WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House says President Joe Biden is preparing to sign an executive order that would result in a shutdown asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border once the average number of daily encounters reaches 2,500 between ports of entry, the border will not reopen until that number drops to 1,500, according to several people familiar with the discussions.
The impact of the 2,500 figure means the decree could come into force immediately, as daily figures are now higher than this figure.
The Democratic president is expected to unveil his actions – his most aggressive unilateral move yet to control the numbers at the border – at the White House on Tuesday in an event attended mayorborders were invited.
Five people having familiar discussions on Monday confirmed the figure of 2,500, while two of them confirmed the figure of 1,500. The figures are daily averages over a week. Everyone insisted on anonymity to discuss a decree that is not yet public.
Although other border activities, such as trade, are expected to continue, the threshold of 1,500 residents at which the border would be reopened to asylum seekers may be difficult to reach. The last time the daily average fell to 1,500 encounters was in July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Senior White House officials, including Chief of Staff Jeff Zients and Legislative Affairs Director Shuwanza Goff, briefed observers on Capitol Hill on details of the planned order ahead of its formal rollout Tuesday. But several questions remain about how the executive order would work, particularly how much cooperation the United States would need from Mexican authorities to enforce the executive order.
The president has been deliberating for months on how to act on his own after bipartisan legislation to crack down on asylum at the border The deal collapsed because Republicans defected en masse from the deal at the urging of Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Biden has continued to consider executive action even though the number of illegal crossings at the southern border has been declining for months, thanks in part to increased efforts by Mexico.
Biden administration officials had waited until after Mexico’s presidential elections, which were held on Sunday, to comment on the US president’s border measures. Mexico elected Claudia Sheinbaum, the nation’s first female leader, and Biden said in a statement Monday that they were committed to “advancing the values and interests of our two nations for the benefit of our people.” The two spoke by telephone Monday, although White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to say whether they spoke about the pending order.
“We continue to look at all options on the table,” Jean-Pierre told reporters traveling with Biden on Air Force One Monday evening.
The executive order will allow Biden to declare that he has pushed the limits of his own power after parties, particularly congressional Republicans, removed what would have been the toughest border and asylum restrictions in a time. Biden’s order is intended to try to head off any potential increase in border encounters that could arise later this year, as the November election approaches.
For Biden’s executive order, the White House is adopting some policies directly from the Senate’s bipartisan border deal, including the idea of limiting asylum applications once encounters reach a certain number. The administration wants to encourage migrants to seek asylum at ports of entry using U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s CBP One app, which schedules about 1,450 appointments per day.
Administration lawyers are considering exploiting the executive powers outlined in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the president broad authority to block certain immigrants from entering the states. -United if it is deemed “detrimental” to the national interest. It’s the same legal reasoning Trump used to take some of his toughest actions on migration as president.
That has advocacy groups already preparing to challenge Biden’s immigration order in court.
“We will have to review (the executive order) before making final decisions on litigation,” said Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who has led several of the highest-profile challenges to Trump’s border policies. “But a policy that effectively ended asylum would raise obvious legal issues, just as it did when the Trump administration tried to end asylum. »
The White House will also likely face stiff resistance from many Democratic Democrats. The senator from California. Alex Padilla, a vocal critic of the Senate’s previous border bill, said the pending executive order is “simply not the solution we need and is very incomplete as a strategy.”
Padilla, who was also briefed on the proposal by the White House, wants an approach that works with Latin American countries to combat poverty and unrest that drives migration to the United States. In recent weeks, Padilla has also pressed the White House for executive actions that benefit immigrants and said the message he’s heard back is: “We’re working on it.”
Biden will unveil his executive order alongside several border mayors that the White House has invited for the announcement. Texas mayors John Cowen of Brownsville and Ramiro Garza of Edinburgh both confirmed their invitations, and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria’s office also said the White House had invited the mayor, but he was unable to attend due to scheduling difficulties.
Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat who said he had been briefed on the plan, said he wished the White House had taken executive action long ago and said Mexico’s cooperation would continue to be essential as the The administration implements the order.
“If you think about logistics, where can they go? » said Cuéllar. “If they don’t let them in, where are they going? Are they sending them back (to Mexico) or are they trying to deport as many as they can? We’ve added a lot more money to the ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement) program so they can be deported, but the easiest thing, of course, is to just send them back to Mexico. You have to have help from Mexico to make this work.
Jennifer Babaie, an attorney at the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Texas, said she would be alarmed if Biden issued formal deportation orders without the option to seek asylum. Defenders fear he could attempt this under 212(f).
The pandemic-era deportation authority, known as Title 42, had “a silver lining” for migrants because they could try again without fear of legal consequences, Babaie said. But a formal deportation order would expose them to criminal prosecution if they tried again and it would impose bans on legally entering the country in the future.
“It’s even more extreme than (Title 42), while still putting people in danger,” Babaie said.
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Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Fatima Hussein on Air Force One contributed to this report.