This week's trip Cast is sponsored by University of Houston College of Nursing. We
are committed to training the next generation of nurses to enter the workforce faster and
more prepared to ensure quality healthcare for all. Find out more at uh dot
edu, slash Nursing and Texas BioMed Pioneers and share scientific breakthroughs that protect our
communities. Health starts with science, Health starts at Texas BioMed. Visit tx
BioMed dot org for more. Hello, and welcome to the Texas Tribune trip
Cast for May twelve, twenty twenty three. My name's Matthew Watkins, Managing
editor of News and Politics for the Tribune. It's been a very busy week
in Texas news since the last time we joined. Of course, the mass
shooting in Alan. We will be having an alle hundred Serrano, one of
our reporters covering gun laws this legislative session, to talk more about that later.
But we've also had major developments in the Texas Legislative session and the lifting
of Title forty two, the pandemic era health order that allowed the Biden administration
and previously the Trump administration to expel migrants at the southern border. Talking with
us about that today. Is our editor who oversees immigration coverage, Dave Harmon.
Hey, Dave, hey, thanks for having me all right, so
very quickly, I think most people will know this, but give us a
quick rundown of what Title forty two was and how it worked. Sure.
Title forty two is a public health order that the Trump administration invoked for the
first time ever in March twenty twenty, as the COVID pandemic was beginning,
and it was used to allow immigration authorities to quickly process and remove migrants from
the southern border without allowing them to claim asylum. The stated intent was to
prevent people from other countries bringing COVID into the country and allowing us to expel
them before that could happen. Right, And so the reason that this is
being lifted, it was lifted late last night around eleven o'clock Central time ten
o'clock Mountain time where al Paso is, is because you know, the Biden
administration more broadly, is lifting the COVID emergency. Right, so you can
no longer have the emergency power to kind of enforce Title forty two if there
is no longer an official emergency here and we saw, you know, the
I feel like the build up, the hype around this all week was expecting,
you know, mass numbers of people crossing the border now that this order
was in place. We saw, you know, in the lead up,
multiple local jurisdictions around the border declaring emergencies. I mean, we saw big
crowds of people crossing over and you know, in the streets of cities like
El Paso and Brownsville in the days leading up to this, So that all
kind of set up for this eleven o'clock or in the case of El Paso,
ten o'clock kind of lifting of the order, where you know, us
in many other media outlets ready to watch for kind of what was anticipated a
major influx of people. What ended up happening, What ended up happening.
It was not what a lot of people expected or feared. We've seen large
numbers of migrants crossing the river over the past week. Looks like a lot
of people tried to enter before titled to forty two ended. That happened again
last night. Woody ell Garcia, our border and immigration reporter in El Paso,
was in siud Aduarez across the river and saw once again hundreds of people
lined up on the US side of the river, waiting to be apprehended and
processed. I think their hope was that they would be paroled, which is
a term basically it means they would be released into the country if they promised
to report to an immigration court. And then when the actual deadline came,
not much really changed on the Mexican side of the river. Woody Yell told
me that there were a lot of reporters and a few migrants, so I
think everybody who intended to cross did it earlier in the evening. They queued
up. There was a line for men and another line for women and children.
It was pretty calm and pretty orderly, and when the deadline passed,
border patrol began letting people through a gate in the border wall in small groups.
And I think we saw that kind of repeated up and down the southern
border. Can you explain what the difference is now, so you know what
we're seeing right at the border and have been seen for years, is people
showing up right crossing the border, sometimes illegally, sometimes at ports of entry
and not necessarily kind of going out into the broader America trying to be seen
or not be seen by border patrol, although I'm sure that is still happening
as well too, But a lot of people kind of essentially walking up to
border patrol and asking for asylum, right that then setting that process where they
might be released on parole or Entitle forty two, allowing them to be released,
you know, back into Mexico or elsewhere. So what is different now
on May twelve than what may have happened if you turn yourself into border patrol
May sixth, Like, what is how? How are these processes different and
how does that affect the migrants who are crossing over? Yeah, I mean
that's a great question. We're basically going back to pre pandemic immigration rules with
some tweaks by the Biden administration. They were anticipating potentially a mass of people
arriving at the border when Title forty two ended, so they have added some
features to the old system that was in place before the pandemic. It's a
carrot and stick approach. The carrot is we will provide you with ways to
request asylum without going to the border, without going to a port of entry
or crossing the river and surrendering. One of those is a cell phone app
to make appointments, which migrants have been complaining just crashes constantly. I think
they only offered about a ten minute window to grab one of the seven hundred
and forty appointments available each day along a two thousand mile border. The administration
is also setting up offices in a couple of countries Columbia is one of them,
where people can apply for an appointment from their own countries. The idea
is they're trying to tell migrants don't come to the border and surrender, because
if you do, without Title forty two in place, you are now more
likely to just be deported. And in many cases they're telling people we're not
going to let you claim asylum or you could get barred from the country for
five years for illegal entry. So it's kind of back to the old policy
of you know, punishing people for illegal entry and at the same time trying
to give them some new ways to apply for asylum without overwhelming border patrol resources
at the border. Yeah, I feel like a lot of this really highlights
how little control the Biden administration or really whoever is in charge at the time
has over some of the things that can kind of spur the political outrage or
the political focus, right. I mean, you know, people coming up
to this country in a lot of times being driven by you know, economic
conditions or natural disasters or things like that in their home countries. You have
you know, I've been reading a lot about people kind of arriving at the
border based on misinformation being spread by human smugglers or other basically saying, you
know, title for you two is lifting, they'll let you in now,
you know, and and that driving people in the Biden administration having trouble kind
of dealing with that. And then you know, the that being said,
you have areas, you know, people along the border. I mentioned earlier,
areas in El Paso talking about you know, shelters being full, people
having to sleep in the streets, Brownsville having similar you know, the Rio
Grand Valley and everything like that. I mean, how much is my assessment
of that, right? I mean that the Biden administration is somewhat limited and
they can what they can actually do about kind of maintaining these these crises that
are happening on these in these border communities. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean
they are up against a really a global problem and a global issue using you
know what tools they have. UM. And at the same time, every
policy they try to change or introduce as almost uniformly being challenging court by Republican
attorney generals, governors. UM. So you know, some of their tools
have been stopped by courts. That that happened last night when a Florida judge
put in a temporary injunction preventing them from parolling people into the country without having
you know, a court date. So that's that's one less tool they have
to manage this influx. But migration is a global problem. As you said,
it's sparked by big problems in country. We're seeing a ton of Venezuelans
coming to the border right now because that country has famously gone into economic collapse.
Politically it's a mess. Haiti same thing. The government essentially collapse in
that country, and we saw a huge number of Haitians come to our border
and on and on. You know, you look at it, you look
at a part of the world that's in trouble. Natural disasters also play into
this. Droughts play into this, and America is still the place lots of
people want to go. And we have a very kind of clunky, clumsy
patchwork system for handling the numbers that we've been seeing in recent years. Yeah.
Yeah, and and kind of I think an unwillingness to accept that those
numbers might keep coming, right, because in order to kind of get past
that clunky system, you would need to, you know, build up capacity
or or take other steps to address that. I want to ask a little
bit about kind of the next steps. You mentioned this judge's ruling based in
Florida, you know, kind of blocking the parolling of migrants. You mentioned
how the number of people crossing over so far and the you know a little
bit over twelve hours since this title forty two is lifted being maybe not the
kind of rush that we were expecting. Does that mean we're out of the
woods here from crises? What? Like? What should we be watching over
the next twenty four or thirty six, you know, even weeks and months
of this kind of new reality of the border. Yeah? Have they prepared
enough for the numbers that they're seeing? Even though it wasn't a tidal wave
last night, it was a significant number of people crossing the border. I
mean, these are these are daily records that we've been seeing in the last
week or so. Border patrol facilities can only hold so many people. There
was there was a lot of news coverage in years past when those facilities got
overwhelmed and we had migrants in overcrowded, caged enclosures. We're going to be
watching to see if the border patrol facilities can handle this influx. How many
people are they deporting outright, and how many people are they releasing into communities
because in El Paso, for example, you know, they have a shelter
system, but they can only handle so many people. The other thing that
I think we should watch is with the Biden inspiration administration doing kind of a
pr Bulitz discouraging migrants from coming to the border, and migrants coming regardless because
of the forces you talked about in their home countries. Yeah, is this
going to kind of usher in a period where people are again looking for smugglers
and trying to sneak across the border and evade border patrol, which is you
know, how a lot of people have gotten into this country historically, as
you said, they've they've recently been more likely to process a bridge or between
the bridges in Texas and surrender to border patrol. But if they are afraid
they're going to get deported or criminally charged or barred from claiming asylum, they
may resort to trying to sneak across the border and just live and work in
the country without documents. Yep. So let's talk just briefly about the rural
Texas is playing. Governor Abbott held a press conference at the beginning of this
week saying he was spending sending you know, a couple of kind of tactical
units down to the border, not a major escalation of what he kind of
has already sent down to the border. There's been images of National Guard folks
kind of you know, turning people away, like not essentially not letting them
cross. Some have argued that that's kind of an escalation and going kind of
beyond what the state should be doing in terms of enforcing the laws. How
would you kind of summarize the Abbot administration or the State of Texas response to
to to the lifting of Title forty two so far, well, I mean,
it's another kind of show of force at the border. This is this
has been the pattern since Joe Biden became president. The governor and the State
of Texas have spent a lot of money and sent a lot of state troopers
and National Guard to the border, claiming that the federal government isn't doing its
job and isn't controlling the border. So this is kind of just the most
recent installment of that strategy. We did Uriella did see National Guard at the
river last night telling people they couldn't cross into US territory. So to help
you visualize this, there's the Rio Grand and then there was a string of
concertina wire pretty close to the river, and then beyond the concertina wire was
the border wall. So there were hundreds of people lined up between the wire
and the wall waiting for boarder patrol to let them through a gate. Meanwhile,
you had the National Guard kind of at the edge of the river telling
people who were waiting across the river, no, you can't come in.
We're not positive those were state deployed guard because an administration also deployed guard.
Our guess is that they were state because the troops that Biden sent were supposed
to be kind of helping with transportation and logistics and that sort of thing.
So, you know, the state has in recent years really put a premium
on shows of force at the river. You know there were images a couple
of years ago of state troopers forming a lot with a line of vehicles at
the river when we had large groups of migrants, you know, crossing it,
trying to cross it, equal pass and other crossings. So this looks
like kind of another state show of force. All right, well, we
will continue to watch this. I know that things are changing, you know,
by the hour, and you are you continue to watch them. So
thank you Dave for joining us for the to give us the latest update.
Yeah, absolutely, thanks for having me. All right, let's pause to
hear a message from our sponsor. The US is home to BP's largest workforce
in the world, and we've invested more than one hundred forty billion dollars in
America since two thousand and five. We support more than two hundred forty thousand
jobs here, a workforce aiming to deliver the energy America needs today while developing
lower carbon alternatives. See how we are investing in America at BP dot com
slash investing in America. All right, So joining us now is alle hundred
Serrano. Alle hundred has been covering a gun legislation in the Texas legislative session
this year. Hey, drew All one hundred, Thanks for joining us,
Thanks for having me. It was a dramatic week in the Texas House following
a you know, pretty terrible weekend in which, you know, a gunman
and an Alan shopping mall open fire, killing eight people, wounding many others.
This of course, kind of reignited the debate around guns in this state
right around an important time for that debate in the legislature this week, you
know, being the deadline for the House to pass out House bills in the
Chamber in order for them to you know, have a chance of becoming law
during this legislative session. While hundred you have specifically been following the what you
know, we've been kind of calling the raise the age bill, the bill
to raise the ah to buy a semi automatic rifle from eighteen to twenty one.
This has been particularly pushed by Uvaldi families, families of victims in the
Uvaldi shooting. Can you tell us a little bit about the bill, who's
pushing for it, and why this is so important to the Uvaldi families?
Sure? Yeah, So the main bill when we refer to the bill or
where he's the Age's House Bill twenty seven forty four from Tracy King, the
representative from Valda. Essentially, in simple terms, would prohibit selling certain semi
automatic rifles to people younger than twenty one, and it has several exemptions,
the King said. He added after hearing from constituents or concerns such as sporting
or hunting or what have you. But this kind of has been like a
main ask of Valdi families since the shooting. Like this is really like almost
immediately after the shooting, when it became clear over the summer that the gunmen
had tried purchasing rifles like the ones he used, a R fifteen style,
and he bought the two that he had days after turning eighteen, as well
as a bunch of ammunition that he and use in the shooting. So it
becomes a case where families contend and Representative King as well, that they really
believe this had this bill been a law lest year, it could have potentially
thwarted this shooting, right, And we've basically seen these families coming to the
Capitol, you know, throughout the session, you know, speaking at rallies.
You know, we've seen children who were in the school kind of speaking
at rallies, speaking to legislators knocking on doors and everything like that that led
to but you know, essentially like little action. Right there was a committee
hearing. You know, some thought even that was an impressive step in kind
of gunfriendly Texas. But then the bill had been kind of paused, you
know, beyond that hearing did not receive a vote. The deadline to vote
bills out of committee was on Monday, and we kind of came into this
week then with the Alan shooting thrusting this issue you back into the top of
minds. Tell us what happened on Monday. Yeah, so, I I
mean, I like to think about it. It's kind of starting last week,
there's some as you mentioned, families have been coming very They've been a
constant presence at the They've maintained a constant presence at the capitol. And last
week there was one press conference with a couple lawmakers and of a lawmaker mentioned
that the committee had the votes to pass it out and that was kind of
surprising as like a tid bit of news. And then a relative of one
person from the Valda family said that Chair Ryan gee And had told them that
if there were enough votes to get out of committee, he'd put it on
for a vote, but that hadn't happened. So Monday we were kind of
like keeping an eye on this deadline when very early in the day there's a
rally already happening, another press conference at ten am, even before the House
had convened. And then when the Chamber convened, our colleague Eleanor was there
and they announced the committee meeting from the floor, so we kind of just
scrambled to come up with a plan, and she went there, and then
they voted it out. And what was curious that two Republicans joined the six
Democrats on the committee and advancing the bill, and particularly one of them said
in a statement after the fact, Dallas Area Representative that after hearing so much
testimony, he was compelled to vote the way he did. But he added
he wasn't naive that one law could solve this issue. But you know,
you kind of think about like just like the constant cloak of grief that we
kind of have just as a state that keeps experiencing this Like Alan was horrific,
but you know, days before that there was a similar shooting in Cleveland
where it was in a public setting. But you know, a man was
asked to stop shooting his gun by a neighbor, and he killed five of
his neighbors. So I think it's been top of mind, and it's been
kept top of mind by both activists families, but also the occurrences in the
state right, right, So that was a very dramatic moment of the capital.
We had, you know, the families rushing into the room tearfully,
kind of celebrating, saying thank you and everything like that. But it was
sort of a short lived victory, right, because then Thursday was the deadline
for the House to pass bills out. In order for that to happen on
Tuesday, it had to get on basically the House's agenda, and that was
a sort of roughly ten o'clock deadline for that to happen, and the House
was still in session at ten o'clock, ten o'clock at night, and basically
we didn't see it make that agenda, and you know, sort of a
dramatic moment in the capital. Can you just tell us a little bit about
what happened there? Yeah, and also confusing a dad because you know,
it's kind of like like people are trying to keep on, like stay on
top of the issue. But then by by late after Nino's becoming clear that
like it may not happen because of some technicality, So it wasn't immediately clear
like come five o'clock Tuesday, if the Calendar's committee even had the committee report,
which is essentially required before they could even put a bill on the calendar.
So then it like activists were both like commanding both chairs of both committees
just act on it, not really knowing whose onnus it was. But then
the hour slowly ticked by and families kept rallying and chanting up until the very
last minute, where we saw one parent Brett Cross, had to had to
be escorted out by authorities because he was apparently being too loud and the chance
we're even being heard in the full chamber so much that they closed the second
floor doors. So the fight was there up until the last minute, but
ultimately just there was no movement. The Calendars Committee met Tuesday evening, but
they did not put this bill on the calendar. So how should people view
this? I mean, Texas is clearly a gunfriendly state. I don't think
with the current legislature that is going to change anyway. There was a big
kind of celebratory movement on Monday, as we described, but ultimately it did
not lead to any kind of policy changes being made. I mean, what
is the kind of community that was pushing for this feeling this week? Are
they Are they feeling like this is a sign of progress? Are they feeling
like, you know, nothing is going to change here? Yeah, I
can't speak for everyone, but we've seen already that families are are valuing to
keep fighting, and they are already like maintaining that they keep fighting, not
only waiting till the session ends, but you know, keep trying to push
for this particular proposal because technically there are things lawmakers could do, although it
would still be that would still face tall odds. But I think part of
what we're kind of slowly seeing is kind of like this willingness to have a
conversation. And you know, we saw another representative from North Texas talk about
how he was willing to consider some gun control measures after the Allen shooting.
You know, there's a guy who said that he loves guns, he knows
guns, he's around guns, and it's not about to take anyone's guns.
But it just gets to a point where you don't want someone harming someone you
love or someone loved by others. And you know, I'm kind of reminded
of what a one gun reform activists told me a couple of weeks ago.
They were telling me how these shootings are in general, gun bos becoming so
prevalent that like the circles of separation or the degrees of separation or decreasing,
and it's kind of almost getting to a point where it affects everyone, and
that may just be what pushes at least the conversation to a start. Yeah,
you know, and of course, these mass shootings in a lot of
ways only make up a kind of tiny proportion of the gun deaths in Texas.
We had a story by our colleagues Aaron Douglas and Alex Ford this week
in which, you know, it highlighted how in twenty eleven, there were
nine point eight gun deaths deaths by firearms is the term they used, per
one hundred thousand people in Texas. By twenty twenty one, that number had
gone up to fifteen point three, so more than a fifty percent increase in
you know, just a little bit over a decade, and the number of
these deaths and so I don't know, we will see. We're still well
below the peak in nineteen ninety one where that number was twenty point four,
but definitely a lot more conversation around this topic and perhaps a little bit more
willingness. But as you said, even these bills, had they made it
to the House floor, had they gotten a vote, which would have,
you know, a favorable vote, which which felt feels unlikely, they would
have then had to go to the Senate, where maybe there is maybe even
more adamant opposition to this. So you know, the folks pushing for this
certainly have a long way to go. All right, Thank you all,
Hondro for joining us, Thank you for having Okay, So, also this
week trip Fest tickets for twenty twenty three win on sale. Joining us for
a quick conversation about that is Matt Ewalt, our new director of Events and
live journalism for the Tribune. Hey, Matt Hey, Matthew Hey, tell
us a little bit about what we can expect from trip Fest this year.
Yeah, so, we as you mentioned, went on sale Tuesday. What
I'm excited about is building off of the momentum of last year's festival, what
many said was the best festival they had experienced, and we've been able to
announce our first twenty speakers out of what everyone knows is becomes a huge lineup
of voices in national and state politics and policy that you know and as we
joke, some voices you ought to know based on the kind of impact we're
having. So already announced Mattie Parker, Senator Ted Cruz, Delora Suerta,
Andrew Yang a number of others will be rolling out those names over the coming
weeks and months. But just I think excited to bring Texans together into conversation
on issues again across across politics and policy, but issues that impact people's lives,
all right. And this year it will be again in downtown Austin September
twenty one through twenty third. How can people get tickets? They can go
to tripfest dot org and we want everyone to be part of the conversation.
So I think it's helped to remind folks that we have discounts for students,
educators, those in government and working for a nonprofit organization. But go online,
cr slate of speakers and a lot of different options for how you can
engage in trip Fest. Very good. It's It's always one of my favorite
weekends of the year. And I believe if you buy between now in May
thirty first, there is a discount as well. So that note that that
site again is trip fest dot org. That's it, and you're right.
These tickets are the cheapest you're gonna get, and do so before the thirty
first. All right, Thanks matt You're welcome. Thanks Matthew. That's about
all the time we have today. Thank you to our sponsors BP, the
University of Houston, College of Nursing in Texas BioMed. Thank you to Alajandro,
to Dave, to Matt Ewalt, and to our producer Justin. We'll
talk to you next week. The Texas Tribute Spring member drive ins today.
Now's the time to give. Your donation today will be matched by the Tribune's
board of directors support the Texas politics and policy news you can rely on from
Tribcast at Texas Tribune dot org slash donate