An early round of the 2024 US presidential election campaign is being fought along the southern border with Mexico. Thousands of migrants hoping to enter the US with the expiry of “Title 42” restrictions imposed by Trump are instead being detained at once on orders from a Biden administration that cannot afford to be seen as faltering on immigration. “The border is not open,” the US homeland security secretary tells Reuters. Indeed not. Biden has kept Title 42 – originally a public health measure – in force against migrants for his first two years in power despite a 2020 campaign pledge to ease legal immigration routes. And he has replaced it with new rules limiting the grounds for asylum claims not unlike those championed by Suella Braverman in the UK.
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