U.S. President joe Biden. Credit | REUTERS
United States: President Biden on Tuesday is set to sign an order that grants him the authority to close the US border with Mexico to migrants selectively at specific reasonable circumstances, which, in effect, effectively ends asylum seekers in the United States.
Joe Biden’s senior staff has recently informed some lawmakers of the plan regarding the action and said that the president is going to sign the order together with several mayors from South Texas.
More about the news
Representative Henry Cuellar, Democrat of Texas, who previously criticized Mr. Biden for not bolstering enforcement at the border earlier in his presidency, said, “I’ve been briefed on the pending executive order,” as New York Times reported.
“I certainly support it because I’ve been advocating for these measures for years. While the order is yet to be released, I am supportive of the details provided to me thus far,” he added.
What would the order signify?
The order would be the most stringent border policy that President Biden has implemented or that any modern Democrat, and resembled a Trump plan from 2018 to only prevent migration, which was denounced by Democrats and stopped by federal courts.
While the executive action is poised to trigger lawsuits, Mr. Biden has political pressure to act on the issue of illegal migration, which will be a significant focus for voters in the US presidential elections this year.
The decision is a demonstration of the immigration policy that has shifted dramatically to the right within Biden’s administration. With more than two years left before the November 2024 election, polls show that border measures, which used to be dubbed as racist by the Democratic Party and praised by then-president Donald Trump, are increasingly gaining support among the Democrats as well.
Details of the order
The order would enable, in effect, officials at the border expel the migrants and swiftly refuse their applications as asylum seekers as soon as the frequency of border crossings shall increase.
Officials of the government earlier this year talked of Mr. Biden into shutting down the border in the event that there were average daily crossings of 5,000 or eight thousand five hundred in a single day, but sources involved in the negotiations pointed to the fact that this number wasn’t set and could, in fact, be adjusted. White House officials, especially in recent months, have been seeking a switch that would allow Mr. Biden to close the border.
According to a person with specific knowledge of the data, on Sunday, border agents arrested over 3,500 migrants, who entered the country irregularly. The numbers on Sunday were of similar trends as the week before which shows a consistent flows of cross over at the southern border.
The restrictions, however, will probably exclude children who seek asylum on their own, as an official familiar with the order for immigrant detention suggested.
The executive action will probably resemble part of a two-bill measure from earlier this year and while lacking many of the components in border security restrictions which Congress for years has only flirted with. It would have allocated billions to border agents, diplomats, and immigration officials and helped hire thousands of new asylum officers to consider claims.
Congress tried to pass the bill in February, but Republicans blocked it, claiming that it was not ambitious enough. Some of them, incited by Mr. Trump, refused to approve Mr. Biden a law in a year of elections. Mr. Biden’s aides think that it can help the Democrats persuade and convince voters that this administration has sought ways to address the problem at the border while the Republicans were keen on milking it for votes.
According to Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesman, “While congressional Republicans chose to stand in the way of additional border enforcement, President Biden will not stop fighting to deliver the resources that border and immigration personnel need to secure our border,” as the New York Times reported.
Although he did not confirm the future plans further, he said that the administration was exploring “a series of policy options, and we remain committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system.”
