March 28-April 4, 2022 Mixed Migration—hebdo

This week, we open with a Spotlight on the announced repeal of Title 42, and a reflection on how Title 42—like Fortress Europe and Stop the Boats—is a non-solution built on a fraud that can only fail.

Apr 4

Welcome to MMh! Here—in the time it takes to read one feature—you get a global sweep of the last week's most relevant migration policy developments, & links to all the articles you need to dig deeper.

Thank you to the readers who access MMh through a paid subscription—your support means the world to me. MMh is freely available, and will remain so for as long as I can sustain it, but it’s also the equivalent of a part-time job for a solo author-editor living on financial fumes. If you appreciate what you find here every week, and you’d like to help me keep it coming, please consider switching to a paid subscription. I’ve set rates as low as I can so that subscribing is as easy as possible on your wallet. If you can’t afford to, no problem—please consider clicking the share button below to help more people find MMh. Thank you for your support!

Spotlight

Last week, the Biden Administration announced it would finally repeal Title 42 in late May—not a minute too soon (which is another way of saying, about a year and half too late).

Just a quick recap: Title 42 is a provision of a 1944 law that allows U.S. authorities to turn away foreigners summarily in the event of a pandemic (think of how the Spanish influenza reached U.S. soil mainly through its Atlantic ports). The preceding Administration invoked Title 42 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, allowing border authorities to turn back asylum seekers arriving at U.S. border posts (i.e., fully complying with the law), and to expel asylum seekers irregularly entering U.S. soil (i.e., circumventing but not breaking the law without offering them a chance to claim asylum (you can catch a more thorough backgrounder on Title 42 here and a great op-ed on the politics of its repeal here). Title 42 was enacted in astoundingly bad faith by the same Administration that undermined public health measures to slow down the spread of COVID-19, and kept in place in poor judgment by the Biden Administration, calculating that the political costs of increased immigration would derail its other priorities.

The problem with the Biden Administration’s calculation is that it assumed migration is static, that closing a border mechanically leads to the halting of transit across that border. This magical thinking is prevalent across the West, and leads to outcomes we could generously describe as unwelcome: a Leviathan of Polish border police and a border fence tearing across primordial forest to counter the perceived threat of a few thousand Middle Eastern asylum seekers. Systematic, violent pushbacks in the Aegean Sea. Desperation and abuse across Australia’s refugee offshoring system. The Biden Administration’s use of Title 42 has has been less violent, in day-to-day border enforcement, than its counterparts in Europe and Australia. It remains an affront not just on asylum seekers’ rights, but on us all.

From its activation in March 2020, Title 42 has been built on a lie: that turning back asylum seekers was necessary to protect residents of the U.S. from COVID-19 transmission. Likewise, the EU’s border externalization is built on the lie that Europe lacks the ability to process the asylum claims it receives unless it keeps their numbers at a septic low, and that the barbaric conduct of its border forces is compliant with EU law; Australia’s Stop the Boats policy on the lie that irregular arrivals are a greater threat to orderly migration than the Australian government’s abdication from honoring international refugee law. These lies harm asylum seekers most directly, but they harm us all: they do not just undermine migrants’ rights and well-being, but also democratic governments’ duty of accountability and transparency toward their constituents.

There is another cost to the assumption that migration can be prevented by closing borders, which is that migration does not halt when it meets a closed border—it accumulates. The political cost repealing Title 42 will be greater now than it would have been a year ago, because of the year’s worth of accumulation of asylum seekers’ aspirations to enter the U.S. and seek asylum. Migration is not mechanical but dynamic, evolving over much longer timespans than the term limits of elected leaders. Either our politics work out how to handle migration policy generationally, or we will remain hostage to non-solutions, relying on non-truths to non-solve real problems—the cost of which may feel abstract to the majority of us, but will remain very real for those made to suffer them.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick @ReichlinMelnick

If someone tells you Title 42 "works," point them at this.

Thank you for reading MMh. If you like what you’re reading, you can subscribe here. If you’ve already subscribed, please share and help new readers find MMh.

On to the news…

Asia

Post-occupation Afghanistan
Last Tuesday, authorities in Afghanistan announced that passport processing would resume nationwide on April 5, after months of intermittent operation during which online applications have accumulated and fraudulent abuse of Afghan civilians’ need to travel abroad have grown substantially. | On Thursday, a donor conference intended to raise $4.4 billion to fund humanitarian programming in Afghanistan managed to raise only $2.44 billion, echoing the disappointing outcome of a donor conference earlier in March to fund aid provision in Yemen. | On Sunday, Afghan refugees living in the Iranian town of Abu Shaar denounced that they had been banned for working and faced potential eviction from the municipality, with Iranian authorities responding that bans applied only to irregular migrants and not to all Afghans.

Myanmar and its neighbors
Last Tuesday, Bangladeshi authorities relocated 1.196 Rohingya refugees from camps near Cox’s Bazaar to Bhasan Char, bringing the island containment facility’s population to ~24.000. On the same day, Thai authorities announced that they had intercepted 61 Burmese asylum seekers in transit toward Malaysia on the Friday prior, 39 of whom were being trafficked, including 26 Rohingya children. | On Thursday, Bangladeshi authorities relocated another 1.535 Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char. On the same day, the family of Mohib Ullah, a Rohingya civil society leader shot dead last September in Cox’s Bazaar, fled Bangladesh for Canada, where they were expected to be granted asylum. Also on Thursday, Human Rights Watch condemned Indian authorities’ deportation of a Rohingya woman, further separating her from her husband and children after over a year’s confinement apart from her family (see HRW’s full satement here). | On Friday, Amnesty India condemned the detention of 25 Rohingya refugees in the Ramban district of Kashmir, relocated there with the assistance of a local civil society group. On the same day, Malaysia and Indonesia signed a labor migration management agreement intended to protect Indonesian domestic workers in Malaysia, with Indonesian President Joko Widodo relaying his hope that this deal would pave the way for other deals covering labor migration into Malaysia’s agricultural, manufacturing, and service sectors.

Sources: TOLOnews, the Guardian, Dhaka Tribune, the Bangkok Post, the Goa Chronicle, al Jazeera, the Siasat Daily, Reuters.

Sub-Saharan Africa

Ethiopia’s civil war
Last Monday, Tigrayan authorities denounced that, 4 days into the humanitarian truce announced by Ethiopian authorities in the week prior, no aid deliveries had reached Tigray, accusing Addis Ababa of misleading Ethiopians and the international community while keeping Tigray blockaded. On the same day, French authorities disbursed 3 million to WFP to protect 3.000 Ethiopian children and lactating mothers from wasting and malnutrition, as 3 consecutive failed rainy seasons compound the impact of civil war on nutrition outcomes across Ethiopia. Also on Monday, Ethiopian authorities announced that the repatriation of Ethiopian nationals stranded in precarious conditions in Saudi Arabia will resume as of March 30, anticipating ~100.000 returns in the next 7-11 months. | On Tuesday, Ethiopian authorities released 14 Tigrayan former government officials who had been detained outside of Tigray about 3 weeks prior. | On Thursday, the first ~900 of ~100.000 Ethiopians to be returned from Saudi Arabia arrived in Addis Ababa with harrowing narratives of the conditions they had endured in pre-removal confinement. On the same day, the UN Budget Committee rejected an attempt by Ethiopia’s UN delegation to defund the International Commission of Human Rights Experts, constituted last December by the UN High Commission for Human Rights to investigate war crimes in Ethiopia. Also on Thursday, the border crossing linking Ethiopia’s southwestern Benishangul-Gumuz state with Sudan via the town of the town of Kurmuk re-opened to trade, after a long-term closure prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. | On Friday, the first food aid convoy to enter Tigray in 100 days crossed the border from Afar to deliver 500 metric tons of food to Mekelle.

Displacement and mobility in East Africa
Last Wednesday, Ugandan authorities reported the sudden arrival of 7.000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, fleeing fresh fighting between government forces and rebel groups, on the heels of another 7.000 arrivals from DRC to Uganda over the whole of March. | On Thursday, Ugandan authorities announced that they would cease administering mandatory COVID-19 tests for fully vaccinated incoming travelers.

Sources: Addis Standard, Reuters, AFP, AP, the Guardian, IANS, the EastAfrican.

Middle East and North Africa

Asylum seeker abuse and containment in Libya
Last Monday, the UN Human Rights Council revealed it was investigating reports of mass graves in the desert smuggling hub of Bani Walid, where an unknown number of deceased asylum seekers are believed to have been dumped (see the full UN OHCHR report here). | On Tuesday, UNHCR relocated 119 asylum seekers from Libya to Rwanda for onward processing, bringing the total number of asylum seekers thus evacuated to just under 950. | On Wednesday, UN investigators confirmed they were researching the existence of multiple mass graves in and near Bani Walid, and probing testimonials of sexual violence by Libyan security personnel against asylum seekers, with a full report expected in June. On the same day, German authorities announced they would cease providing training to Libyan Coast Guard on account of its systematic abuse of asylum seekers and antagonism toward NGOs.

Syria’s civil war
Last Tuesday, a Lighthouse Reports investigation uncovered evidence of the use of incentives used by Russian proxies recruiting fighters to join in the invasion of Ukraine, ranging from drastic pay differences in comparison to those available domestically, to entrapment of families with detained kin. | On Thursday, Middle East Eye revealed the bizarre case of 4 Afghan asylum seekers detained in Ankara as they tried to reach Europe and deported to Idlib, where they were detained for a month by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and have since then been stranded, unable to afford to either continue their attempted journey to Europe or return to Afghanistan.

Yemen’s civil war
Last Wednesday, the Saudi-led coalition initiated its unilateral ceasefire in Yemen, and launched peace talks among the Gulf Cooperation Council, which Ansar Allah refused to attend, all while demanding that the ceasefire be accompanied by a halt to the coalition’s deadly blockade of northern Yemen. | On Thursday, the World Bank announced it had allocated $300 million to support humanitarian programming, bolstering the disappointing $1.3 billion raised by a recent donor conference intended to raise 3 times as much, but still leaving total humanitarian funding for Yemen far short of manifest needs. | On Friday, UN Special Envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg announced that all warring parties had agreed to a 2-month ceasefire, with the Saudi-led coalition agreeing to allow passage to fuel ships into the port of Hodeidah, and of select flights into Sana’a Airport. On the same day, the Guardian revealed a letter addressed by 11 humanitarian NGOs active in Yemen to UK authorities, imploring them to back down from plans to designated Ansar Allah a terrorist organization, fearing this would have a chilling effect on commerce and banking with northern Yemen and exacerbate its already dire humanitarian crisis. | On Sunday, the first fuel ship allowed to supply northern Yemen, under the terms of the Ramadan truce that started on Saturday evening, docked in the port of Hodeidah to discharge its hold of Mazut oil. On the same day, a fire broke out an an IDP camp in Marib, taking the lives of 5 children and 2 adults.

Migrant laborer abuse in Qatar
On Thursday, the Guardian released an investigation tallying that migrant laborers from Bangladesh and Nepal have paid ~$2 billion in aggregate recruitment fees to work on infrastructure projects ahead of the 2022 World Cup, in the form of indivual recruitment fees of $3.000-$4.000 for Bangladeshi workers, and of $1.000-$1.500 for Nepali workers, often leading to exploitation and debt bondage. | On Friday, follow-up reporting from the Guardian disclosed that, out of 40 deaths recorded in World Cup-related infrastructure projects, 37 were classified as deaths of natural causes, depriving bereaved families of any compensation from employers.

Sources: Reuters, the EastAfrican, AP, the Telegraph+SIRAJ, Middle East Eye, the New Arab, the Guardian.

Maritime Migration Routes to & through the West

The English Channel
Last Monday, 386 asylum seekers in 12 vessels reached UK shores autonomously or were rescued in British waters, while French authorities intercepted 101 asylum seekers before they could depart French waters.

Central and western Mediterranean
Last Tuesday, the Sea-Eye retrieved 32 asylum seekers from a container ship that had rescued them on Monday from a distressed vessel struggling through rough seas, and whom it now hopes to disembark in Malta. | On Wednesday, the Sea-Eye rescued another 74 asylum seekers from a rubber vessel in the Central Mediterranean, and attempted to rescue another 145 asylum seekers off the coast of Libya, who were ultimately intercepted by the Libyan coast guard. | On Saturday, MSF assessed that ~90 asylum seekers had perished when their vessel sank off the coast of Libya, according to the testimony of 4 survivors rescued by an oil tanker which is set to return them to Libya.

Aegean Sea
Last Wednesday, Turkish authorities announced they had apprehended 851 asylum seekers preparing to attempt irregular crossings toward Greece, and rescued another 140 asylum seekers from 3 vessels in the Aegean Sea, whom they believed had been pushed back from Greek waters.

Ruta Canaria
Last Thursday, Spanish police announced it had detained 3 passengers from the vessel that had reached El Hierro on the Sunday prior with 47 asylum seekers and 1 lifeless body on board, on suspicion of smuggling, and confirmed that another 25 passengers had perished and been thrown overboard through the 8-day crossing. | This Monday, Salvamento Marítimo rescued 97 asylum seekers from 2 vessels in waters off of Gran Canaria and Lanzarote.

Gulf of Mexico
Last Thursday, U.S. Coast Guard vessels located an overturned vessel, which was believed to have carried 19 Cuban asylum seekers in waters off of Sugarloaf Key, rescuing 6 people and retrieving one lifeless body, with the remaining passengers remaining missing as of Sunday evening. | On Saturday, 15 Cuban asylum seekers arrived autonomously to an uninhabited island near Key West, where they were apprehended by U.S. authorities for likely repatriation.

Sources: BBC, InfoMigrants, AP, Hürriyet, EFE, AFP, NBC 6, the Miami Herald.

Europe

Displacement within Ukraine and beyond
Last Monday, the EU Council issued a 10-point plan to better coordinate the processing of refugee arrivals from Ukraine, announcing a common European registry of arrivals and reception facilities, facilitating transportation between countires, and providing for standardized registration and anti-trafficking procedures. | On Tuesday, a coalition of Eastern European countries issued a request for financial support from the EU to support healthcare provision to Ukrainian refugees, estimating Poland’s monthly costs between €50 and €70 million per million refugees, and suggesting that funds could be disbursed from the EU’s €5.3 billion facility to fund vaccination programs (see the full statement here). | On Wednesday, the number of refugees displaced out of Ukraine exceeded 4 million. On the same day, the Washington Post relayed the testimony of a resident of Mariupol who was coerced into evacuating into Russia, eventually managing to break loose and enter EU soil on her own, describing an elaborate infrastructure to channel coerced evacuees via filtration camps in the Donbas region and track them through the seizure of biometrics and cell phone data. | On Thursday, UK Home Office minister Kevin Foster announced that just over 27.000 visas had been issued to Ukrainians, though no figures were available as to how many had arrived, as shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper blasted a visa application system she described as Kafkaesque. | On Friday, the Home Office disclosed that only 5.200 visas had been issued under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, out of 32.000 applicants and against 200.000 volunteer hosts, as advocates demanded that Ukrainians arriving on their own be allowed to apply for Homes for Ukraine from UK soil, and not solely from abroad. On the same day, 2.000 civilians were evacuated on buses from Mariupol, one day after another 631 civilians had managed to evacuate through the same humanitarian corridor in private vehicles, and as Ukrainian authorities accused Russian troops of seizing 14 tons of food and medicines destined for delivery in Mariupol. | On Sunday, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield pledged $50 million in aid to Moldova to help it better accommodate arriving Ukranian refugees, deter trafficking, and achieve justice sector reform. | This Monday, an ICRC relief convoy lamented it had failed to reach Mariupol after being halted by Russian authorites in Manhush, 20 kilometers west of Mariupol. On the same day, Lighthouse Reports released a new invesitgation into the detention of several dozen migrants who remain in detention in Ukraine after 40 days of hostilities, some of whom were confined after trying to flee Ukraine and being turned back by Polish border guards.

Med5 migration (mis)management
Last Tuesday, Greece’s National Transparency Authority issued a summary of a 4-month investigation prompted by Lighthouse Reports’ October 2021 report into pushbacks being conducted at Croatian, Romanian, and Greek borders, concluding it had found no evidence of unlawful conduct but rather of a structured process adhering to relevant laws (see the NTA’s full statement here). On the same day, 30 employees of the asylum seeker containment center in Samos refused to enter the site after being informed, upon arrival, that securitized entry-and-exit protocols involving biometric identity verification, would be henceforth required of staff and not just of resident asylum seekers. | On Wednesday, Alarm Phone relayed the appeal for help of a group of 34 asylum seekers stranded since Tuesday on an islet in the Evros river, marking the land border between Greece and Turkey—the second such case to take place this month and likely result of a coerced return from within Greek territory. | On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights issued interim measures compelling Greek authorities to receive the 34 asylum seekers stranded in the Evros river. | On Friday, in compliance with the ECtHR’s ruling, Greek autorities rescued the 34 stranded asylum seekers.

EU and UK migration policymaking
Last Thursday, the EU Parliamentary Budget Committee refused to sign off of discharging Frontex’s next budget discharge, pending investigations of its upper leadership for misuse of funds, participation in illegal acts in Hungary and Greece, and 17 cases of harassment recorded in 2021 alone. | On Saturday, the BBC reported on the Home Office’s increasing difficulties placing Afghan evacuee families temporarily hosted in London hotels in more permanent housing, with families fearing loss of community and livelihoods if moved away from the familiarity of London. On the same day, German media confirmed an official halt in deportations to Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and Belarus, due to airspace closures; as well as a halt in Dublin returns to the Visegrad 4 countries and to Romania, to avoid placing additional strain on their reception capacity.

Sources: Deutsche-Welle, Politico, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Independent, Reuters, al Jazeera, InfoMigrants, efsyn, Border Violence Monitoring Network, EUobserver, BBC.

The Americas

U.S. migration policymaking
Last Monday, VICE revealed an unusual deal between Mexican and U.S. border authorities to clear a group of 35 Russian asylum seekers encamped at the San Ysidrio border crossing, and who, after refusing for several days to move, were exempted from Title 42 restrictions and allowed accross the El Chaparral port of entry, which has been closed to northbound transit for months. On the same day, BuzzFeed News revealed the extent of U.S. officials’ concern for the safety of asylum seekers returned under MPP to Nuevo Laredo amid a spike in cartel violence in mid-March—leading to a temporary suspension of returns through the embattled port of entry. | On Tuesday, DHS officials disclose that they are surging personnel and resources to the U.S.-Mexico border to prepare for a potential increase in asylum seeker arrivals in the event that Title 42 is repealed shortly, potentially leading to as many as 18.000 daily arrivals, exceeding CBP’s retention capacity of 16.000 people per day. | On Wednesday, the Biden Administration leaked that it has reached a tentative decision to terminate Title 42 on May 23. | On Friday, the Biden Administration officially announced it would repeal Title 42 on May 23, committing to process all arrivals under regular proceedings and to promptly expel those lacking a legal basis to remain on U.S. soil.

Irregular migration in Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean
Last Tuesday, UNHCR signaled that the number of asylum seekers crossing the Darién Gap reached nearly 8.500 so far this year, a dramatic increase from the less than 3.000 crossings in the first 2 months of 2021 (see UNHCR’s full statement here). | On Wednesday, a dozen NGOs issued an open letter demanding that Honduran authorities activate a state of emergency in response to increasing asylum seeker arrivals, which reached 7.000 in the first trimester of 2022. | On Friday, Mexican authorities intercepted the viacrucis caravan on its first day’s march from Tapachula, arresting 92 of its 500 participants, the remainder of whom vowed to regroup and resume their northbound journey. | On Sunday, the viacrucis caravan dissolved in southern Mexico after 200 participants agreed to be transferred to the states of Oaxaca and Tabasco to have their asylum petitions processed there. On the same day, COMAR disclosed that, in the first quarter of 2022, Mexico has received just under 30.000 asylum petitions, a more than 30% increase from the first quarter of 2021.

Sources: VICE, BuzzFeed News, CBS News, Reuters, al Jazeera, EFE, el Diario del Sur, Deutsche-Welle, el Economista.

Oceania

Australian refugee resettlement
This Monday, an Australian Senate committee was informed that a deal signed between Australian authorities and the outgoing Obama Administration to resettle 1.250 refugees from offshore detention to U.S. soil will be completed this year, with 1.000 resettlements already carried and another 230 approved and awaiting transport.

Sources: SBS-AAP

Mixed Migration—hebdo