Another Biden Immigration Plan That Looks a Lot Like Trump’s

President Joe Biden’s plan for asylum likely faces the same legal problems Donald Trump’s did in 2020.

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President Joe Biden speaks with U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers as he visits the U.S.-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on January 8, 2023. (Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

The Biden administration on Thursday moved closer to adopting another Trump-era policy to deter asylum cases at the U.S.-Mexico border, despite President Joe Biden criticizing former President Donald Trump about the same issue while on the campaign trail in 2020.

Critics say Biden’s proposal shares the same flaws that led to Trump’s iteration being overturned by federal courts.

Biden’s rule, published in the federal register Thursday, would presume individuals arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border are ineligible for asylum if they traveled through another country without seeking protection there first. It makes limited exceptions for children and for medical emergencies, life-threatening circumstances, or for “severe” forms of trafficking. The changes also include expedited screening and removal processes (which in some cases could be wrapped up less than 72 hours after they begin).

It’s unclear whether Mexico will agree to accept detainees turned away by U.S. officials or if the removal proceedings will instead involve costly flights back to deportees’ home countries. The proposal—which the Biden administration says it plans to use only for two years—must go through a 30-day notice and comment period before implementation.

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  1. Avatar photo
    DougAz

    Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S. https://nyti.ms/3IPNJd9

    Maybe we deport every single supervisor, manager, owner working migrant children.

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  2. Avatar photo
    Matt Hannon

    Good article. Another president will be taking a bunch of hits because congress is literally making social media videos at the border rather than making laws in congress. It takes research and understanding not 1st class tickets and a camera crew to pass legislation. Congress needs to convince each other about the problem not us!

    Biden's Trump's Obama's Bush's Clinton's (you get it) policy is trying to stall the migrants with Mexico's help so the numbers don't skyrocket again. If migrants are required to adjudicate their cases in another country before moving on to the US it simply slows then down until a later date and maybe some of them get sent home rather than northward. Mexico is learning that many travel north before their asylum claims have been vetted.
    Many things are clear to me.
    It's not the executive branch's job to make immigration laws.
    The US needs W-2 wage earners more than it needs a wall and a fast legal process for those economic migrants.
    The US needs an asylum system that is fair to those in need of refuge.
    US citizens need to stop using so many drugs.
    Congress needs to address these issues and then the President can enforce those laws and then we can stop 24/7 campaigning about whose fault the border is and move on to other issues.

    We are addicted to drugs. We are hiring illegal laborers every day to drive our economy. We keep voting for useless politicians. We love to help people who are suffering and to share an American dream. We the people are as much to blame if not more than the migrants at our borders. If your government and people were worse than us wouldn't you leave too.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Ben Connelly

      So, actually Bush did try to get immigration reform done. His biggest sin according to the MAGA folks wasn’t Iraq, it was being “soft” on immigration, meaning compassionate and willing to compromise.

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  3. Bigdonmck

    Great stuff. Thanks Harvest. And I agree with Eric. Remove the economic advantage of coming here.

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    1. Avatar photo
      DougAz

      What if just deported the management and owners working these children?

      Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S. https://nyti.ms/3IPNJd9

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  4. Nordic_man

    Immigration will never be fixed until we accept the following. As long as there is a huge economic gap between Central America and the US, there will be lots of migration across the border. If it isn’t legal it will be illegal. Sure we can do more to secure the border, and unlike the democrats who tried to run far to the left and decriminalize border crossing, open borders isn’t a good policy here. That being said, the conservative idea that we can institute Canadian style merit based immigration systems and quotas is laughable. Do you know why Canada can do that even with one of the largest land borders that is mostly unsecured? It’s because that land border is with the richest county in the world, and in fact canadas problem is that Canadians keep leaving to work in the US. Swap Central America and the US geographically and Canada would also have no real choice but to start opening up pathways for under skilled, less culturally similar migrants .

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  5. Jack H Wolf

    The recent exodus from Central America was largely a case of economic and social refugees, but often the asylum cases were based on family violence, gangs, etc. and are largely unprovable as evidenced by the high failure rate of successful claims. Gangs do not issue memos to the coerced. Most surveys of Northern Triangle migrants reveal that the primary impetus is economic.
    Who, in any country, making under $1/hour wouldn't move to earn $10 an hour if the process is as simple as just showing up at the border. Criminality, unfortunately is rampant in dozens of countries and the answer is not for the populations to all move to the US.
    On the contrary you have some half a million Rohingya stuck in Bangladesh who were ethnically cleansed by the Burmese Army and can't return and are not allowed to work in Bangladesh, a poor country to begin with and will languish in camps their whole life. Refugees are confirmed by various international agencies like UNHCR and thus when they are accepted in the US, usually a small part of the migrant stream, they do not have to go through any legal hurdles and are brought in through a well oiled process with support from various faith groups and individual sponsors.
    I personally have been involved along with my local faith group and Lutheran Services Carolinas in sponsoring families from Burma, Cuba, Iran, and Syria. The source of these refugees is generally in camps throughout the world and the difference between asylum claimers and refugees is that the latter have gone through extensive vetting by US agencies to determine the most in need as well as to rule out possible threats to the homeland. It is a process where we choose who most needs entry and who has sponsorship and can best contribute to our country vs the asylum process where it is just about who can get to the border.
    I am a firm believer in the idea of the US as a refuge for people in desperate circumstances, just as my grandparents came here at the turn of the century fleeing the pogroms and routine discrimination against Jews in the Russian Empire.
    But immigration must be orderly and well thought out or the backlash will lead to such draconian immigration laws as the Immigration Act of 1924 that effectively shut the door on all immigration from Asia and Southern and Eastern Europe for 50 years.
    Biden, whether for political purposes or otherwise, is finally pivoting from a defacto open border to a sensible immigration that vets people in their home countries, allows a definable number of entrants, and can avoid clogging our courts with long protracted asylum claims that more often are not validated and a large number are just no shows as the asylum process is used just to create a porous border.

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    1. Nordic_man

      It can be orderly if we accept that any border as large as the US Mexico border will be porous no matter what we do. It will be disorderly if we reject reality and actually think we can by fiat say X migrants will enter the US from Central America each year. Supply and Demand set immigration trends. Our options are to make this legally workable, orderly, and safe, or just pretend we can impose our will on reality

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      1. Jack H Wolf

        Of course no border will ever be impenetrable, but the number of people illegal entering will correlate with the cost and difficulty of getting in.
        When we just start admitting anybody showing up at a customs crossing, we essentially are making that fairly negligible and the clear recent history is that the number of crossers increased geometrically with the ease of entering, and has fallen off recently, now that we are not accepting everybody.
        It is an argument I often hear with gun regulation, that since there is a way of evading things, it is not worth doing.
        I dont know you have in mind by making it " legally workable" but the voters are not going to accept unlimited millions of people who will come, which they will, if it is just a matter of showing up at the border. Define workable- 1 million, 10 M or 100M immigrants. There are 2.5M Venezuelans alone in Colombia in a country that cannot give them work. Should we immediately agree to take 2.5M which is about equal to the annual migration to the US both legal (about 2M) and illegal (about 0.5M). There are 11M people in Haiti which is a failed state.

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        1. Nordic_man

          Well then the voters get chaos. Americans across the aisle need to get their heads out of their asses and realize cakeism isn't going to work.

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          1. Jack H Wolf

            I guess we agree on this. Most of the surge was due to executive decisions on enforcement and now that Biden is pivoting to not allowing entry of asylum claimees under most circumstances, the situation should normalize to prior numbers.

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  6. Avatar photo
    EricRemcon@gmail

    Great piece Harvest! ❤

    It’s almost like immigration policy needs to be done by congress instead of executive fiat; who could have guessed?

    Even though Biden’s latest effort will probably be bogged down in the courts and not really help the chaos at the border, it is nice to see that he recognizes that handing everyone who shows up at the gate a ticket to an asylum trial (years in the future) and bus ticket is a bad idea. Most of those (>80%) will probably not qualify, but it won’t matter because they will have already established a life in the US. They KNOW that and that is the reason for most of the chaos. BTW, the massive crush also punishes the real asylum cases.

    It is a horrible mess and Biden does not help by trying to have one foot on both sides of the border, but place the blame where it really belongs – Congress AND the populist voting public (on both sides) that does not want to solve the problem, just take advantage of an issue.

    It will take a return to serious debate and compromise to fix the problem. Because I see that as the prerequisite, I don’t expect to see a solution within the next decade.

    BTW: I would appreciate a TD deep dive piece on E-Verify. Maybe that could be an area where compromise could be reached without arguing about asylum and walls. If the economic advantage disappears, so will the masses.

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    1. Jack H Wolf

      I think there is no easy solution that does not involve enforcement at the border. E verify is helpful but people came here after that and short of a huge policing effort, people will find ways to work off the books whether false ID or getting paid under the table. The few high publicity raids on a few chicken processors are a drop in the ocean of people who work for small construction contractors, or as maids/gardeners/day laborers and get paid cash.
      As long as you can make the lowest wages in the US of $7-10/hr there will be an endless supply of people from countries where they earn less than $1 hr.
      What compromise might evolve perhaps is that enough Rs would support DACA which is generally favored if the Ds beefed up enforcement at the border. But all R gives for higher immigration, eg easing up the backlog on family reunification, guest workers, etc. would have to be paired with stronger enforcement.

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      1. Avatar photo
        EricRemcon@gmail

        Obviously, border enforcement is important. And you are correct, there will always be (mostly) small businesses (e.g., restaurants, pop-up landscaping, road-side motels) that will hire off of the books. But I would hope a REAL implementation of E-Verify (with meaningful penalties for companies) would uncover the hidden illegal worker problem (e.g., agriculture, hospitality, residential construction). If the real magnitude of the illegal workforce was exposed, (maybe) we would be forced to reform the guest worker/legal immigration rules.

        The prevalent attitude seems to be that if you are lucky enough to make it across the border (through the gate or jumping over the wall) you have won a golden ticket to hide in the shadows with little chance of being deported. Until this stops being the norm, the flow will continue.

        We can’t (and shouldn’t try to) address the poor economies, working conditions, and wages of other countries, but we can make sure the rules are followed in our own country. We have been arguing about border stuff for over a decade, with no real improvement. Rs like to yell about drugs and “hordes” of criminal invaders and Ds want to get amnesty for those already here and highlight the squalor on both sides of the border. IMO, it is largely an economic problem. We need to acknowledge that fact and deal with it.

        I am not trying to make it sound simple, just hoping a change of focus might bring more thought to the debate. If E-Verify was done correctly it would create a HUGE problem for the deportation force. But I would hope the fact that it was being taken seriously would discourage the border surges.

        I can think of many reasons why both sides would like to ignore the E-Verify angle. But I would still appreciate TD examining the details.

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        1. Avatar photo
          DougAz

          I would add..why are we not deporting management and owners paying illegal workers? That is demand side. And deport the management of these Migrant Child workers
          Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S. https://nyti.ms/3IPNJd9

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      2. Nordic_man

        The fun fact is that, it won't be endless, it will be until supply meets demand.

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