Biden to visit El Paso; announces crackdown on illegal border crossings

The changes come as the Biden administration is under increasing pressure to confront surges at the southern border, especially from those four countries, where political instability and gang violence are rampant.

“Today, my administration is taking several steps to stiffen enforcement for those who try to come without a legal right to stay,” Biden said in remarks at the White House, days before a two-day summit in Mexico City.

“My message is this,” he said. “If you’re trying to leave Cuba, Nicaragua or Haiti, or have agreed to begin a journey to America, do not, do not just show up at the border.”

The president described the new approach as one intended to expand opportunities for migrants. But immigration advocates denounced the changes, saying they included vast new restrictions on the right to claim asylum for people who need to escape their countries.

Eleanor Acer, the director of the refugee protection program at Human Rights First, called the new policies “a humanitarian disgrace” and said the president should not be adding restrictions on people who seek refuge in the United States.

“The Biden administration should be taking steps to restore asylum law at ports of entry,” she said, “not doubling down on cruel and counterproductive policies from the Trump playbook.”

The situation at the border has become an increasingly difficult political problem for Biden as his adversaries seize on immigration as an election issue. House Republicans have promised to begin investigations into the administration’s handling of the border and to start impeachment proceedings against Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary.

The president said he would travel Sunday to El Paso, which Republicans have been calling for him to do since he took office. Migrants have been overwhelming city resources there. He added that he would announce new funding to help communities deal with the effects of the increase of migration.

“I know that migration is putting a real strain on the borders and border communities,” Biden said, adding that “our problems at the border didn’t arise overnight, and they are not going to be solved overnight. It’s a difficult problem.”

The new policies are an attempt by the administration to make good on what the president called an “orderly, fair, safe and humane” border. But they fall far short of a complete overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws, which Biden proposed to Congress on the day he took office. He lashed out at Republicans for refusing to even consider that proposal.

“If the most extreme Republicans continue to demagogue this issue and reject solutions,” the president said, “I’m left with only one choice: act on my own, do as much as I can on my own to try to change the atmosphere.”

Officials have said that most of the recent migrants from Central and South America trying to cross through Mexico to reach the United States are from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua.

Under the new rules, people in those four countries will be allowed to apply for entry to the United States using an app on their phones while still in their home countries. If they can find a sponsor — a relative, church or nonprofit group — pass a security screening and pay for the flight, they will be allowed to live and work legally in the United States.

Migrants from those countries who seek to travel to the United States by passing through Mexico would be automatically ineligible for the new program. And those who try to cross into the United States will be quickly expelled to Mexico, which has agreed to accept up to 30,000 migrants each month from the four countries.

Biden administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity during a briefing before the president’s remarks, said the program would drastically lessen the need for people from those countries to make the dangerous journey across the U.S.-Mexico border. An earlier program that applied only to Venezuelans significantly reduced the number of migrants from that country at the border, the officials said.

But as many as 9,000 migrants try to cross the border every day, officials said, and it remains unclear how many of the people from the four countries will be able or willing to take advantage of the new program.

Administration officials said Biden would also triple the number of refugees that the United States accepts each year from the Western Hemisphere, to 20,000. The refugee program is a separate way for people who are fleeing persecution to apply to come to the United States legally.

Biden also announced an increase in the use of tougher enforcement measures at the border, which will allow agents to more quickly expel migrants trying to cross between the ports of entry.

Immigrant rights advocates say the measures, known as expedited removal, deny people their rights to due process and are used as a way to prevent them from making legitimate claims for asylum, which are guaranteed by U.S. and international law.

The Biden administration is also embracing a restrictive policy developed under President Donald Trump in which migrants who travel through a third country, such as Mexico, can be prevented from seeking asylum in the United States unless they have applied for asylum in another country first.

The Department of Homeland Security said Thursday that officials would propose a rule that would make migrants ineligible for asylum if they “fail to seek protection in a country through which they traveled on their way to the United States.” Migrants who violate the rule would be barred from seeking legal entry to the United States for five years.

Immigration advocates said that would be an effort to shut down access to asylum for people fleeing violence, political instability and economic disasters. A letter to the president from four Democratic senators last month accused Biden of accepting the policies of Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy.

“By resurrecting one of Stephen Miller’s cruelest attacks on asylum-seekers, you risk normalizing the anti-American belief that immigrants are a threat to our communities,” the senators wrote.

The third-country rule would require public hearings and a monthslong review process, officials said.

They said the other new border policies would take effect right away. The government is under court orders to quickly expel most migrants under Title 42, a public health rule put in place during the coronavirus pandemic.

But the officials said they intended to continue with the new border policies if courts allowed the enforcement of Title 42 to end, as the administration intends. The Supreme Court is considering a challenge by Republican-led states to the administration’s plan to stop enforcing Title 42. Biden said a court decision could come as soon as June.