President Joe Biden is said to be finalizing plans for migration limits under U.S.-Mexico border restrictions – Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON – The White House is finalizing plans for a U.S.-Mexico border restriction that would close asylum applications and automatically deny entry to migrants when the number of people encountered by U.S. border officials exceeds a new daily threshold, with President Joe Biden expected to sign an executive order, according to four people familiar with the matter already on Tuesday.

Since the failure of the bipartisan border bill earlier this year, the president has been considering additional executive actions. Illegal crossings of the U.S.-Mexico border have been declining for months, in part because of increased efforts by Mexico. Still, immigration remains a top issue ahead of November’s U.S. presidential election, and Republicans are eager to pressure Biden on the issue.

The Democratic administration’s efforts would be aimed at preventing a potential surge in border crossings that could occur later in the year as the fall election approaches, the weather cools and the number of people increases – including two. They were not authorized to speak publicly about ongoing discussions and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

The move would allow Biden, whose administration has taken smaller steps in recent weeks to discourage migration and speed up the processing of asylum claims, to say he has done everything he can to control border numbers without help from Congress.

Talks remained fluid, with people emphasizing that no final decisions had been made.

The restrictions under consideration represent an aggressive attempt to ease the nation’s overwhelmed asylum system, along with a new effort to expedite cases for migrants already in America and another effort to speed up processing of migrants with criminal histories or those who would otherwise ultimately be deemed ineligible seek asylum in the US.

Citizens told the AP that the administration was considering some policies directly stemming from the stalled bipartisan Senate border deal, including limiting appointments to an average of 4,000 a day during the week and whether that limit would cover asylum seekers arriving at the border with appointments via an app CBP One of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Currently, approximately 1,450 such meetings take place daily.

Two of the people said one option is that migrants arriving after reaching a certain threshold at the border could be automatically removed in a process similar to deportation and would not be able to easily return. Migrants could more easily return to the border if they were expelled under a pandemic-era policy known as Title 42. Under that agreement, Mexico agreed to take back some non-Mexican nationalities, including migrants from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Migrants, especially families, seeking asylum at the southern border are typically released into the United States to wait out their cases. But more than 2 million immigration court cases are pending, and some people wait years for a hearing, living in limbo in the U.S.

Anyone can ask for asylum, regardless of whether they come to the border illegally, but U.S. officials are increasingly pushing migrants to make appointments, use a legal route that avoids the costly and dangerous journey, or stay put and file. applications through offices in Colombia, Guatemala and Costa Rica.

The Biden administration has become increasingly conservative on border issues as the president faces continued criticism from Republicans and large numbers of migrants are entering the United States from Mexico and are difficult to turn back, especially as global displacement increases due to war, climate change and not only .

The immigration authority that the administration wanted to use was defined in Art. 212 letter f) the Immigration and Nationality Act. It gives the president wide latitude to block certain immigrants from entering the U.S. if doing so would be “detrimental” to the U.S. national interest.

Last week, Republican senators again blocked a bill that would have included some of the same efforts. The vote was intended to underscore GOP resistance to the proposal, even as Republicans demanded more restrictions and argued that Biden had not done enough to stem the flow of migrants into the U.S.

The bipartisan bill had been in negotiations for months and seemed likely to pass, at least for a while. It was even endorsed by the National Border Patrol Council and its president, Brandon Judd, an avowed supporter of Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee. But Trump, concerned about giving Democrats an election-year victory, urged Republicans to deny it, and they did.

White House officials did not confirm the expected executive order.

White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández said the administration “continues to explore a range of policy options and we remain committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system.”

“Even though Republicans in Congress have chosen to stand in the way of additional border enforcement, President Biden will not stop fighting to provide the resources border and immigration personnel need to secure our border,” he said.

This year, Congress approved funding for a total of 41,500 detention beds and increased funding for immigration enforcement and removal operations by $1.2 billion over the original White House requests. This included an additional $106 million for programs that monitor immigrants in the asylum system through phone apps and ankle bracelets rather than through detention.

These increases, negotiated after the failure of the bipartisan agreement, could pave the way for the administration to tighten immigration enforcement.

But unlike binding legislative action, anything Biden does through executive action can and almost certainly will be challenged in court, so it’s unclear whether – or at all – asylum restrictions will begin. The administration was also considering other actions, including faster and stricter enforcement of the asylum process.

The administration generally links the proposed crackdown to expanding legal paths elsewhere and plans to do so in the future as well, but not at the same time as it announced the new restrictions, the people said.

Associated Press writer Stephen Groves contributed to this report.