What Biden’s Partial Border Closure Means and How It Impacts Immigrants Seeking Asylum
by Nicolas Baintrub – Enlace Latino NC
Border agents will be able to expel migrants in a matter of hours or days.
On Tuesday, June 4, President Joe Biden signed an executive order temporarily closing asylum seekers entry through the border with Mexico. The decision affects thousands of migrants who every day apply for asylum, a legal remedy that protects people who have suffered persecution in their countries of origin.
What does Biden’s new order to temporarily close the border mean if you’re seeking asylum? The executive actions signed by Biden “prohibit migrants from illegally crossing the southern border to receive asylum.” These actions, the Administration explains, “will come into force when there are high levels of encounters (detentions) on the border with Mexico that exceed our capacity to process them in a timely manner, as is the case today.” Under the new decision, the border with Mexico will be closed to asylum seekers once the weekly average of illegal entries reaches 2,500 per day. Currently the crossings already exceed that figure. The executive order also gives immigration agents greater discretionary power “to deport those aliens who do not have a legal basis to remain in the country.” In contrast, until the enactment of this executive order, asylum seekers were allowed to wait for their case to be processed in the United States, which allowed them to live in the country for years and access work permits while they waited. Now border agents will be able to return migrants across the border into Mexico in a matter of hours or days. The document issued by the White House, however, warns that “this cannot achieve the same results as congressional action, nor does it provide the critical personnel or funding necessary to further secure the southern border.” But the legislature “still has time to act.”
How long will the border with Mexico remain closed to asylum seekers? As established in the executive order, the border with Mexico will only be opened to asylum seekers once the number of crossings decreases significantly. The figure would have to stay below a daily average of 1,500 for seven consecutive days. Only two weeks after registering that figure will the border be reopened.
A decision ahead of the elections In the November elections, Joe Biden will put his continuity in the White House at stake against Republican Donald Trump. In this context, numerous specialists read this radical move by the Democrat, who has always opposed this type of measure, as an electoral proposal to respond to voters’ concern about the arrival of migrants. The crisis peaked in December 2023, when about 10,000 people were crossing the U.S. border daily. Although that figure has fallen drastically – currently there are about 3,500 daily crossings – immigration policy continues to be a great vulnerability for the Democratic candidate.
Lawsuits Biden’s new order suspends human rights guarantees that protect anyone who sets foot on U.S. soil. For this reason, it is expected that it will encounter opposition in the courts. In fact, Donald Trump himself tried in 2018 to close the U.S. border to asylum seekers and the courts denied him after a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. Members of the organization have already announced that they are preparing to file a lawsuit against the current order. It was only in 2020 that Trump managed to stop asylum applications, using an emergency rule due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Differences with Trump’s policy and other asylum alternatives at the border with Mexico Unlike Trump’s proposed measures, Biden’s order includes humanitarian exceptions for minors who cross the border without their parents. It is also temporary. In other words, the order will cease to have effects when the entry of migrants is reduced. Biden’s executive order also authorizes migrants to apply for other protections intended for people who can prove they will be tortured in their home countries. But officials warned that in practice, it will be very difficult to prove that kind of threat. Therefore, a significant number of migrants are not expected to use this option. If they cross the border illegally, people who don’t qualify for those protections will be barred from entering the United States for five years.
