President Joe Biden is preparing an executive order that limits asylum requests and allows the border with Mexico to be closed once a certain number of illegal crossings is exceeded. The measure will be announced on Tuesday by the president, who will be accompanied by mayors of border cities, areas that have been impacted by the increase in migratory flows during the Democratic Administration. The Executive has been preparing the measure since April. This will arrive in the middle of the electoral campaign towards the November elections, a process where border management is one of the issues that most concern the electorate.
The order will allow immigration agents to quickly deport those who enter the country irregularly. It is not yet known what ceiling the Government will set to decree the closure of the border. In accordance with Political, some Administration officials have set the figure at 4,000 daily crossings over the course of a week. Once this quota is reached, immigration agents would begin to quickly return new arrivals.
For this, Biden will make use of section 212 (f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, a resource used by Donald Trump during his presidency to impose a draconian immigration policy and prevent entries into the United States. The former Republican president invoked this text to carry out his controversial veto of Muslims from six countries in 2017. For now, it seems that the executive order protects unaccompanied minors, who would be exempt from the new rule.
The executive order also toughens the granting of asylum, one of the protections that serve as a pillar of rights in the United States. The Government currently processes about 1,450 applications daily at ports of entry. Immigration authorities have been fighting for months to have these processes started in a mobile application and from the country of origin of those who wish to obtain this right. The Department of Homeland Security, on which the Border Patrol depends, seeks to ensure that the agents who conduct the first interviews to grant asylum have greater freedom to reject those who do not qualify sooner. It is estimated that there are some two million asylum requests waiting to be decided by judges specialized in migration. The vast majority of these people are awaiting resolution of their cases in the United States and leading a normal life.
Biden has been cooking the proposal for months. It was at the beginning of April when it emerged that the president was preparing a border control measure. Since then and until now, the general spirit of the measure has been shared, but not great details. The White House does not rule out that the executive order will be taken to court by human rights organizations or by Republican states, who are very critical of the president’s position on border management.
“Any decision by the Administration to criminalize parents, children and individuals seeking safety on our border would be a useless repetition of the mistakes of the past,” says Marisa Limón, executive director of the Las Américas center, which supports migrants. This organization is based in El Paso, Texas. The mayor of this border city is expected to be one of those who accompany Biden in signing the executive order.
The proposal comes at a time when the border is experiencing moments of tense calm. Illegal crossings fell in May again for the third consecutive month. The Border Patrol recorded 118,000 arrests (about 3,800 daily), a decrease from the 129,000 crossings detected in April. In March there were 137,000. The figures are far from the nearly 250,000 arrests that were made in December 2023, the largest month in history since records have been kept. The United States Government has admitted that the drop in these numbers has been possible due to the brakes that the Mexican authorities have imposed on migrants seeking to reach the north.
The executive order will be a weapon that Biden can sell to the electorate during the debate with Trump, scheduled for June 27. The Republican, on the other hand, has among his campaign promises to close the border with Mexico on the first day of his return to the White House. Furthermore, he has used his xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric throughout the election campaign.
The Democratic Executive has insisted that immigration control should be the task of the Legislative Branch. Only congressional action could secure an area that is a priority for both parties ahead of the fall elections. A bipartisan group of senators negotiated for weeks an ambitious rule that had the approval of the White House. This, however, was rejected by the Republicans, who did not want to give Biden a victory on one of the most important flanks on the way to the polls. A second vote on this law failed on May 23, when the Senate again denied it. On this occasion, several Democrats rejected it, criticizing that the Government was following steps previously marked by Trumpism.
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