Biden to sign executive order on immigration as early as this week: Sources

RACHEL SCOTT and LUKE BARR
Mon, June 3, 2024 
President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order on immigration as early as this week, according to sources familiar with the decision.

The long-awaited executive order would limit the number of migrants that would be allowed to claim asylum at the southern U.S. border. It would immediately send them back to Mexico to wait until the daily average goes down and, once it goes down, they would be able to claim asylum. The exact number that would trigger a pause on claiming asylum is still under deliberations, the sources said.

In recent days, members of Congress have been briefed on the executive action, according to sources familiar with the briefings.

Any executive order, administration officials caution, would be challenged in court.

"I anticipate that if the president would take executive action, and whatever that executive action would entail, it will be challenged in the court," Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters last month at Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

Mayorkas and other members of the administration have urged Congress to pass the bipartisan border bill that was negotiated and proposed earlier this year.

MORE: Unaccompanied minors are representing themselves in immigration court, alarming advocates

A spokesperson for Brownsville, Texas, Mayor John Cowen confirmed to ABC News that the White House invited him to a meeting at the White House on Tuesday for an immigration-related announcement, and he will be attending.

El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser also confirmed he is attending. He told ABC News in a statement: "El Paso is a welcoming community, and that makes me very proud, but no community can continue the effort and resources we've expended on this humanitarian crisis endlessly. We are appreciative of the funding we have received from the federal government so that our efforts don't fall on the backs of El Paso taxpayers, but our immigration system is broken, and it is critical that Congress work on a bipartisan long-term plan to work with other countries in order to create a more manageable, humane and sustainable immigration system for our country.

"I look forward to hearing more about the president's plan on Tuesday, and we stand ready to work with our partners at the local, state and federal level on this effort," he added.

ABC News' Armando García contributed to this report.

White House expected to unveil sweeping immigration order

Bernd Debusmann Jr - BBC News, Washington
Mon, June 3, 2024 

The number of migrant arrivals at the US-Mexico border has been steadily falling in 2024. [Getty Images]

President Joe Biden is expected to issue a sweeping new executive order aimed at curbing migrant arrivals at the US-Mexico border as early as Tuesday.

Under the planned order, US officials could swiftly deport migrants who enter the US illegally without processing their asylum requests once a daily threshold is met, according to CBS.

That, in turn, will allow border officials to limit the amount of migrant arrivals, three unnamed sources briefed on the expected order told CBS, the BBC's news partner.

More than 6.4 million migrants have been stopped crossing into the US illegally during Joe Biden's administration - a record high that has left him politically vulnerable as he campaigns for re-election.

Migrant arrivals have plummeted this year, however, although experts believe the trend is not likely to be sustainable.

CBS - the BBC's US partner - and other US news outlets have reported that Mr Biden has been mulling use of a 1952 law that allows access to the American asylum system to be restricted.

The law, known as 212(f), allows the US president to "suspend the entry" of foreigners if their arrival is "detrimental to the interests" of the country.

The same regulation was used by the Trump administration to ban immigration and travel from several predominantly Muslim countries and to bar migrants from asylum if they were apprehended crossing into the US illegally, provoking accusations of racism.

Asylum processing at ports of entry is expected to continue under the order. About 1,500 asylum seekers go through the process at official crossings each day, mostly after setting up appointments using a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app known as CBP One.

Mayors of several border towns - including Brownsville and Edinburg, both in Texas - were expected to be in Washington for the president's announcement.

Democratic lawmakers have also been reportedly briefed on the plan.

The proposal, however, is likely to be challenged in court, either from immigration advocates or from Republican-led states.

A White House official told the BBC on Friday that no final decisions had been made on possible executive actions.

In a statement, a White House spokesperson noted that a bipartisan border security deal failed earlier this year as a result of opposition from Republicans in Congress.

"While Congressional Republicans chose to stand in the way of additional border enforcement, President Biden will not stop fighting to deliver the resources that border and immigrational personnel need to secure our border," the spokesperson said.

"As we have said before, the administration continues to explore a series of policy options and we remain committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system," the spokesperson added.

Republicans criticised the Biden border plan as an election-year ruse and argued that US laws already exist to prevent illegal immigration, but they were not being duly enforced by the Democratic president.

News of the potential executive order comes as numbers of migrant detentions at the US-Mexico border fall.

Recently released statistics from CBP show that about 179,000 migrant "encounters" were recorded in April.

In December, by comparison, the figure spiked to 302,000 - a historic high.

Officials in the US and Mexico have said that increased enforcement by Mexican authorities is largely responsible, although many experts have cautioned the reductions are unlikely to be permanent.

The decline in migrant crossings at the US border comes at a politically fraught time for President Biden.

Polls show that immigration is a primary electoral concern for many voters in the presidential election in November.

A Gallup poll at the end of April found that 27% of Americans view immigration as the most important issue facing the country, topping the economy and inflation.

A separate poll conducted in March by the Associated Press and NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that two-thirds of Americans now disapprove of Mr Biden's handling of the border, including about 40% of Democrat voters.

Biden prepares a tough executive order that would shut down asylum after 2,500 migrants arrive a day

SEUNG MIN KIM, STEPHEN GROVES and COLLEEN LONG
Mon, June 3, 2024 

President Joe Biden arrives on Marine One at Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Del., Sunday, June 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is telling lawmakers that President Joe Biden is preparing to sign off on an executive order that would shut down asylum requests to the U.S.-Mexico border once the number of daily encounters hits 2,500 between ports of entry, with the border reopening once that number declines to 1,500, according to several people familiar with the discussions.

The impact of the 2,500 figure means that the border could be closed to migrants seeking asylum effectively immediately, because daily figures are higher than that now.

The Democratic president is expected to unveil his actions — which mark his most aggressive unilateral move yet to control the numbers at the border — at the White House on Tuesday at an event to which border mayors have been invited.

Five people familiar with the discussions confirmed the 2,500 figure on Monday, while two of the people confirmed the 1,500 number. The figures are daily averages over the course of a week. All of the people insisted on anonymity to discuss an executive order that is not yet public. Other border activity, such as trade, is expected to continue.

Senior White House officials have been informing lawmakers on Capitol Hill of details of the planned order ahead of the formal rollout on Tuesday.

Biden has been deliberating for months to act on his own after bipartisan legislation to clamp down on asylum at the border collapsed at the behest of Republicans, who defected from the deal en masse at the urging of Donald Trump, the former president and presumptive Republican presidential nominee. Biden continued to consider executive action even though the number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border has declined for months, partly because of a stepped-up effort by Mexico.

Biden admin quietly dismisses over 350K asylum applications from immigrants since 2022: TRAC

Greg Wehner

FOX NEWS/AP
Sun, June 2, 2024 

As the White House finalizes plans for a U.S.-Mexico clampdown that would shut off asylum requests and automatically deny entrance to migrants once a threshold is met, the Biden administration has continued to allow hundreds of thousands of migrants to remain in the U.S. with what amounts to amnesty, according to a report.

A report released last month by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonpartisan data gathering organization that tracks immigration cases and backlogs shows that since 2022, over 350,000 asylum cases filed by migrants were closed by the U.S. government on the basis that those who filed did not have a criminal record or were not deemed a threat to the U.S.

Once cases are terminated without a decision on the merits of their asylum claim, the migrants are removed from the legal system, and they are not required to check in with authorities.

It also means the migrants can legally go anywhere they want inside the U.S. without having to worry about being deported.

JACUMBA HOT SPRINGS, CALIFORNIA - FEBRUARY 20: Border patrol agents process asylum seekers at an improvised camp near the US-Mexico border on February 20, 2024 in Jacumba Hot Springs, California.

The New York Post reported that a memo sent out by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) principal legal advisor Kerry Doyle in 2022 told agency prosecutors to dismiss cases for migrants who do not pose a threat to national security.

TRAC’s data shows that in the same year, there were 173,227 applications for asylum filed. Of those applications, immigration judges ordered 36,250 of the applicants be removed from the U.S., granted asylum to 31,859 applicants. The other 102,550 applications were reportedly dismissed or taken off the books.

In 2023, there were 248,232 asylum applications filed, of which 52,440 applicants were ordered to be removed, 43,113 were granted asylum, and 149,305 were dismissed or taken off the books.

People, mainly from West African countries, line up outside the former St. Brigid School to apply for shelter, in New York City on December 7, 2023. There are approximately 66,000 asylum seekers currently housed in shelters in New York, which Mayor Eric Adams says is "managing a national migration crisis virtually single-handedly."More

So far in 2024, there have been 175,193 asylum applications and 113,843 applications dismissed.

The numbers are much higher than under the Trump administration, when in 2019 – before the pandemic – there were 87,018 asylum applications filed with 52,223 applicants removed from the country, 24,109 granted relief and 4,746 applications dismissed.

When cases are closed, migrants are no longer faced with deportation or removal proceedings. They are also not obligated to leave the U.S. as they are no longer being monitored by ICE.



June 2, 2022: ICE agents conduct an enforcement operation in the U.S. interior.

The applicants whose cases are dismissed are able to apply for asylum again or they can seek out other forms of legal status like a family-based or employment-based visa, or even Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA).

The immigration court backlog has grown from 2.8 million at the end of Fiscal Year 2023 to nearly 3.6 million in FY 2024, with immigration judges being unable to keep up with the current flow of new cases into the system.

The number of new cases filed as well as the number of cases completed by immigration judges are both on pace to exceed all-time highs this year, the TRAC report notes, though the pace of completions will be unable to stem the growing backlog.


TOPSHOT - US President Joe Biden speaks with US Customs and Border Protection officers as he visits the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on January 8, 2023.

The president has been weighing additional executive action since the collapse of a bipartisan border bill earlier this year. The number of illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border has declined for months, partly because of a stepped-up effort by Mexico. Still, immigration remains a top concern heading into the U.S. presidential election in November and Republicans are eager to hammer Biden on the issue.

The Democratic administration’s effort would aim to head off any potential spike in crossings that could occur later in the year, as the fall election draws closer, when the weather cools and numbers tend to rise. Four people familiar with Biden’s plans were not authorized to speak publicly about the 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 asylum processing, to say he has done all he can do to control the border numbers without help from Congress.

The restrictions being considered are an aggressive attempt to ease the nation's overwhelmed asylum system, along with a new effort to speed up the cases of migrants already in America and another meant to quicken processing for migrants with criminal records or those who would otherwise be eventually deemed ineligible for asylum in the United States.

The people told the AP that the administration was weighing some of the policies directly from a stalled bipartisan Senate border deal, including capping the number of encounters at an average of 4,000 per day over a week and whether that limit would include asylum-seekers coming to the border with appointments through U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s CBP One app. Right now, there are roughly 1,450 such appointments per day.

Fox News Digital’s Michael Lee and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Original article source: Biden admin quietly dismisses over 350K asylum applications from immigrants since 2022: TRAC