imran: migrants have been rushing to the united states, as trump era restrictions introduced during the pandemic are lifted. the biden administration is replacing them with strict new measures. what impact will they have, and how do they differ from trump's policy? this is "inside story." ♪ hello, and welcome to the program. i'm imran khan. many thousands of migrants from far and wide are trying to reach the u.s. and start a better

life. among the obstacles of the mexican border are stretches of a wall built during the trump presidency. new immigration restrictions from the biden administration represent a fresh obstacle, replacing trump's pandemic era measures. critics say the new system makes it tougher for asylum seekers, but supporters say it's a fairer, yet robust approach. so how do donald trump and joe biden differ on immigration, and what's the effect on those fleeing poverty or wars trying to enter the u.s.? we'll be hearing the arguments from our guests in a few moments. but first, this report. reporter: a desperate attempt to reach the united states at the border with mexico. ahead of a deadline ending pandemic era restrictions, tens of thousands of people from latin america flocked to the border at the rio grande river, across from texas. they're racing to enter the u.s. before stringent new rules came into effect on friday.

border authorities say the number of people caught crossing illegally top 10,000 a day this week. >> after selling everything you had to get here, how can you go back empty-handed? we need to wait here in mexico in order to cross legally to the united states. reporter: the u.s. is warning anyone who tries to enter without approval will be deported. >> our borders are not open. people who cross our border unlawfully and without a legal basis to remain will be promptly processed and removed. reporter: the rules introduced by donald trump's administration, known as title 42, had been in place since 2020. they aim to curb the spread of covid-19 and allowed the u.s. to expel 2.7 million migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers in three years. but they had no legal consequences, allowing people to

try again and again. fear of a stricter new policy led to another surge across the border, angering republicans. >> this is deliberate. this is a decision that was made by president joe biden and kamala harris and congressional democrats to open up the border to what is nothing less than an invasion. reporter: rights groups are criticizing the u.s. for denying refuge to people fleeing conflict and desperate circumstances. many come from venezuela, nicaragua, cuba, and haiti. >> we still don't understand title 42. we don't know how it's going to be. maybe it's easier to enter here or maybe it's more complicated. honestly, we are uncertain. we are here, and we do not know what will happen. hopefully, it will be easier for us. reporter: roughly 11 million undocumented migrants live in the u.s., which has failed to approve comprehensive immigration reforms for decades.

reporting for "inside story." ♪ imran: let's bring in our guests. in old bridge, new jersey, richard goodstein, a democratic political consultant and former advisor to president bill clinton and vice president al gore. in tucson, arizona, alex miller, director of the immigration justice campaign at the american immigration council, a nonprofit advocacy group. and in washington, d.c., adolfo franco, a republican strategist and former official of the latin american and caribbean bureau of the u.s. agency for international development. a warm welcome to you all. let's start with richard goodstein first. richard, title 42 has come to an end, that was very severe restrictions on migration during the pandemic brought in by president donald trump. we've got a new policy now brought in by president joe biden. substantially, what's different? >> look, joe biden is trying to

do something that presidents have been trying to do for decades, and they're hamstrung by the fact that congress refuses to do comprehensive immigration reform. -- to pass comprehensive immigration reform. let me just say one thing about what he's not doing. remember, the republicans, donald trump particularly, called for a muslim ban. he said that only christians should be allowed in as immigrants. he separated children from their parents as a way to penalize immigrants. what joe biden is trying to do is both a humane approach and an approach that recognizes that there's a reason that people seek asylum in the united states. so last night, they issued a very strong statement saying that there's a right way and a wrong way to try to seek entry, and if you go the wrong way, for at least a five-year minimum, you will not be considered for entry into the united states no

matter what. but by the same token, there's a recognition that there's a shortage of workers in the united states in health care, on farms, child care in restaurants, and that we need -- in child care, in restaurants, and that we need actually hard-working people in the united states who come through legally. so joe biden is trying to kind of walk that line between doing something that recognizes the united states as a country of immigrants, but trying not to convey the message, which he did quite loudly last night, that the border is not open, that people should not give in to what smugglers want to do, and should go through a legal asylum seeking method and that's it. imran: alex miller, the words "humane approach" have been used there by richard goodstein. we've heard that from democrats quite a lot, we've also heard that this is the correct way of doing it. is biden's policy a reasonable

policy? >> my read is not quite the same. i understand that the biden administration is trying to do a really challenging thing with its hands tied behind its back in a certain way, but with the announcement of the new asylum transit ban yesterday, we're taking this a step too far. the needle is too difficult to thread. what this transit band means is that asylum seekers at the border will face a rebuttable presumption that they do not qualify for asylum unless they seek asylum through incredibly narrow means using a phone app called cbp one, which is difficult to use and has limited spaces, or if they first seek asylum in a transit country. what this will mean in practice is that people with bona fide fear claims may be returned to their countries of origin despite the real risk of persecution, and that's not where we want to land. imran: adolfo franco, the floodgates are open now, right, that's surely what you think? >> correct. imran: so tell us why.

>> the floodgates have been opened because of the disastrous policies of this administration. and your guest, alex, sort of alluded to the fact that this administration is now at the very last hour, for political reasons, because of the crisis they created, have now reverted in part to the policies of the previous administration that of course were working fantastically and brilliantly on the border. but there are a couple of things that need correction here. there has never been, and i want to be clear on this network particularly, a muslim ban. there was a ban that president trump tried to implement for a period of time to ban immigration from countries that were in a high terrorist lists. -- from countries that were on high terrorist lists. some of those countries were primarily muslim countries. there was never a muslim ban. that's just a falsehood. anyone can look that up and see it. number one. number two, the policies of the trump administration were worked out with mexico.

they remained a mexico policy which this administration is trying to do again to bring about an orderly system that people could have their claims adjudicated, but a very strict border policy of legal migration only. you heard your two guests allude to two different things here, and this was their contradictions. richard mentioned the real reality, which is people flooding into the country for economic reasons. we went to restaurants, workers and so forth didn't say this to us, but somehow alluded that somehow that's okay to have floods of people coming to the country without being vetted. from all over the world, by the way, not just central america and mexico. alex is referring to the asylum cases. well, we know the reality. i am a lawyer, i worked latin america issues all of my life ahead of the latin america bureau, i was on the border numerous times, the vast, vast majorities that richard alluded, these are economic refugees, people trying to come to the

country because they want a better life. there is a need, there's a labor ability here. very, very few people, under our law, as a lawyer, i can tell you, qualify for political asylum in the united states. they have to have persecution. doesn't mean crime, doesn't mean a bad standard of living. >> right. >> so the reality is, for two or three years, we had, wink wink, an open border policy in effect by the reversal of the effective trump policies. now, at the last minute, some of these policies again are trying to be implemented, but it's going to be very difficult since you have 10,000 to 12,000 people now projected to come across the border on a daily basis. so the system will be flooded. what does that mean? people will be given -- they will be paroled. in the u.s. law, that means people will be allowed -- imran: you made some very interesting points. you made some very interesting points. let's put this to richard goldstein. richard, you've heard what adolfo has been saying, your policy just doesn't go far

enough. >> well, again, let's be clear, go back. don't take my word for it. google will show you that there were many, not just donald trump, many republican candidates that called for a muslim ban when they were running for president in 2015 and 2016. ultimately faced with the reality, once donald trump won, he did limit that, but in is heart of hearts, he said it quite clearly, he wanted a muslim ban. so let's not kid ourselves about that. and he did, because what he and his allies, the republican allies said that immigrants make the united states dirtier and poorer. that's the way they look at the world. no, i don't think these people who would help the jobs seen in the united states are doing it for economic reasons. that's not why. they're people who were fleeing

-- who are fleeing gangs, mothers and fathers who are told, unless your children lie with our gangs, we will kill you and them. tell me what that is. it sounds like something that i would certainly want to flee, if i had the opportunity. and if it meant walking thousands of miles through desert and heat, it sounds like the alternative is much worse. so again, i think, biden said they turned back 1.5 million people have been deported, that's not biden's number, that's border patrol officials saying that. so tell them that the border is open. they didn't see it that way. imran: go on. >> i have to say a couple of things. let me pick up first on his

point about the muslim ban. first of all, i've never used google as an authority for anything, and much less, for something as serious as this. there has never been a muslim ban. there will never be a muslim ban. and if there's anybody that's pro-arab in the region, it's president trump. the abraham accords, i just returned from the region, from the united arab emirates. well, he's immensely popular. saudi arabia, president biden called it a pariah state, and attacking the saudis, our allies. president trump is the most pro-muslim, pro-arab president we've ever had, and anyone in the region can tell you that. imran: adolfo -- >> if i can very quickly, these allegations that were made about the policies and so forth, first, you can't have it both ways, richard, you just said earlier that people were coming here to work in restaurants. now you're talking about persecution. let me be clear, under our law,

crimes and gangs and fear and those things are not a basis for political asylum. this is not political persecution. i'm a lawyer. i've worked these issues. it's just, these people do not qualify. it's a horrible situation, economically, in crime, but just fleeing because you have a high crime rate in mexico or central america is not a basis in and of itself of political asylum. everyone in america knows these are economic refugees. imran: adolfo, i am going to stop you there, because i want to bring in alex miller. alex, what you've heard from both of our guests right now is essentially the debate in america over immigration in kind of a nutshell. for somebody like you, who works in advocacy, it's got to be frustrating when you can't move the needle on either side because of the opinions of both sides. >> yeah, i mean, this is incredibly frustrating. of course this is a difficult time. but i think we need to take a step back and look at the

fundamental principles standing behind asylum. and we can't only look at rule of law when we're talking about exclusion and enforcement. rule of law also means our constitutional bedrocks. it means access to due process. it means having a real way to defend your claims and your rights in an american court. and adolfo is right. not every asylum seeker will ultimately succeed in their claim, but they have a right to move forward with that claim. and also to the other point about whether people are fleeing real persecution or not, asylum is not only for political fears. it is for people fleeing persecution based on their nationality, on their race, on their religious beliefs, or people that are members of a particular social group like the lgbtq community, and those individuals are facing real harms and are often returned

sometimes to their death, despite our asylum procedures. asylum is failing certain people. imran: i want to talk about the politics of this right now, because we managed to swing into this. let's explore that. richard goodstein, i want to bring this up. there's very rarely a sensible discussion particularly in the run-up to an election on immigration issues. it is a hot button issue and something that people lose elections on. there's no real winner in the immigration debate, right? no one actually wins this. >> the united states wins, if congress is able to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill. which the united states senate with 68 senators, including noted communists like lindsey graham and marco rubio, supported in 2013. this was a bill for $46 billion in border security and took care

of the dreamers, children that came into the united states with their parents and who've now grown up here, and other ways basically beefed up the immigration process the united states. when people talk about we need immigration reform, that bill passed with again a very strong bipartisan majority. and would have passed the house of representatives but the republican speaker at the time refused to allow it to be considered. republicans want this as an issue. they don't want this resolved. they want the issue because they think it lights a fire under their right wing, anti-immigrant base. okay? that's why they don't want it resolved. the american public wants two things, they want security, and they want humanity. we want a process for people who have genuine asylum claims to be heard. the republicans don't want that. they only want to focus on these bad people coming in. imran: alex, i'm going to come to you in a minute. but adolfo, this is a hot button issue that the republicans need to win. what do you think of that?

>> well, let me do a little bit of a reality check here, if i may. first of all, the only comprehensive or large immigration reform ever done in recent history was done under president reagan in the 1980s. the bill that richard is referring to was a bush administration initiative at the end of the bush administration by president bush. i worked on it. secretary carlos gutierrez worked on it. i'll tell you who voted against it, senator barack obama. that's who voted against that bill that richard is making a reference to. when president obama was elected -- >> he was president in 2013 at that time. >> richard, richard, i didn't interrupt you. barack obama, senator obama voted against the bill that richard is referring to. in 2008, when he was elected president and he had a super majority of 60, enough to not have a filibuster in the senate, he promised, and alex will tell you this, immigration reform as

a priority. in his first two years when he had super majorities, he elected not to do that. he focused on health care and later mentioned and agreed on spanish television, which i do, that, yes, he broke his promise. so if anybody doesn't want the reforms, he referred to senator graham, to senator rubio, to senator mccain who i worked for, all of these individuals were pushing immigration reform. that is the reality. we are for a pro-immigration party. pro-legal immigration. lastly, to alex's point, the fact of the matter is, she's right, there are cases where if your nationality, you're persecuted for this if you're persecuted because you're a member of a minority group, gay rights and so forth, these people are entitled to an asylum hearing. but there are two things that the viewers need to understand. first of all, that's a minuscule number of the economic refugees that are coming into the country and every american knows it.

secondly, unfortunately, they're getting in the system. hundreds of thousands of people trying to enter the country, they're overwhelmed, they're giving court dates in the future for either asylum or other reasons, and then they just go into the shadows and they never show up and they become illegal immigrants in the country, which is a travesty. horribly for them, that is the reality of america today, and it is not a republican problem, it is a bipartisan problem, i'll recognize that, but the only true initiatives in recent history have been driven by republican presidents and senators. imran: alex miller, it's such a hot button issue. everybody talks about this. but here we are, both sides blaming each other for this. what's the most frustrating thing for you when you're trying to speak to politicians, trying to get them to push through legislation? is it a bipartisan issue? is it a republican issue? is it a democrat issue? what is it for you? >> i mean, this is an issue for every american. it extends beyond party, beyond democrat, beyond republican.

it's a human issue. and we need to try to find empathy when we're looking for solutions. i think there's a fundamental question about, what does it look like to succeed in immigration reform? are we trying to exclude as many people as possible? is that where we find our wins? i would think that the goal is actually to create a system that expeditiously supports people to seek asylum while maintaining their access to due process, ensuring that they have access to counsel, and also creating lawful pathways for individuals to come here outside of the framework of asylum. but i think it's important to remember, you know, people throw around around the word illegal immigration really broadly. it is lawful to seek asylum, regardless of your manner of entry. and instead of xenophobic rhetoric and and throwing asylum seekers under the bus, we need to make sure that we're protecting those most vulnerable.

imran: but alex, there is a legal immigration. there is economic migrations. all of these things exist. we're not talking really about asylum seekers here. what richard, what adolfo franco, what the democrats and republicans really actually mean when they talk about immigration is this kind of illegal economic migration. that's always going to happen. but how do you deal with that reasonably? >> i mean, it's an incredibly challenging issue. like we were talking about earlier, there are economic needs in this country. there is a need for labor. and so, beyond the asylum problem, beyond the tensions at the border, finding realistic, lawful pathways for migrants to come here for economic reasons is also part of the solution. imran: richard goodstein, the economic illegal migration, which is what the republicans really mean when they talk about people flooding into our

country, then democrats don't ever seem to have a winning argument here, that is a failure of policy, right? >> i would disagree, and here's exhibit a. in 2018, fox news, and the republicans talked about this caravan, you recall it, i'm sure. that was people streaming through mexico, about to flood into the united states. and guess what happened? the democrats won an overwhelming victory in the midterm elections in 2018 because most people, again, the right-wing, anti-immigrant base of the republicans eats that stuff up, but everybody else is nauseated by that because they understand that there are multiple ways to deal with immigration. and scaring people about immigrants is not a winning strategy. that's not it. that's not fair. it's not what people want to hear. most open-minded people

understand that this is multifaceted, and there's both a security element and there's an element about recognizing legitimate asylum claims. so i disagree with the premise that this is somehow a winning issue, just like taking on democracy. republicans love to undermine democracy. trump people do. most people are turned off by that, and they're turned off by this bashing of immigrants as well. imran: alfonso franco, are you shaking your head there? tell me why. >> we got to the democracy, the president who was waving all kinds of -- waving around his pen with executive orders and been beaten back by the courts, including on immigration by the way by the florida courts this week. trying to release people. we will see about the democracy as implemented by president biden. but going back to the issue,

richard, the polls indicate something very differently. they indicate that 72% of the american people opposed the immigration policies of this administration and rank the border in security as very high. i completely agree with alex that we need workers here and an orderly system, but you have to secure the border first. you have to have sovereignty. you have to have a border security policy that makes sense. we don't have that. the president is now dispatching 1,500 troops, federal troops, something democrats criticized president trump for suggesting, and now they're doing that. and i understand adding more, i live here in washington, d.c., i have a lot of friends at the white house, and i can tell you this -- president biden and private is furious over what has happened in the border. he does not view it as, richard, this is fine, the american people are levelheaded. the american people are

concerned about what it's turning into, an uncontrollable situation. we have had declared this week emergencies throughout the united states and cities, including democrat controlled cities. and not just in texas, as far away as illinois, because of this border crisis. president biden referred to it two days ago as -- imran: adolfo, sorry, we are running out of time. i want to come to alex miller. there is fear-mongering and it is on both sides of of the divide. fear-mongering is the one thing that stops a sensible conversation happening on immigration. how do you get over that? >> i think it's really hard. to adolfo's point, biden is facing pressure from both sides. part of that is because, at the same time that he's creating and implementing incredibly exclusionary policies like this asylum transit ban, like the plans to increase expedited removal and cbp custody without adequate access to counsel, he's

also creating lawful pathways and trying to get in front of misinformation that organized transnational crime groups are using to encourage folks to come here. i would encourage people to try to look to empathy and to think about migrants at the border not as numbers, not as this way, but as individuals with personal stories who deserve to have an opportunity to tell them and deserve an opportunity to seek protection. i've been working at the border for over four years now, and the types of stories i've heard are are absolutely heartbreaking. not just the stories from people's countries of origin, where they're coming from, but also the stories of people forced to live indefinitely at the border. and what i know for sure is we can't use policies that are actually the agents of chaos like title 42 as a solution for chaos.

title 42 has not been effective. title 42 continuing on indefinitely is not a solution. we need a meaningful way for people to be able to seek asylum at ports and beyond the border, to think about alternate solutions for lawful pathways for people to come to the united states who don't have fear-based claims. imran: i want to thank all our guests, richard goodstein, alexandra miller, and adolfo franco. and thank you, too, for watching. you can see the program again anytime by visiting our website, aljazeera.com. and for further discussion go to our facebook page, that's facebook.com/ajinsidestory. and you can also join the conversation on twitter. our handle is @ajinsidestory. from me, imran khan, and the whole team here, bye for now. ♪

male: the "fox news" decision desk can now project that joe biden will become the 46th president of the united states. male: the wrong people are going to turn this country to socialism, communism, marxism. crowd: trump, pack your-- you're illegitimate. karishma vyas: it's been a year like no other in america. crowd: america was never great. female: losers cheat to win. karishma: a country at war with itself. donald trump: the radical democrats are trying to capture georgia's senate seats. [crowd booing] trump: you just can't let them steal the us senate.