Biden takes on Trump over border crisis with surprise cap on asylum seekers

Washington: President Joe Biden has taken his toughest action yet to curb the US immigration crisis by temporarily stopping migrants from seeking asylum when border crossings surge, in a move that Donald Trump says won’t do enough to stop America being “invaded”.

With five months until the election, Biden has issued an executive order to stem the flow of people illegally crossing into the United States from South and Central America, which the White House hopes will help mitigate one of his biggest policy weaknesses.

A group of migrants seeking asylum look for transportation options after being processed and released in San Diego.Credit: AP

The move contrasts with Trump’s plan to tackle the border crisis by carrying out what he claims will be “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history”. That plan would enlist law-enforcement authorities to remove an estimated 10.5 million undocumented people, two-thirds of whom have lived in the US for more than a decade.

Under Biden’s executive order, asylum requests at the US-Mexico border will be automatically halted once the average number of daily encounters hits 2500 for all ports of entry. This means that the border will effectively shut down, and reopen only once the daily average declines to 1500, albeit two weeks after it lowers to that number.

“Doing nothing is not an option,” the president said, criticising Trump and Republicans for blocking a bill that could have resolved the issue months ago. “We have to act.”

The executive order is the toughest action Biden has taken so far to control the number of illegal entries into America and will kick in at midnight because total daily crossings already exceed the threshold.

This means US officers will be able to return migrants across the border into Mexico – which has just elected its first female president, lifelong leftist Claudia Sheinbaum – and other countries of origin.

US President Joe Biden unveiled plans to enact immediate restrictions on migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border.Credit: AP

However, it is not yet clear how many non-Mexican migrants Sheinbaum would be forced to accept under the new regime, or how quickly migrants from far-away countries would be deported, given many people now crossing the border come from as far as China, Africa and the Middle East.

While the latest action may appeal to some independent voters, it has already resulted in the American Civil Liberties Union vowing to sue, and has frustrated progressives and advocates who believe the president is caving in to Republican rhetoric.

President Joe Biden talks with Border Patrol agents as they walk along a stretch of the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, in 2023.Credit: AP

“This attempt to shut down the border to asylum seekers uses the same section of US immigration laws that convicted felon Donald Trump used to implement the Muslim ban and in attempts to cut off all access to asylum,” said Democrat congresswoman Pramila Jayapal.

“The reality is that the only thing that will ‘fix’ the border is to modernise a desperately outdated immigration system that has reduced legal pathways and resources to process immigrants to intolerable levels.”

Biden’s decision to take a tougher stance comes amid polls suggesting immigration has now overtaken the economy as the top concern for voters, and as Trump makes the issue of “migrant crime” the centrepiece of his campaign to win the White House as a convicted felon.

But Trump and Republicans branded the move as “too little, too late”, saying it smacks of desperation from a president whose polling, as Louisiana Senator John Kennedy put it on Tuesday, is “right up there with fungal infections”.

Donald Trump greets members of Texas Department of Public Safety as he visits Shelby Park on the US-Mexico border.Credit: AP

Trump, who describes the border crisis as an “invasion”, said: “It’s all for show because he knows we have a debate coming up in three weeks.”

But the president hit back at Trump’s rhetoric and past actions, saying: “I will never demonise immigrants. I’ll never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of a country. Further, I’ve never separated children from their families at the border.”

The new measures will include humanitarian exceptions for unaccompanied children and victims of trafficking. Migrants who enter lawfully will still be able to seek asylum.

The issue is nonetheless dicey for Biden because about 3.2 million people illegally crossed the border last year – far more than the 1.9 million who entered in Biden’s first year in office.

His decision to rescind Trump era policies, such as halting construction of the border wall and no longer forcing asylum seekers to be sent back to Mexico to await immigration proceedings, merely compounded the problem.

Democratic cities are also now feeling the brunt due to hundreds of thousands of migrants being bussed into places such as New York, Chicago and Denver, where they are granted a legal right to shelter and services while they await immigration court hearings, which can often take up to six years.

The White House has been considering executive action ever since House and Senate Republicans rejected a bipartisan border security bill in February after Trump made it clear he wanted to use the issue as a political cudgel.

Had the bill passed, it would have added critical border and immigration personnel, invested in technology to catch illegal fentanyl, and reduced the immigration court backlog.

“Frankly, we would prefer to address this issue through bipartisan legislation,” Biden said. “But Republicans have left me with no choice.

“While these steps are important, they’re not enough. To truly secure our border, we need to change our law.”

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