Title 42 is just one of literally dozens of Band-Aid policies that administrations, both Republican and Democrat, have applied to the border since 9/11.

That history is traced in the article, I wrote that you referred to.

Under the Trump Administration, which was really desperate to curtail the number of people requesting asylum, Stephen Miller, who was President Trump's Chief immigration advisor, he scoured federal law looking for ways that the president could bypass Congress and shut the border down himself.

I documented this in a front page story in the New York Times.

He finds Title 42.

He tries to put it in place initially based on small public health issues, outbreaks of things like lice and the flu and White House lawyers tell him no, this is not serious enough to invoke this public health rule.

When the coronavirus pandemic comes around, it actually offers an opportunity to Miller.

The Trump Administration pushes forward Title 42 under the guise of a public health concern.

When it was really just an attempt to minimize the number of people seeking asylum.

Here's the problem with Band-Aid solutions that cut off access to a portion of our immigration system, but not the entire thing.

When Title 42 cut off access to asylum, illegal crossings rose dramatically.

They have been very low because prior to Title 42, most people crossing the border were turning themselves over to border agents and requesting asylum.

Illegal crossing closed.

Now we have Title 42 lifting, which affords some people access to asylum again.

But the Biden administration replace it with yet new Band-Aid solutions that I think, as he mentioned, are both being challenged in court, and I think are just not going to meaningfully address the much more powerful factors, those that draw people to the United States, are very significant labor shortages, American employers who are desperate to hire migrants.

And on the others of the border, factors like climate change, instability, violence, severe hunger, but are pushing people to the United States.

.

These minimal policies really are no match.

In terms of the quiet we are seeing on the border today, it is very to go for a surge in migration to occur right before a transition in administration or a change in policy.

Those moments offer smuggling organizations the opportunity to basically start ASAP -- start a fire sale.

Then the change takes place, numbers go down.

This is very much typical and not surprising.

That is why I'm trying to take the opportunity to draw the conversation to our bigger immigration issues and not just the border on a day-to-day basis.

>> It is so important you explained it the way you did and laid it out the way you did.

Clearly this is an issue that has been grappling multiple administrations, both Republican and Democrat.

It is notable the difference it makes when a candidate is seeking the presidency as opposed to when they are in office.

Then-candidate Biden was campaigning harshly against Title 42.

Yet here we are, two years into his administration, and finally, you see this program lifted.

I do want to play sound from the president who is under no illusions that this process is going to be without chaos.

He addressed it and said as much earlier before this expiration.

Let's listen.

Pres.

Biden: It remains to be seen, it will be chaotic for a while.

And as an example, as I raised in the meeting when they said, we are going to cut, no spending more money, what the hell happens?

If you cut people at the border?

We were going to cut agents at the border?

We need more at the border, not less.

>> Your right to describe these policies as Band-Aids.

What needs to happen is Congress needs to get its acts together.

And really enact significant change on a bipartisan basis.

Without that, we are seeing this president and administration taking unilateral action.

Can you explain for our viewers the difference?

There have been criticism from Republicans and Democrats about this policy that has been introduced by President Biden looking quite similar to the policies that have been enacted by his predecessor.

Caitlin: Absolutely.

I think one of the things that the Trump Administration created, Former President Trump was so focused on immigration and immigration policy, that he made it seem to the American public like the president sets immigration laws.

Which of course is not true.

What presidents can do is issue memos, issue regulations that chisel out different ways in which the existing set of laws are applied.

Many times, presidents will attempt to go too far, and that is what the ACLU, which is challenging the Biden administration in court now contends.

It is the same thing that they argued against ways in which the Trump Administration eroded the asylum system.

The baseline into important thing for people to understand is that the United States immigration laws are very outdated.

They have not been updated in decades.

And they don't address the current geopolitical realities.

They don't address the circumstances that are drawing people to the United States, nor do they address those factors I mentioned earlier.

The need for migrants who ideally would arrive in the United States in a safe and legal way.