalizations are going up.
” “ Those are real , ” Giroir said .
“ And we do know deaths are increasing , unfortunately .
”

White House Communications Director Alyssa Farah said on Wednesday that the Science and Technology Policy Office had chosen its words poorly when it suggested in a news release on Tuesday that among President Donald Trump’s top achievements during his first term was “ending the COVID-19 pandemic.”
When asked during a Fox News interview on Wednesday whether the Trump administration believed the baffling claim that the virus has been defeated, Farah replied: “No absolutely not.”
WH Communications Director Alyssa Farah says news release lauding the Trump administration for 'ending the COVID-19 pandemic' was "poorly worded." pic.twitter.com/qgd3j54wyc — TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) October 28, 2020
Yet the communications official declined to acknowledge outright that the statement was false.
“I think that was poorly worded,” Farah said of the press release, which announced in very plain language the issuing of a document touting victory over the coronavirus pandemic as one of Trump’s biggest accomplishments.
“The intent was to say it is our goal to end the virus,” Farah added, in a complete reframing of the wildly false statement.
While she acknowledged to Fox News’ Sandra Smith on Wednesday that cases “are still rising” and urged the American public to “remain vigilant,” Farah also doubled down on a dangerously misleading assessment by President Trump that the nation is “rounding the corner” on COVID-19 — a claim that she repeated throughout the interview in an apparent contradiction of earlier statements on rising cases.
The “rounding the corner” assertion, which has become a new Trump favorite at rallies, is a far cry from reality as the nation broke records for the number of new infections reported in a single day on Thursday — 77,000 — and then topped that record for a second day in a row on Friday with a record-shattering roughly 83,000 new cases.
Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary Adm. Brett Giroir seemed to contradict the White House narrative of any turns being rounded on the unchecked pandemic, suggesting during a “Today” Show interview on Wednesday morning that “cases are actually going up, and we know that too because hospitalizations are going up.”
“Those are real,” Giroir said. “And we do know deaths are increasing, unfortunately.”


talkingpointsmemo--2020-10-28--Interior Dept Defends Trump-Boosting Propaganda Vid By Boasting About Secretary

The Interior Department on Wednesday defended a campaign-style video posted to its official social media channels , following backlash that ensued over a typically apolitical government agency touting President Trump ’ s “ historic feats for conservation.
” Critics accused the department of violating the Hatch Act , which prohibits executive government officials from participating in political activity while on duty , but exempts the President and the vice president .
On Tuesday , Interior Secretary David Bernhardt posted a video to his official Twitter account featuring majestic images of national parks , birds , mountains and plains over text @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which is set to an upbeat tune , abruptly throws in clips of the President and concludes with Trump remarking last month that his administration is “ recommitting ourselves to preserving the awesome majesty of God ’ s great creation.
” The Interior Department ’ s official Instagram account posted the same video later Tuesday , which appears out of sync with the aesthetic of its feed usually featuring scenes of the nation ’ s great outdoors .
The next day , the Interior denied any wrongdoing with the social media posts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Wednesday , the Interior Department did not directly address the backlash over the pro-Trump social media posts , but focused on defending Bernhardt instead .
The Interior Department said that Bernhardt “ transformed ” the Departmental Ethics Office that is led by “ dedicated career public servants.
” The department cited Bernhardt beefing up its workforce and “ dedicating more resources to the ethics office to ensure Interior has an environment of ethical compliance.
” The Interior Department added that the Office of Government Ethics recently recognized the department ’ s ethics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a move the Interior touted as “ an incredibly rare achievement for cabinet level programs.
” In its statement , the Interior thanked Bernhardt ’ s “ unprecedented actions and the hard work of our career ethics attorneys ” before denying that the video the department shared boosting Trump ’ s “ historic feats for conservation ” isn ’ t a violation of the Hatch Act .
“ The Secretary ’ s video message and the Secretary ’ s tweet were reviewed by the Departmental Ethics Office , and it did not violate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” the Interior Department ’ s statement said .
The Interior ’ s defense of its questionable pro-Trump posts come on the heels of social media users swiftly accusing the department of committing a violation of the Hatch Act .
Among those critics was Tim Fullerton , who served as the director of digital strategy for the Interior Department during the Obama administration .
He decried the video as “ propaganda ” and said he would ’ ve been fired if he posted similar content when he ran the Interior ’ s digital @ @ @ @ @ @ @ press secretary fired back at Fullerton in a tweet by insisting that sharing the Trump-friendly video on social media got approval from “ career ethics attorneys.
” The press secretary then attacked both Fullerton and the Obama administration .

The Interior Department on Wednesday defended a campaign-style video posted to its official social media channels, following backlash that ensued over a typically apolitical government agency touting President Trump’s “historic feats for conservation.”
Critics accused the department of violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits executive government officials from participating in political activity while on duty, but exempts the President and the vice president.
On Tuesday, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt posted a video to his official Twitter account featuring majestic images of national parks, birds, mountains and plains over text praising the Trump administration. The video, which is set to an upbeat tune, abruptly throws in clips of the President and concludes with Trump remarking last month that his administration is “recommitting ourselves to preserving the awesome majesty of God’s great creation.”
The Interior Department’s official Instagram account posted the same video later Tuesday, which appears out of sync with the aesthetic of its feed usually featuring scenes of the nation’s great outdoors.
The next day, the Interior denied any wrongdoing with the social media posts.
In a statement shared with TPM on Wednesday, the Interior Department did not directly address the backlash over the pro-Trump social media posts, but focused on defending Bernhardt instead.
The Interior Department said that Bernhardt “transformed” the Departmental Ethics Office that is led by “dedicated career public servants.” The department cited Bernhardt beefing up its workforce and “dedicating more resources to the ethics office to ensure Interior has an environment of ethical compliance.”
The Interior Department added that the Office of Government Ethics recently recognized the department’s ethics program as “fully compliant” — a move the Interior touted as “an incredibly rare achievement for cabinet level programs.”
In its statement, the Interior thanked Bernhardt’s “unprecedented actions and the hard work of our career ethics attorneys” before denying that the video the department shared boosting Trump’s “historic feats for conservation” isn’t a violation of the Hatch Act.
“The Secretary’s video message and the Secretary’s tweet were reviewed by the Departmental Ethics Office, and it did not violate the prohibitions of the Hatch Act,” the Interior Department’s statement said.
The Interior’s defense of its questionable pro-Trump posts come on the heels of social media users swiftly accusing the department of committing a violation of the Hatch Act.
Among those critics was Tim Fullerton, who served as the director of digital strategy for the Interior Department during the Obama administration. He decried the video as “propaganda” and said he would’ve been fired if he posted similar content when he ran the Interior’s digital team in 2012.
The current Interior press secretary fired back at Fullerton in a tweet by insisting that sharing the Trump-friendly video on social media got approval from “career ethics attorneys.” The press secretary then attacked both Fullerton and the Obama administration.


talkingpointsmemo--2020-10-28--Lev Parnas Associate Looks Prepared To Change His Plea In Straw Donor Case

NEW YORK ( AP ) — A change-of-plea hearing is set for Thursday for a man charged with conspiring with associates of Rudy Giuliani , one of President Donald Trump ’ s lawyers , to make illegal campaign contributions .
The hearing for David Correia , scheduled to occur by video , was announced in a filing Wednesday in Manhattan federal court .
If it occurs as planned , Correia would become the first conviction among four men charged last year with using straw donors to make illegal contributions to politicians they thought could aid their political and business interests @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his lawyers Wednesday .
A spokesperson for prosecutors declined to comment .
In September , an updated indictment charged Correia and co-defendant Lev Parnas with defrauding investors in a business called Fraud Guarantee .
A superseding indictment also charged him with additional campaign finance violations .
Parnas and Correia also hired Giuliani , a Republican former New York City mayor , to consult with Fraud Guarantee .
Giuliani has said he was promised $ 500,000 to work with the company .
The indictment said Correia misled investors about the strength of the company @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases used the invested money for personal expenses .
Two other men who have pleaded not guilty in the case , Parnas and Igor Fruman , worked with Giuliani to try to get Ukrainian officials to investigate the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden while Parnas and Fruman allegedly made sizable illegal campaign contributions to U.S. candidates .
Giuliani has said he knew nothing about the donations .
The Ukrainian quest was a focus of Trump ’ s impeachment proceedings earlier this year .
The president ’ s efforts to press Ukraine @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the House to impeach Trump , though he was acquitted by the Senate .
Correia is an American-born businessman who owns a home with his wife in West Palm Beach , Florida .
Last month , one of his lawyers asked to leave the case and said Correia hadn ’ t paid him .

NEW YORK (AP) — A change-of-plea hearing is set for Thursday for a man charged with conspiring with associates of Rudy Giuliani, one of President Donald Trump’s lawyers, to make illegal campaign contributions.
The hearing for David Correia, scheduled to occur by video, was announced in a filing Wednesday in Manhattan federal court.
If it occurs as planned, Correia would become the first conviction among four men charged last year with using straw donors to make illegal contributions to politicians they thought could aid their political and business interests.
Messages for comment were left with his lawyers Wednesday. A spokesperson for prosecutors declined to comment.
In September, an updated indictment charged Correia and co-defendant Lev Parnas with defrauding investors in a business called Fraud Guarantee. A superseding indictment also charged him with additional campaign finance violations.
Parnas and Correia also hired Giuliani, a Republican former New York City mayor, to consult with Fraud Guarantee. Giuliani has said he was promised $500,000 to work with the company.
The indictment said Correia misled investors about the strength of the company and a business model and in some cases used the invested money for personal expenses.
Two other men who have pleaded not guilty in the case, Parnas and Igor Fruman, worked with Giuliani to try to get Ukrainian officials to investigate the son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden while Parnas and Fruman allegedly made sizable illegal campaign contributions to U.S. candidates. Giuliani has said he knew nothing about the donations.
The Ukrainian quest was a focus of Trump’s impeachment proceedings earlier this year. The president’s efforts to press Ukraine for an investigation of the Bidens led the House to impeach Trump, though he was acquitted by the Senate.
Correia is an American-born businessman who owns a home with his wife in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Last month, one of his lawyers asked to leave the case and said Correia hadn’t paid him.


talkingpointsmemo--2020-10-29--Trump Rushes McSally At AZ Rally: ‘They Don’t Want To Hear This, Martha’

President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to play drill sergeant when he mockingly rushed Sen. Martha McSally onto the rally stage at an event in Arizona where the Republican lawmaker is fighting a bitter battle for her imperiled seat .
After going through the motions of saying she was “ respected by everybody ” and “ great , ” Trump rushed a breathless McSally to the stage for truncated remarks .
“ Martha , come up just fast .
Fast .
Fast .
Come on .
Quick .
You got one minute !
One minute , Martha !
They don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Martha .
Come on , Martha .
Let ’ s go .
Quick , quick , quick , quick .
Come on .
Let ’ s go , ” Trump said .
McSally spoke for a little over a minute , saying she was “ proud ” to work with President Trump — after dodging a question about whether or not she was proud of supporting him during a debate against Democratic challenger Mark Kelly earlier this month .
“ I ’ m proud to be fighting for Arizona every single day , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ When pressed on the issue after the moderator suggested that it sounded like “ she is proud of her support for President Trump , ” McSally again demurred , saying , “ I ’ m proud to be fighting for Arizonans here.
” In a flip-flopping move , the embattled lawmaker penned an op-ed reasserting her support for the President Trump ’ s reelection which was published by Fox News hours before she appeared alongside Trump at the rally in her state on Wednesday .
Yet polling shows a deepening distaste for Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wavering Trump pride appears to reflect a growing fear that many conservative-minded voters may not support a Senate candidate who backs Trump this year .
Three other GOP lawmakers were also passed the mic at the Goodyear rally — Sens .
Rand Paul ( KY ) , Mike Lee ( UT ) , and Rep. Kevin McCarthy ( CA ) .
Among them , only McCarthy is running for re-election in November , but all three of the lawmakers were permitted more time to speak than McSally , NBC News noted .
Yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time — polling in Arizona has repeatedly shown McSally trailing her Democratic opponent .
During an earlier trip to Arizona last week , Trump told reporters that he and McSally were “ very separated , but we support each other fully .
”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday appeared to play drill sergeant when he mockingly rushed Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) onto the rally stage at an event in Arizona where the Republican lawmaker is fighting a bitter battle for her imperiled seat.
After going through the motions of saying she was “respected by everybody” and “great,” Trump rushed a breathless McSally to the stage in Goodyear, Arizona for truncated remarks.
“Martha, come up just fast. Fast. Fast. Come on. Quick. You got one minute! One minute, Martha! They don’t want to hear this, Martha. Come on, Martha. Let’s go. Quick, quick, quick, quick. Come on. Let’s go,” Trump said.
McSally spoke for a little over a minute, saying she was “proud” to work with President Trump — after dodging a question about whether or not she was proud of supporting him during a debate against Democratic challenger Mark Kelly earlier this month.
“I’m proud to be fighting for Arizona every single day,” she said at the time.
When pressed on the issue after the moderator suggested that it sounded like “she is proud of her support for President Trump,” McSally again demurred, saying,“I’m proud to be fighting for Arizonans here.”
In a flip-flopping move, the embattled lawmaker penned an op-ed reasserting her support for the President Trump’s reelection which was published by Fox News hours before she appeared alongside Trump at the rally in her state on Wednesday.
Yet polling shows a deepening distaste for Trump in Arizona and McSally’s apparent wavering Trump pride appears to reflect a growing fear that many conservative-minded voters may not support a Senate candidate who backs Trump this year.
Three other GOP lawmakers were also passed the mic at the Goodyear rally — Sens. Rand Paul (KY), Mike Lee (UT), and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (CA). Among them, only McCarthy is running for re-election in November, but all three of the lawmakers were permitted more time to speak than McSally, NBC News noted.
Yet it would seem she needs the air time — polling in Arizona has repeatedly shown McSally trailing her Democratic opponent.
During an earlier trip to Arizona last week, Trump told reporters that he and McSally were “very separated, but we support each other fully.”


talkingpointsmemo--2020-10-29--Fox Hosts Gripe About SCOTUS Allowing NC And PA To Extend Ballot Deadlines: ‘Are You Kidding?’

“ Fox and Friends ” hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy seemed to be feeling sour on Thursday morning over @ @ @ @ @ latest rulings that allowed North Carolina and Pennsylvania to extend their deadlines for voters to @ @ @ @ @ What I find discouraging is that the Supreme Court is letting North Carolina and Pennsylvania @ @ @ @ @ they ’ re counting ballots , ” Kilmeade complained .
“ Are you kidding ?
@ @ @ @ @ there ’ s a siren on .
If you have a ballot , mail it @ @ @ @ @ .
“ What ’ s taking so long ?
Why do you need extra days @ @ @ @ @ , ” Doocy replied .
“ And what we ’ ve seen over the last @ @ @ @ @ long lines , etc .
is just the fact that every state has different rules @ @ @ @ @ get closer five days out , everybody ’ s got a different deadline and it @ @ @ @

“Fox and Friends” hosts Brian Kilmeade and Steve Doocy seemed to be feeling sour on Thursday morning over the Supreme Court’s latest rulings that allowed North Carolina and Pennsylvania to extend their deadlines for voters to return absentee ballots.
“What I find discouraging is that the Supreme Court is letting North Carolina and Pennsylvania extend the time in which they’re counting ballots,” Kilmeade complained. “Are you kidding?”
“Hey guys, there’s a siren on. If you have a ballot, mail it in,” he continued. “What’s taking so long? Why do you need extra days?”
“Great question,” Doocy replied. “And what we’ve seen over the last week or two with these long lines, etc. is just the fact that every state has different rules. And now as we get closer five days out, everybody’s got a different deadline and it is troubling.”
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court dealt blows to GOP efforts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania to curb the timeline by when mail-in ballots would be accepted. However, the rulings weren’t quite as black and white as Kilmeade and Doocy made them out to be.
The court majority denied the North Carolina GOP’s request that it prevent the State Board of Elections from extending the deadline from three days after Election Day to nine.
It also rejected the Pennsylvania GOP’s request for the court to intervene now in a battle over the state’s three-day extension to its Election Day deadline, allowing the extension to stand for now. However, a statement from three of conservative justices filed with the order suggested that at least some members of the court would be willing to toss the late-arriving ballots if they were challenged again after Election Day.
Watch Kilmeade and Doocy below:


talkingpointsmemo--2020-10-30--Court Order Separating Late-Arriving Ballots Signals Revival Of Tighter MN Deadline

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit signaled its willingness to revive Minnesota ’ s Election Day deadline for the receipt of mail-in ballots , undoing a seven-day extension that the state agreed to as part of a consent degree in a separate state court case .
The appeals court strongly implied that it would ultimately remove from the final presidential count any late-arriving ballots , as it ordered election officials to separate ballots out that arrived in the period previously covered by the consent decree .
In disrupting the consent degree , the appeals court adopted an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court — that only legislatures can make changes to election rules .
Remarkably , the appeals court appears ready to reverse the extension on those grounds even though Minnesota ’ s Democratic legislature was not even seeking to undo the consent agreement .
The agreement instead was challenged by two presidential electors , a GOP activist and a Republican state lawmaker .
The district court had concluded that the two challengers did not meet the procedural requirements warranting a federal court ’ s intervention .
The appeals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballot deadlines have rocked the final days leading into the Nov. 3 election .
The U.S. Supreme Court has reinstated stricter deadlines in some of the disputes that have come before it , while leaving in place extensions arising from other cases , depending on the circumstances .
While not every justice has explained his or her rationale for each of these votes , it appears that the three most conservative justices , Justices Neil Gorsuch , Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have taken the most hardcore view against changes made to election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the legislature .
Justice Brett Kavanaugh has also mostly adopted that approach , but has stopped short of aligning himself with the court ’ s far-right wing in certain cases .
Chief Justice John Roberts meanwhile has been willing to reverse ballot deadlines ordered by federal courts , but has voted to leave in place changes to election rules that have been agreed to by state election officials or that have been put in place by state courts .
It is unclear whether the 8th Circuit ’ s decision will be kicked up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ panel ’ s lone Democratic appointee dissented from the order .
She questioned the feasibility of the segregation order , while arguing the voters who put their ballots in the mail when the extension was still in place were now at risk of disenfranchisement .

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit signaled its willingness to revive Minnesota’s Election Day deadline for the receipt of mail-in ballots, undoing a seven-day extension that the state agreed to as part of a consent degree in a separate state court case.
The appeals court strongly implied that it would ultimately remove from the final presidential count any late-arriving ballots, as it ordered election officials to separate ballots out that arrived in the period previously covered by the consent decree.
In disrupting the consent degree, the appeals court adopted an extreme claim — not yet endorsed by the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court — that only legislatures can make changes to election rules.
Remarkably, the appeals court appears ready to reverse the extension on those grounds even though Minnesota’s Democratic legislature was not even seeking to undo the consent agreement.
The agreement instead was challenged by two presidential electors, a GOP activist and a Republican state lawmaker. The district court had concluded that the two challengers did not meet the procedural requirements warranting a federal court’s intervention. The appeals court disagreed.
Court fights over mail ballot deadlines have rocked the final days leading into the Nov. 3 election. The U.S. Supreme Court has reinstated stricter deadlines in some of the disputes that have come before it, while leaving in place extensions arising from other cases, depending on the circumstances.
While not every justice has explained his or her rationale for each of these votes, it appears that the three most conservative justices, Justices Neil Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas have taken the most hardcore view against changes made to election rules that were not explicitly approved by the legislature. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has also mostly adopted that approach, but has stopped short of aligning himself with the court’s far-right wing in certain cases. Chief Justice John Roberts meanwhile has been willing to reverse ballot deadlines ordered by federal courts, but has voted to leave in place changes to election rules that have been agreed to by state election officials or that have been put in place by state courts.
It is unclear whether the 8th Circuit’s decision will be kicked up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The panel’s lone Democratic appointee dissented from the order. She questioned the feasibility of the segregation order, while arguing the voters who put their ballots in the mail when the extension was still in place were now at risk of disenfranchisement.


talkingpointsmemo--2020-10-29--Perdue Ditches Final Debate After Ossoff Roasts Him, Flees To Trump Rally Instead

A day after Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff roasted Sen. David Perdue ( R-GA ) during a segment of their debate that went viral , the Georgia senator called off what was supposed to be their final debate on Sunday and decided to join President Trump at his Georgia rally that night instead .
In a statement issued Thursday , Perdue ’ s campaign sarcastically explained why the senator has instead opted to campaign for President Trump on Sunday night and accused Ossoff of lying to the people of Georgia .
“ As lovely as another debate listening to Jon Ossoff @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Senate Perdue will not be participating in the WSB-TV debate but will instead join the 45th president , Donald J. Trump , for a huge Get-Out-the-Vote rally in Northwest Georgia , ” Perdue ’ s Senate campaign communications director John Burke said .
Burke touted that Perdue spent the last 14 days of his campaign going “ back to Washington to work for much needed COVID relief for Georgians ” and threw “ Ossoff ’ s top donor ” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer ( D-NY ) under the bus for supposedly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Burke also ripped Senate Democrats for not “ crossing over ” to vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — an observation that he tried to use against Ossoff by saying that Perdue ’ s Democratic challenger “ would have joined their opposition had he been in the Senate.
” Burke concluded that Perdue is “ making up for lost time ” by having more than 20 campaign stops planned in the last few days of the Senate race and is “ excited ” to join forces with Trump in Georgia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ossoff swiftly swiped at Perdue in a tweet for abruptly pulling out of what was supposed their final debate .
Perdue ’ s decision to pull out of his final Georgia Senate debate against Ossoff happened just hours after his Democratic challenger ’ s scathing takedown of him during their debate Wednesday night went viral .
Ossoff took the GOP incumbent to task during the debate by calling him a “ crook.
” Ossoff roasted Perdue over the legal trouble he ’ s had with his business and his response to the COVID-19 @ @

A day after Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff roasted Sen. David Perdue (R-GA) during a segment of their debate that went viral, the Georgia senator called off what was supposed to be their final debate on Sunday and decided to join President Trump at his Georgia rally that night instead.
In a statement issued Thursday, Perdue’s campaign sarcastically explained why the senator has instead opted to campaign for President Trump on Sunday night and accused Ossoff of lying to the people of Georgia.
“As lovely as another debate listening to Jon Ossoff lie to the people of Georgia sounds, Senate Perdue will not be participating in the WSB-TV debate but will instead join the 45th president, Donald J. Trump, for a huge Get-Out-the-Vote rally in Northwest Georgia,” Perdue’s Senate campaign communications director John Burke said.
Burke touted that Perdue spent the last 14 days of his campaign going “back to Washington to work for much needed COVID relief for Georgians” and threw “Ossoff’s top donor” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) under the bus for supposedly having “derailed” that effort.
Burke also ripped Senate Democrats for not “crossing over” to vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett — an observation that he tried to use against Ossoff by saying that Perdue’s Democratic challenger “would have joined their opposition had he been in the Senate.”
Burke concluded that Perdue is “making up for lost time” by having more than 20 campaign stops planned in the last few days of the Senate race and is “excited” to join forces with Trump in Georgia for both of their re-election efforts.
Ossoff swiftly swiped at Perdue in a tweet for abruptly pulling out of what was supposed their final debate.
BREAKING: Senator Perdue just cancelled our final debate. At last night's debate, millions saw that Perdue had no answers when I called him out on his record of blatant corruption, widespread disease, and economic devastation. Shame on you, Senator. — Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) October 29, 2020
Perdue’s decision to pull out of his final Georgia Senate debate against Ossoff happened just hours after his Democratic challenger’s scathing takedown of him during their debate Wednesday night went viral.
Ossoff took the GOP incumbent to task during the debate by calling him a “crook.” Ossoff roasted Perdue over the legal trouble he’s had with his business and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Sen. David Perdue is out for himself — not for our health. pic.twitter.com/zbtmw6rU4Q — Jon Ossoff (@ossoff) October 29, 2020