2024-06-04 18:33:37
President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled plans to enact immediate significant restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border as the White House tries to neutralise immigration as a political liability ahead of the November elections.
The White House detailed the long-anticipated presidential proclamation signed by Biden, which would bar migrants from being granted asylum when US officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed.
The Democratic president has contemplated unilateral action for months, especially after the collapse of a bipartisan border security deal in Congress that most Republican lawmakers rejected at the behest of Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.
The order will go into effect when the number of border encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500 per day, according to senior administration officials. That means Biden’s order should go into effect immediately, because that figure is higher than the daily averages now. The restrictions would be in effect until two weeks after the daily encounter numbers are at or below 1,500 per day between ports of entry, under a seven-day average. Those figures were first reported by The Associated Press on Monday.
Once this order is in effect, migrants who arrive at the border but do not express fear of returning to their home countries will be subject to immediate removal from the United States, within a matter of days or even hours. Those migrants would face punishments that could include a five-year bar from reentering the US, as well as potential criminal prosecution.
Meanwhile, anyone who expresses that fear or intention to seek asylum will be screened by the US. asylum officer but at a higher standard than what is currently used. If they pass the screening, they can pursue more limited forms of humanitarian protection, including the UN Convention Against Torture.
Biden’s order was detailed by four senior administration officials who insisted on anonymity to describe the effort to reporters. The directive is coming when the number of migrants encountered at the border have been on a consistent decline since December, but senior administration officials nonetheless justified the order by arguing that the numbers are still too high and that the figures could spike in better weather, when the encounter numbers traditionally increase.
Yet many questions and complications remain about how Biden’s new directive would be implemented.
For instance, the Biden administration already has an agreement with Mexico in which Mexico agrees to accept up to 30,000 citizens a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela once they are denied entry from the US, and senior administration officials say that will continue under this order. But it is unclear what happens to nationals of other countries who are denied under Biden’s directive.
Senior officials also acknowledged that the administration’s goal of deporting migrants quickly is complicated by insufficient funding from Congress to do so. The administration also faces certain legal constraints when it comes to detaining migrant families, although the administration said it would continue to abide by those obligations.
The legal authority being invoked by Biden comes under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows a president to limit entries for certain migrants if it’s deemed “detrimental” to the national interest. Senior officials expressed confidence that they would be able to implement Biden’s order, despite threats from prominent legal groups to sue the administration over the directive.
“We intend to sue,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who successfully argued similar legal challenges under Trump. “A ban on asylum is illegal just as it was when Trump unsuccessfully tried it.”
The senior administration officials insisted that Biden’s proposal differs dramatically from that of Trump, who leaned on the same provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act that Biden is using, including his 2017 directive to bar citizens of Muslim-majority nations and his efforts in 2018 to clamp down on asylum.
