WASHINGTON – Facing mounting political pressure over migrant flows at the US southern border, President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed an executive order temporarily halting asylum applications after the daily average number of arrivals between official ports of entry exceeded 2,500. senior administration official.
A senior administration official said the shutdown would take effect immediately because that threshold had already been met. The border will be opened only after this number falls to 1500. The President’s order will suspend the entry of noncitizens who illegally cross the southern border into the United States under Sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
Senior administration officials told reporters on Tuesday that “illegal or unauthorized crossers across the southern border will generally not be eligible for asylum unless they are admitted by proclamation, except in exceptional compelling circumstances.”
Officials said migrants who did not meet the “credible fear” requirement when they applied for asylum could be removed immediately, and that “we expect to remove these individuals within days or even hours.”
The White House has released details of the long-awaited move to lawmakers Mondaybut confirmed the details of the executive order Tuesday morning ahead of the president’s scheduled appearances in the East Room of the White House with the mayors of several border cities.
“This is definitely a step in the right direction,” he said. Texas State Representative Eddie Jones, Jr.’s district includes Eagle Pass, Texas. “One of a series of steps we need to take to ensure we can secure the border.”
In 2018, the Trump administration tried to impose similar border restrictions, but the courts blocked them. The Biden administration now expects to defend the executive order against legal challenges.
The executive order will also have some exceptions, including for unaccompanied minors.
Donald Trump’s campaign spokeswoman Carolyn Leavett, in her written statement, reiterated the former president’s slogan that “border invasion and migrant crime will not stop until Crooked Joe Biden” and claimed that the exception would give “a green light to child traffickers and sex traffickers”. He was deported from the White House.”
Republican lawmakers are calling the move too little, too late.
“(Biden) deliberately created a crisis at the border,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer. R-ND. “(Executive action) has more political risk than political benefit, especially because his base will reject it.”
But the White House has repeatedly claimed that it was Republicans in Congress who failed to take action on immigration. Earlier this year, Trump urged House GOP members to kill a bipartisan border funding bill that had been debated in the Senate. At the time, House Speaker Mike Johnson and other Republicans argued that the Senate bill did not go far enough and that a tougher immigration bill prevailed in the House.
“President Biden led the historic opening of legal pathways for individuals, including families, to enter the United States through a legal process, including the CBP One mobile app to request an appointment at the port of entry as well as to provide family members. reunification programs in regional countries and the historic parole process for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans,” said a senior administration official. “Thus, the action we’re announcing today comes alongside those legal avenues.”
The enforcement action comes on the heels of a Mexico’s historic presidential election and as the rise of the campaign in the United States. Trump has it A 30-point advantage with registered voters A CNBC national poll in late March showed a 23-point advantage among Latino voters, including a 23-point advantage among Latino voters when asked which candidate would do better on immigration and border security.
Many immigrant advocates are outraged by the president’s tougher immigration policies and argue that the changes will lead to chaos.
“This is a betrayal of what we were told in his campaign four years ago,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the California-based Immigrant Advocates Law Center. “We were told that President Biden would restore humanity to our border… But what we’re seeing is history repeating itself.”