Biden to temporarily shut Mexico border to asylum seekers

Biden to temporarily shut Mexico border to asylum seekers.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday that will temporarily halt asylum requests once the average number of daily encounters exceeds 2,500 between official ports of entry, according to a senior administration official.

“The border is not a political issue to be weaponized," Biden declared in a White House speech announcing the order.

The shutdown will go into effect immediately since that threshold has already been met, the official said. The border would only reopen once the number falls to 1,500. The president’s order invokes sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, suspending entry of noncitizens who cross the southern border into the United States unlawfully.

Senior administration officials stated in a call with reporters on Tuesday that “individuals who cross the southern border unlawfully or without authorization will generally be ineligible for asylum, absent exceptionally compelling circumstances, unless they are accepted by the proclamation.”

Officials mentioned that migrants who don’t meet the "credible fear" requirement when applying for asylum will be immediately removable, and they “anticipate that we will be removing those individuals in a matter of days, if not hours.”

The White House communicated details of the long-awaited move to lawmakers on Monday and confirmed details of the executive order on Tuesday morning ahead of the president’s planned remarks in the East Room of the White House, alongside mayors from several border towns.

Many immigrant advocates are outraged by the president’s harsher immigration policies, arguing the changes will cause chaos.

“It is a betrayal of what we were told during his campaign four years ago,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of the California-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center. “We were told that President Biden would be restoring humanity at our border. … But what we are seeing is that history is repeating itself.”

Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants’ Rights Project, who argued the challenge to asylum restrictions during the Trump administration, said the advocacy group plans to sue.

“A ban on asylum is illegal just as it was when Trump unsuccessfully tried it,” Gelernt said in a statement.