PBS News Hour

JOHN YANG

Good evening. I'm John Yang. Tonight on "PBS News Weekend," at the border, the latest and the Biden administration's immigration reform plans as the president visits the U.S.-Mexico border for the first time since taking office. Then, after the shocking collapse on field of Buffalo Bill safety Damar Hamlin, we look at emergency medical care in the NFL. And lonely Americans, why are more of us feeling alone and spending less time with friends and family? There are real health implications. LAURIE SANTOS,

Yale University

Individuals who report feeling lonely are more likely to experience things like dementia, heart disease, stroke. It actually affects longevity, meaning that people who self-report feeling lonely are even more likely to die than those that aren't. (BREAK)

JOHN YANG

Good evening. President Biden is making his first visit to the southern border as president today after two years of Republican criticism that he's soft on border security. He's in El Paso, Texas, meeting with officials to talk about migration and drug trafficking. The trip comes just days after the president announced policies designed to discourage migrants from seeking asylum at the border. Last year, more than 2 million people were apprehended at the southern border. White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez is here. Why now? Laura, this is, as we said, the Republicans have been taunting him for two years about going to the border. Why now?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ

So the White House says that this trip is because the president wants to see firsthand migration enforcement. He wants to firsthand see how many migrants are coming to El Paso. He stopped at the Bridge of the Americas, which is one of the busiest ports of entry on the U.S.-Mexico border. Of course, as you noted, John, the timing is key here. He's doing this at the start of his third year in the White House and also as the House is being about to be taken over by Republicans, and they are going to be trying to push the administration aggressively on this. So it comes right at this moment.

JOHN YANG

As we said, this is the second shoe this week. He did announce new policies earlier in the week. What were those policies?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ

So the actions taken this week essentially are modeled after the same parole program actions that were taken for Ukrainian refugees. And so what those actions are that they apply to Nicaraguans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Cubans. They will all be able to apply it's 30,000 per month would be able to apply to be admitted to the United States for two years. And then also it's paired with some more enforcement actions, 30,000 per month will be expelled to Mexico. And then that last part has gotten a lot of criticism because of the fact that it's essentially an expansion of Title 42, which is the deportation policy that was first implemented under former President Trump due to the public health pandemic. The administration, the Biden administration has continued it on since.

JOHN YANG

And so it sounds like this is an effort to relieve pressure on the southern border while also providing other pathways for these immigrants. What's the reaction been?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ

So, within his own party, President Biden is facing a lot of criticism from a number of Democrats who have wanted to see Title 42 ended as soon as he took office, as well as from a number of immigrant advocates. I was talking to someone who's actually a source on the ground in El Paso who's been traveling with the President today at the different various stops, an immigrant advocate who said that they relayed to White House advisers that they're concerned that these new actions make it so people have to stay in their home country to apply, rather than making the dangerous trip to the border and being able to apply at the border. This is trying to get people to apply in their home countries, but the concern is that it's too dangerous in their home countries to even wait and people need to leave immediately. So, in addition to that, the White House has been aggressively trying to push back on this idea that it is an expansion of Title 42. The facts are that Title 42, the deportation policy, initially only applied to people coming from the Northern Triangle or people coming migrants coming from Mexico. Now it's been expanded to apply to the Venezuelans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans.

JOHN YANG

You mentioned the Republicans taking over the House. In his speech early yesterday morning, new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said one of the first hearings was going to be at the border. He called this a crisis of safety and sovereignty. What are the politics of this?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ

So the politics has been fraught in the United States for a very long time, John. As it goes all the way back to the George W. Bush administration and then President Barack Obama tried in his second term to pass comprehensive immigration reform and that ultimately failed because the House GOP at the time did not want to take it up. President Biden, when he first took office, said that he was going to try to avoid what happened when he was Vice President. And so he sent an immigration reform bill to Congress shortly after he took office. Within the first few weeks, it was the first big bill he sent to Congress. But two years have gone by. Now, Democrats don't control both chambers, and he is faced with a split Congress and Republicans have all along during those first two years. And now heading into control of the House are saying that they're going to launch investigations even into Alejandro Majorkas, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, and that they're going to, as you noted, hold hearings at the border. So, the White House, the timing is key here. They're clearly trying to get ahead of that as they see some chaos in the House GOP that we witnessed in the past week. And they say that they are trying to find ways to work with Republicans and that if Republicans want to come to an agreement on immigration reform, of course, would likely be coupled with more border security measures that they want to talk to them about that I think it's unlikely.

JOHN YANG

You got about 30 seconds left, President's going on to Mexico. Is this also going to be an issue in meetings there?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ

It will because Mexico is key partner in actually these new enforcement actions. They had to agree. The White House had to work with them, and the administration had to work with them to get them to agree to be taking these nationals when the United States decides to expel them if they crossed illegally, if they cross the border illegally. So, those will be ongoing conversations as Mexico works with the U.S. to try to take these nationals.

JOHN YANG

White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez. Thank you very much.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ

Thank you.

JOHN YANG

Look at the day's other headlines begins in Brazil's capital city of Brazilia, where hundreds of supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed the grounds of the country's congress, presidential palace and Supreme Court. They claim without factual basis that Bolsonaro's election defeat last year was due to fraud. The crowds clashed with police in riot gear who responded with tear gas. Inside, chants of Lula lost were heard as the crowds vandalized the halls and lounged on the furniture. New President -- Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was inaugurated last week. He was in a different city today. Bolsonaro left Brazil days ago. The far right ex-president has long sown distrust over the legitimacy of the country's election system. The U.S. says it condemns any effort to undermine democracy. And China opened its borders to international travel today for the first time in three years. In airport terminals, family and friends embraced, some of them separated since the pandemic began in 2020. Even as the battle cut -- the country battles a surge in COVID cases, incoming travelers will no longer need to be quarantined upon arrival, but they will still need to show proof of a negative test. In California, they are bracing for another week of torrential downpours and high winds. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses are without power, and mudslides are possible with the ground already saturated by days of heavy rain. At least six people died in last week's storms. The next wave of storms is forecast to arrive tomorrow and could bring between six to 12 inches of rain. But that's still not enough to end the state's drought. And a passing of note award winning author Russell Banks has died from cancer. His celebrated works include the novel's Continental Drift, Cloud Splitter and The Sweetheart After. In 2011, Banks spoke with correspondent Jeffrey Brown. RUSSELL BANKS,

AUTHOR

The process of writing fiction is really the only way I can penetrate things that are truly mysterious to me. And what's truly mysterious to me are people who are not like me, who aren't privileged in the same I said I am, and who are therefore likely to be marginalized and outcasts, or people who we tend to generalize the stereotype.

JOHN YANG

Russell Banks was 82 years old. Still to come on "PBS News Weekend," why do so many Americans feel lonely? And what can they do about it? A young immigrants take on embracing immigration. (BREAK) On this final weekend of the NFL regular season, teams are showing support for Buffalo Bill's safety Damar Hamlin with warm up jerseys and by highlighting his uniform number three on the 30 yard line. Doctors say Hamlin is making steady progress after suffering cardiac arrest during a Monday night game. Today tweeting from his hospital bed. The urgency of that night is evident in recordings of the radio traffic.

MAN

We're going to need everybody, all call. All call. We need airway. Call, bring everybody. We need an airway doctor, everybody. Bring the cop with the medics.

JOHN YANG

The incident has put a spotlight on a team that's at every game, but hopes it's never put on the field. the medical teams. Jordan Rodrigues is a reporter for The Athletic. She's at Lumen Field in Seattle, where the Los Angeles Rams are playing the Seattle Seahawks. Jordan, doctors say that on-field CPR is the reason that Hamlin's brain function has returned to normal. But that response wasn't just luck. How did they prepare for that? JORDAN RODRIGUES, Reporter,

The Athletic

Yes, so it's called an emergency action protocol, and the NFL mandates this league wide. And so basically, when the team's athletic training staff rushes out to the field, they have the opportunity in severe cases of trauma to activate the emergency active protocol, which brings in trauma specialists of a variety of fields. And this is something that's jointly agreed upon by the NFL and NFLPA and rehearsed every year and gone over in detail before every game as well.

JOHN YANG

Talk about that preparation. They drill just like the players drill.

JORDAN RODRIGUES

Yes. So, every game, it's called a 60 minutes meeting, literally at the 60 minutes mark. Medical professionals from both teams and also independent league appointed medical professionals, as well as positions from local trauma centers, paramedics and EMTs, they all meet at the middle of the field or in one of the tunnels to go over every step of the emergency protocol. And this is something that teams are also required to rehearse before the first preseason begins and also on site at the stadium and at their practice facilities.

JOHN YANG

How many members are on this team, for instance, today? How many medical personnel are in the stadium and on the field?

JORDAN RODRIGUES

Yes. So up to 30 at every game, and no less than 20. Everyone from, again, two independently appointed teams of EMTs with the most advanced mandated ambulance care, basically described to me as a traveling emergency room in itself, airway specialists. This was absolutely crucial in the Damar Hamlin situation, as having a certified airway specialist to help in the instance of that cardiac arrest and then the subsequent breathing specialists ranging from dentists to ophthalmologists. In this case, this was a severe incident of cardiac arrest and severe trauma. And so those specialists were the ones to rush out onto the field after they were signaled to by the Buffalo Bills medical staff.

JOHN YANG

And even the ambulance at the stadium is not your garden variety ambulance, right?

JORDAN RODRIGUES

Right. They're in the tunnel, and they have specialized cardiac arrest equipment and life support equipment within that ambulance. So when people watching this game from their couches and obviously in absolute horror at the situation unfolding and watched the ambulance sitting on the field, it wasn't just sitting on the field. It's equipped with cardiac arrest equipment, oxygen equipment, advanced special care, and certified EMT and paramedics on staff. And frankly, it's a traveling life support machine.

JOHN YANG

How long has this program been in place?

JORDAN RODRIGUES

So this is perfected every single year by the NFL. They basically have third party medical professionals consult on how they can troubleshoot the process. It's been described to me by executives across the league as something that's really become way more advanced, especially in recent years, along with the advancement of medical technology and spotters and the booths and those types of things as well. And this is something that they are constantly having to get approval of every single year by third party consultants to make sure that the protocol is up to date and to make sure that it's, you know, in the worst case scenario, as was that night. You know, you hope it's never has to be utilized, but making sure that it's as advanced and up to date as possible and again approved by third party specialists.

JOHN YANG

And despite all the praise that this -- the medical team is getting for what happened Monday night, are they going to review this, see if they can make it even better?

JORDAN RODRIGUES

Yes, they will, because, like I said, every single time, even in the case of a successful operation, as I think we could say now, and doctors at the University of Cincinnati Hospital where Damar Hamlin is, have said that this protocol was, when going into place, was really what saved his life and restored his neurological function. It still will be reviewed. It still has to have separate approval in the offseason before it can be rehearsed and then deployed.

JOHN YANG

Jordan Rodrigues of The Athletic. Thank you very much.

JORDAN RODRIGUES

Thank you so much.

JOHN YANG

People with robust social connections are more likely to live longer, healthier and happier lives. But according to Census Bureau surveys, people were spending less time with friends and more time alone even before the pandemic, which only intensified the sense of social isolation and loneliness. Laurie Santos is a cognitive scientist and psychology professor at Yale University, where her class, Psychology and the Good Life, is one of the school's most popular courses. She's turned it into a podcast, the Happiness Lab. Laurie Santos, how pervasive is this problem in America right now?

LAURIE SANTOS

I mean, it's pretty bad. It's often talked about as an epidemic. You know, some surveys reveal that around 60 percent of people in the U.S. right now report feeling lonely on a pretty regular basis. And that's pretty devastating from a public health perspective. Right. This is worse than rates of obesity. This is worse than rates of diabetes. And everything we know suggests that loneliness might be as big of a public health threat in terms of the effect that it has on our bodies and our minds.

JOHN YANG

What's brought this on? Why? Obviously the pandemic, I think, aggravated it. Even before the pandemic, people were talking about this.

LAURIE SANTOS

Yes. If you look at rates of loneliness, there's lots of evidence that they've been increasing linearly since the 1970s. Right. And that's long before the pandemic. That's actually long before some of the other culprits things like cell phones and so on. And so I think the evidence really points to the fact that there are probably a lot of causes going on at once, but those things are coming together to really make us a much more unhappy and a much more isolated kind of population right now.

JOHN YANG

What are some of those causes that are running together?

LAURIE SANTOS

I think one of the big ones that we don't often think about is just time, right? People are busy. People are spending more time at work. I think that we just don't have enough free time to connect with the people that we care about. I think there's also lots of other interesting demands on our time. You know, back in the 1970s, there wasn't Netflix and all these video games and the kinds of things that we could be doing by ourselves to entertain ourselves. And I think also, you know, like this social media wasn't around in the 1970s, but I think it is having a big effect. Right. Our technology in theory is there to connect us socially. How many times have you been to a restaurant, seen people not talking to the folks at their table because they were looking down at their phones? I think more and more we're connecting through our technology, but that means missing out on the kinds of connections we can experience in real life.

JOHN YANG

What are the health effects of loneliness?

LAURIE SANTOS

I mean, there are many and surprising. So individuals who report feeling lonely are more likely to experience things like dementia, heart disease, stroke. It actually affects longevity. Meaning that people who self-report feeling lonely are even more likely to die than those that aren't. Vivek Murthy the current surge in general estimates that reporting that you feel lonely is like smoking 15 cigarettes a day in terms of its impact on our health and our well-being.

JOHN YANG

It used to be that a lot of this discussion about loneliness focused on older people, that retired people losing that social connection of work. Their spouses or partners may die. But are we seeing this more among younger people now?

LAURIE SANTOS

I mean, that's the most striking thing, especially for me as a college professor, are the rates of loneliness that we see among our young people right now. So nationally, among college students, we see levels of loneliness around 60 percent, which was so striking to me. Right. These are students who are young, who are living on campus, often in the dorms with other students, yet 60 percent of them are reporting feeling very lonely most.

JOHN YANG

And explain I talk about that they were living in a group situation, yet they're lonely, what -- sort of alone in a crowd.

LAURIE SANTOS

Yes. And I think interacting with their technology in a way that prevents connection in real life. You know, I can't tell you how many times I've walked into my dining hall and seen proud of students, each of whom have big headphones on, looking down at their laptop screens, looking down at their phones. I think we're really missing out on the kind of connection that can happen when you talk to a person in person and you have that in real life social connection.

JOHN YANG

What can people do to avoid this? Or if people are feeling lonely, what advice do you have for them?

LAURIE SANTOS

I think the first piece of advice is just to remember that it's a common problem. I think loneliness can feel stigmatizing. You can feel like there's something wrong with you if you're feeling lonely, but if you realize that upwards of 60 percent of people out there are feeling the same, you know, it's not such a bad thing, right? It's something that you can admit to. And I think admitting that you're feeling loneliness is part of the first step. I think one thing to do is then to make sure you're really connecting with the folks who you have in your life. One of the problems with being really busy is that we don't often take the time we need to connect with the people we care about our friends, our family members. But it's as simple as picking up the phone to try to reconnect with them. I think there's also ways that we can try to make new connections, and this is something that I think we often forget to do. Right. Again, it's too easy to stay in our house and watch Netflix, but if you're watching the basketball game, could you head out to a pub and watch that basketball game? If you're going to be doing something engaging in knitting or even on a craft, can you join a craft group and so on. This is another big change we've seen since the 1970s, is that these so called third places that people would meet with other friends, like bowling leaks and so on, these kinds of things have gone away in the modern day, but we can bring them back. We can take some action to make those kinds of collective social connections as well.

JOHN YANG

Laurie Santos of Yale University. Thank you very much.

LAURIE SANTOS

Thanks so much for having me.

JOHN YANG

Devashish Basnet is a Rhodes Scholar studying refugee and migration patterns. He was a refugee himself, leaving Nepal as a child when his family sought asylum in the United States. Tonight his brief but spectacular take on embracing Immigration. DEVASHISH BASNET,

Hunter College Senior

I lived under almost four or five different immigration statuses, including DACA, which is the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program that the Obama administration created. My identity and my presence in this country is inherently politicized. One morning you're waking up and seeing the Supreme Court debate over whether or not you belong in this country. The next morning, you're seeing news of a Congressperson declaring that DACA recipients are, you know, stealing jobs. So it's a harrowing experience. My family and I moved to the United States from Nepal when I was about six years old. The country was in a time of political transitions. It created a really unsafe environment. And so my family and I chose to seek asylum in the United States. I grew up faster than a lot of my peers, and I think a lot of immigrant children have to live with this reality. I was pulled out of school days just to go to immigration court hearings, just to go to asylum interviews. At a certain point, I knew more about immigration policy than any 11-year-old should have. Being black and brown and experiencing the immigration processing system is not just a difficult journey, it's a racist and rather discriminatory journey. Black and brown immigrants tend to resettle into neighborhoods that are already predominantly black and brown. And so not only are they facing the perils that I described in the immigration experience, but they're also facing the same impacts of institutional racism and institutional discrimination that U.S. born citizens are subject to as well. A fair immigration system lies at the midpoint between enforcement and legal pathways. And so the more legal pathways you create, the more likely migrants will be subject to follow those legal pathways. Migration has been a permanent feature of human life from long before now and will be a permanent feature long after. As we see more and more climate disasters, war and political disasters, we're going to see more migrants. It's not a question of if, but it's a matter of when. That's why we need to build a flexible and humane immigration processing system first start to not treat migration as a threat, but as an opportunity. We are missing out on tapping into potential to drastically transform our country's economy, to drastically transform cities. My lived experience going through immigration and experiencing the core tenets of the application process, all of that is directly influenced how I view and how I hope to shape policy in the future. I think the people closest to the problems are the people closest to the solutions. My name is Devashish Basnet, and this is my brief but spectacular take on embracing immigration.

JOHN YANG

Now online, a federal appeals court has ruled that two Americans can wear turbines, beards and uncut hair during the Marine basic training. It's part of their Sikh religion. All that and more is on our website, pbs.org/NewsHour. And that is "PBS News Weekend" for this Sunday. I'm John Yang. For all my colleagues, thanks for joining us. Have a good week.