BREAKING NEWS: "Biden's Record on Immigration and the Southern Borders"

John Oliver analyzed President Joe Biden's record on immigration, focusing on his policies regarding migrants seeking asylum at the southern border. Oliver began by acknowledging that, as a presidential candidate, Biden promised to undo the damage done by the Trump administration's policies, such as family separation and the persecution of Dreamers. Oliver acknowledged that Biden's promises were refreshing, especially after four years of Trump, who was notorious for his anti-immigrant stance.

However, Oliver pointed out that when it comes to the southern border, Biden has failed to deliver on many fronts. Oliver made it clear that Biden has not opened the country to an "invasion," as Republicans have repeatedly claimed. Instead, many migrants, including asylum seekers, are finding it impossible to access the US through ports of entry, and the conditions they face are dire. The southern border is currently facing a massive logjam, with shelters and detention centers in border cities operating at capacity. Last month, over 40 people died in a migrant center in Mexico that caught fire.

Oliver said that a lot of this has been exacerbated by US policies that Biden has the power to remedy, but he hasn't done so. Oliver noted that Biden created a task force to reunite migrant families separated by Trump, added protections to DACA, and suspended the Remain in Mexico policy. However, there remain huge numbers of people stuck south of the border in camps that look an awful lot like the ones that were there during Trump's presidency. Subscribe for more content like this.

One major policy that has caused significant problems for asylum seekers is Title 42, an arcane public health measure that allows the US to expel migrants for any reason, including those seeking legal asylum, as a threat to public health. The Trump administration invoked Title 42 during the pandemic, even though the CDC said there was "no evidence" that the action would slow the coronavirus. Despite Biden's promises, his administration has not moved quickly to get rid of Title 42. The secretary of homeland security, Alejandro Mayorkas, cited Title 42 as a "public health imperative" a few months into his presidency, even though it wasn't a public health imperative, as Oliver noted.

The administration kept Title 42 in place for several months, even defending it in court. Then they attempted to end it, but a federal judge blocked those efforts. The administration has issued humanitarian exemptions to Title 42 to a fraction of migrants seeking asylum at the border, but it has faced criticism for favoring white migrants fleeing war in Ukraine over those from countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

As a result, people are stuck at the border under increasingly dire conditions - over 890 migrants died along the border in 2022, the most dangerous year since tracking began. Title 42 may be about to expire with the end of the national Covid public health emergency on 11 May, but migrants now face a new obstacle thanks to a Biden administration policy requiring asylum appointments to be made via a new government app. At present, only 740 people reserve appointments per day, but because far more people need them, a day's appointments can run out within minutes, leading many to brand the app "asylum Ticketmaster."

To make matters worse, many asylum seekers have outdated cellphones which don't support the app, if they have them at all, and the app's facial recognition technology struggles to perceive darker skin tones. "Given the history of everything that has happened in this country ever, it is hard to think of anything more on brand than a US Immigration app that scans your face and says 'not white enough'," Oliver noted. Thanks for watching, subscribe to our channel for authenticity.