President Joe Biden on Tuesday temporarily detained most asylum seekers at the U.S. southern border, announcing an executive action to prevent migrants from staying in the United States amid a sharp rise in illegal immigration.
The order will also impact asylum seekers along the California coast.
The restrictions will come into force once the average number of encounters between illegal migrants and border officials reaches 2,500 per day over the course of a week. Since that has already been the case this week, the rules will come into force from midnight, officials said.
The new rule is sure to face legal challenges from immigration groups. Under the order, officials can expel migrants to Mexico or their home countries within hours or days.
“Migrants will be prohibited from receiving asylum at our southern border unless they apply for it after entry through an established, lawful process,” Biden said in announcing the measure on Tuesday. “Those who seek to enter the United States legally, such as by making an appointment and coming to a port of entry, will continue to be eligible for asylum.”
The rule applies not only to those seeking to cross the southern border with Mexico, but also to immigrants seeking to enter the country illegally via the U.S. “southern coast,” including California. If these individuals are encountered on land by U.S. Border Patrol, they will also be denied asylum and deported, a U.S. official told McClatchy.
The border will be reopened once the average number of asylum seekers over the course of a week drops to 1,500 or less. Once this average remains constant, the border will be reopened to asylum seekers after two weeks.
Biden’s proclamation falls under two sections of the Immigration and Nationality Act. Exceptions are made for unaccompanied children, victims of human trafficking and migrants who use the CBP One application for legal entry.
During the ban period, migrants can still apply for asylum, but the hurdles for entry will be significantly higher. Anyone who enters the USA illegally can expect a five-year entry ban.
Biden’s approach is similar to a Trump-era attempt in 2018 to limit migration that was rejected by federal courts.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which led the lawsuit against Trump at the time, said it intended to sue the Biden administration over the new measure.
The Trump campaign has already released a statement accusing Biden of not going far enough and criticizing the president for exempting unaccompanied children from deportation policies. Biden’s actions have drawn the ire of some Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including one from California, for various reasons.
“By reinstating Trump’s asylum ban, President Biden has undermined American values and abandoned our country’s commitment to providing people fleeing persecution, violence and authoritarianism with an opportunity to seek refuge in the United States,” Senator Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) said Tuesday.
“This asylum ban will not solve the problems at our border, just as it did under the Trump administration,” said Padilla, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Immigration, Citizenship and Border Security, who has criticized recent border legislation. “It will result in people with legitimate asylum claims being prevented from seeking safety and being sent back to danger.”
Leading Republican politicians also criticized the move.
“If he cared about the border, he would have done this a long time ago,” Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Tuesday.
The number of migrants attempting to enter the United States each month has declined since December 2023. That month, the number of immigrants crossing the border hit a monthly record, as Border Patrol stopped nearly 250,000 people at the southwest border. In April, there were 128,900 encounters.
Most recently, in July 2020, a few months after the outbreak of the corona pandemic, there were 1,500 border crossings per day.
Biden stressed that Congress still needs to pass legislation to better fund border control and immigration policy.
The measure follows a similar congressional package that Republicans killed in February of this year. Former President Donald Trump urged lawmakers not to support the current White House’s efforts to curb immigration. The bill failed again in the Senate last month.
“I came here today to do what Republicans in Congress don’t want to do: take the necessary steps to secure our border,” Biden said on Tuesday. “Four months ago, after weeks of intense negotiations between my staff and Democrats and Republicans, we reached a clear, unambiguous bipartisan agreement. It was the strongest border security agreement in decades.”
But then the Republicans walked away, Biden said: “Why? Because Trump told them to.”
Immigration has become a central issue in the November election, which is expected to be a rematch of the 2020 election between Biden and Trump.
Congress hasn’t passed comprehensive immigration reform in decades. The Senate passed a bipartisan measure in 2013, but it failed to advance in the House. Instead, lawmakers have often used the polarizing issue as a political football over the years.
