Biden rolls out asylum restrictions to help ‘gain control’ of the border

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled plans to enact immediate significant restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border as the White House tries to neutralize immigration as a political liability ahead the November elections.

The long-anticipated presidential proclamation would bar migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. The Democratic president had contemplated unilateral action for months after the collapse of a bipartisan border security deal in Congress that most Republican lawmakers rejected at the behest of former President Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee.

Biden said he preferred more lasting action via legislation but “Republicans have left me no choice.” Instead, he said he was acting on his own to “gain control of the border” while also insisting that “I believe immigration has always been the lifeblood of America.”

Trump “told the Republicans … that he didn’t want to fix the issue, he wanted to use it to attack me,” Biden said. “It was a cynical, extremely cynical, political move and a complete disservice to the American people who are looking for us not to weaponize the border but to fix it.”

Trump, on the other hand, used his social media account to assail Biden again over immigration, saying the Democrat had “totally surrendered our Southern Border” and his order was “all for show” ahead of their June 27 presidential debate.

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 the daily averages are higher now. Average daily arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico were last below 2,500 in January 2021, the month that Biden took office. The last time the border encounters dipped to 1,500 a day was in July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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.

Homeland Security said increased enforcement with Mexico since high-level bilateral meetings in late December has lowered illegal crossings but is “likely to be less effective over time,” creating a need for more action. “Smuggling networks are adaptable, responding to changes put in place,” the department said in a federal rule published Tuesday.

The department predicts that arrests for illegal crossings may climb to a daily average as high as 6,700 from July through September.

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 could face punishments that could include a five-year bar from reentering the U.S. or even criminal prosecution.

Meanwhile, anyone who expresses that fear or an intention to seek asylum will be screened by a U.S. asylum officer but at a higher standard than currently used. If they pass the screening, they can pursue more limited forms of humanitarian protection, including the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

“We’re troubled to see this administration raise the bar on asylum seekers who are coming to our southern border and exercising a legal right,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Global Refuge. “Certainly no one wants to see migrants who may be coming to seek a better life or for economic opportunity game the asylum system, but we see in our clients and in other immigrants people who are fleeing the most dire of circumstances at a time of unprecedented global migration and believe that the U.S. is still a beacon of hope and refuge.”

At the border Tuesday, there were no visible signs of immediate impact.

Iselande Peralta, a Haitian mother staying at a migrant shelter in Reynosa, Mexico, with her 3-year-old son, said the U.S. was within its rights to enforce new restrictions. She has been trying for 10 months to get an appointment through U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s online app, called CBP One. Peralta, 26, wouldn’t consider crossing illegally and considers CBP One her best option.

“Even if I was crazy, I wouldn’t cross the river. How would I do that with a child as young as him? I’m willing to wait,” she said.

Biden’s directive is coming when the number of migrants encountered at the border have been on a consistent decline since December, but senior administration officials say the numbers are still too high and could spike in better weather, as is typical.