Biden moves forward with plan to tighten asylum restrictions at US-Mexico border

President Biden’s administration plans to soon issue regulations to consolidate the drastic asylum restrictions it adopted at the southern border over the summer, two U.S. officials told CBS News, describing changes which would make the lifting of the strict rules in 2017 much less likely. the near future.

In June, Mr. Biden issued a proclamation suspend entry of most migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice implemented his directive by promulgating a rule that virtually halted the processing of asylum applications between official border ports of entry. After these strict measures came into force, illegal border crossings fell to their lowest level in four years.

The administration plans to announce regulatory changes as early as Monday to implement an amended proclamation, said the U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal government plans.

The planned changes would make it much more difficult for authorities to end the partial asylum ban by changing the threshold at which it would be turned off. The current order states that the measure will lapse if the seven-day average of daily illegal border crossings falls below 1,500. (The last time the average of daily illegal border crossings was below 1,500 for a month , that was in the summer of 2020, when the pandemic curbed migration, according to federal data.)

However, under the changes, asylum restrictions would only be turned off if the seven-day average remains below 1,500 for 28 days. It would also include more migrants in the deactivation trigger calculations. Currently, crossings by unaccompanied non-Mexican children are excluded. The updated calculations would include all unaccompanied children.

Taken together, the planned updates would likely ensure that Mr. Biden’s decision to severely restrict asylum remains in place for the foreseeable future, through the election and beyond. CBS News first reported the administration was considering these changes earlier this month.

In a statement to CBS News, DHS spokesperson Naree Ketudat said the department “cannot comment on the content of a rule that is not yet final or published.” White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández did not discuss the coming changes but said Mr. Biden’s “decisive” actions in June were working.

“July and August saw the lowest dating levels since September 2020,” Fernández Hernández said. “The Biden-Harris administration has taken effective action, while Republican officials continue to show they are more interested in cynically playing politics than securing the border.”

While illegal border crossings had declined by early 2024, primarily due to increased efforts by the Mexican government to interdict U.S.-bound migrants, there was a sharp decline after the proclamation took effect. from Mr. Biden in early June. Migrant arrivals have since stagnated in August and September.

Border policy

Immigration has been a major political headache for the Biden administration and Democrats. In 2021, 2022 and 2023, migrant encounters at the southern border reached record levels, creating images of chaos, taxing resources in some major cities and upending immigration policies. Recent polls have shown growing support among Americans for tougher immigration policies, such as the mass deportations promised by former President Donald Trump.

In recent months, Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, have sought to change that narrative by passing tougher immigration measures, including a bipartisan border security deal that collapsed in Congress after Trump urged Republicans to reject it. This bill would have imposed permanent restrictions on asylum and strengthened the ranks of border agents, asylum evaluators and immigration judges.

Harris is expected to travel to Douglas, Ariz., on Friday for her first visit to the southern border since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee.

The asylum restrictions passed in June marked a significant policy and policy shift by the Biden administration, which took office in 2021 promising to expand access to the U.S. asylum system.

The measure, which draws on the same legal authority invoked by the Trump administration to justify several immigration restrictions, means that most migrants who cross the southern border illegally are not eligible for asylum. It also ended the longstanding requirement that border agents ask migrants if they feared harm before expelling them.

Biden administration officials have argued that their border approach is different from that of the Trump administration, as they have coupled their asylum limits with new programs that allow migrants to come to the United States legally, as an initiative that allows Americans to sponsor citizens of four Latin American and Caribbean countries. country.

The administration’s actions have faced scrutiny from both sides. The American Civil Liberties Union and other migrant rights advocates are urging a federal court to strike down the asylum crackdown as illegal, saying it tramples on the rights of desperate asylum seekers. Republican lawmakers, meanwhile, said Mr. Biden was too slow to use his presidential powers to crack down on border crossings.

Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former U.S. immigration official under Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said Democrats’ adoption of tougher asylum rules reflects a recognition “of the need to make some changes to asylum at the border to make the system viable and manageable.”