Biden’s immigration executive order shows his evolution: Critics

During the 2020 election campaign, President Biden was eager to distinguish himself from his opponent on immigration issues, promising to “restore our moral standing” while calling former President Trump’s policies cruel and inhumane.

Although numbers at the borders have declined, they still remain at historic highs. And with immigration a central issue in the 2024 race, Biden has evolved his approach, adopting hard-line policies that borrow elements from those used by his predecessor.

Biden latest executive order is one example, restricting asylum protections for those crossing between ports of entry if average daily crossings exceed 2,500.

While using border metrics as a basis for asylum processing is new, the restrictions on protections are based on a policy first adopted by Trump. They prompted defenders to commit to suing, arguing the limitations they are so illegal under Biden as they were when they were ousted under his predecessor.

Numerous immigrant rights groups have invoked Trump to criticize Biden for his latest policy.

“We’ve been here before. The policies announced today are near replicas of Trump-era asylum bans. Only now they come from an administration that has promised to protect the right to seek protection and support immigrant communities,” the National Immigrant Justice Center said in a statement after the order was released.

While some have order exploded As one of the most restrictive immigration policies implemented by Biden, it is one of several efforts aimed at controlling border numbers that have soared since the pandemic-era lows seen under Trump.

“President Biden came into office with a promise to restore our asylum system. And while the administration has taken some positive steps, including significantly expanding access to asylum at ports of entry, it is clear that this administration no longer believes in the universal right to seek asylum that it championed when it took office,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick. , policy director at the American Immigration Council.

“It is very obvious that the administration considers reducing border encounters to be more important than the abstract principle of keeping asylum alive. And I think that was something that a lot of people found very disappointing.”

Fresh off a campaign in which Biden said he would offer a stark contrast to Trump, his first days in the White House have reflected those promises.

Biden, on his first day in office, lifted the Muslim ban. Shortly thereafter, his administration rescinded the Remain in Mexico policy, which required asylum seekers to await their case on the other side of the border. And he created a family reunification task force to reconnect children who had been separated from their parents under Trump.

But he also hesitated to suspend Title 42, which used the pandemic as a pretext to deny asylum. Biden ended up removing more people from the US under the policy than Trump, rescinding it more than a year after taking office.

The Biden administration has outlined its own that’s it approach immigration as a collection of carrots and sticks.

Its immigration enforcement guidelines prioritize removing those with serious criminal records over those who are undocumented but otherwise not considered a threat. And a program has been launched to offer temporary entry to migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Venezuela and Nicaragua if they can find a US-based sponsor. The administration has also invested heavily in Latin America in hopes of stemming migration flows.

But Biden officials also resorted to another Trump policy in seeking to limit asylum to those who first travel through other countries without seeking protection there, a policy known to Trump as the transit ban.

“These are several tentacles of a significant shift to the right, which, frankly, I think shouldn’t be a surprise, because Biden himself is a political creature of the 1980s and 1990s, when Democrats were quite aggressive in trying to outflank the Republican Party from the right on a number of issues,” said César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, professor of immigration law at Ohio State University.

“These are people who have a different political sensitivity to migration than the one we find ourselves in now. But it’s hard to walk away from your education. I think the Joe Biden of 2020, who was so critical of the Trump administration, was a much bigger deviation than the Joe Biden we’ve seen over the last 12 months.”

Biden and White House officials have been adamant about drawing a distinction between the president’s latest policy move and Trump’s record and rhetoric on immigration.

“There are several differences between the actions we are taking today and the policies of the Trump era. The Trump administration has attacked nearly every facet of the immigration system and done so in a shameful and inhumane way,” a senior administration official told reporters before listing a series of Trump-era immigration policies.

“The action will not ban people based on their religion. This will not separate children from their mothers. There are also narrow humanitarian exceptions to the asylum ban, including for those facing an acute medical emergency or an imminent and extreme threat to life or safety. And the Trump administration’s actions did not include these exceptions.”

Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who promised to sue to block Biden’s order, said he is “not one of those people who wants to equate President Trump and President Biden.”

But while he said polls show voters want action at the border, that doesn’t mean they prefer the draconian measures promoted by Trump.

“The fact that people say immigration is an important issue for them doesn’t mean they want to see one extreme or the other,” Gelernt said.

The order highlights the complicated nature of immigration policy for Biden, who on Tuesday said Americans’ patience is “running thin at this point” and that “doing nothing is not an option.”

The order and accompanying rule are also rife with complaints about Congressional inaction.

Republicans unified against bipartisan Senate legislation that would have included a measure similar to the one included in Biden’s order, with GOP support all but evaporating when Trump spoke out against the measure.

The senior administration official speaking to reporters described it as Trump working to deny Biden a legislative victory.

But polls also show that voters favor Trump when it comes to determining who best manages the border.

A Marquette University poll of registered voters nationwide conducted last month found that 52 percent said Trump had done a better job on immigration and border security, compared with 25 percent who said Biden had done a better job. work better.

“Some of the interest groups and progressives on the left are upset by Biden’s actions. He should lean on their opposition to insist that he governs from the center,” said Jim Kessler, co-founder of the left-leaning think tank Third Way.

“Nothing scares Trump more than Biden getting the jump on him on border security,” he added.

“The killing of the border bill opened the door for Biden to get a new hearing at the border. The executive order is the next step. But it only works if Biden makes the border a priority day after day.”

But few on the left see it as a compromise, and Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) warned that the policy will certainly become a new baseline.

“Immigration and the border are perhaps the thorniest issues in American politics. Republicans use them to spread fear; they use immigrants as political scarecrows to scare voters. If this executive order goes into effect, it is likely that all future presidents, especially Republicans, will use and expand it to stifle immigration and the right to asylum,” he said in a statement.

“The political pressure to keep the ban in place will be too overwhelming.”