The Trump team focused on stopping a surge before it happened.

During the beginning of the pandemic, right around the time of the implementation of Title 42, the public-health measure used to expel migrants, the White House began leading a morning call among administration officials to monitor the number of migrants coming from various places and make sure that they were removed from the United States expeditiously.

They didn’t want overcrowding at any border facilities for public-health reasons, and they didn’t want any backups that would potentially overtop the system somewhere and encourage more people to come.

With most migrants there might be a few options of where they could be returned. With Haitian migrants, there was only one — Haiti.

This meant constant negotiations with the Haitian government, sometimes over each flight and how many people would be on it.