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The White House on Tuesday announced an executive order that will temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers attempting to cross outside of lawful ports of entry, when a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded.
The order would take effect immediately, senior administration officials said on a press call. Those seeking asylum would be held to a much more rigorous standard for establishing credible fear of returning to their home country, although certain groups – including trafficking victims and unaccompanied children – would be excluded from the ban.
“Individuals who do not manifest a fear will be immediately removable, and we anticipate that we will be removing those individuals in a matter of days, if not hours,” one official said. “The bottom line is that the standard will be significantly higher. And so we do anticipate that fewer individuals will be screened in as a result.”
The move comes amid rising public concern over the number of migrants crossing into the US, with polls showing a majority of Americans dissatisfied with the president’s handling of the border. The White House has been under immense pressure from Republicans and some Democrats to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the southern border.
Under the executive order, which Biden plans to sign alongside several border-town mayors on Tuesday afternoon, the administration would shut down asylum requests to the US-Mexico border once the number of daily encounters reaches 2,500 between legal ports of entry. The border would reopen once the number of crossings eases to 1,500. Court challenges are expected, but administration officials defended the legal basis of the order, telling reporters they are “confident that the steps we are taking today are consistent with our obligations under international law”.
The order is not expected to hinder other border activity, such as trade or traffic.
Many progressive and Hispanic lawmakers expressed alarm at the sweep of the order, the most aggressive border move taken by the administration so far. The Biden administration spent several months examining whether the president had the authority to “shut down” the border, as he told Univision in an April interview. Republicans have insisted Biden already has broad authority to act on the border, but has refused to do so out of deference to the progressives in his base.
Immigration and border policy are at the heart of Republicans’ 2024 campaign message, with Trump bashing Biden as “weak” and vowing to unleash the biggest mass deportation of undocumented migrants in US history should he win re-election in November.
The order relies on the same legal framework adopted by Trump to restrict unlawful crossings in 2018, but was blocked by a federal court. At the time, Democrats assailed Trump’s border policies as draconian and rooted in xenophobia. But the White House fiercely rejected comparisons between Biden’s new order and the severe immigration policies enacted by Donald Trump when he was in office.
“The Trump administration attacked almost every facet of the immigration system and did so in a shameful and inhumane way,” one official told reporters. “The actions that we are taking today will only apply during times of high encounters … The action will not ban people based on their religion. It will not separate kids from their mothers.”
Trump’s campaign quickly weighed in on news of the order, dismissing the policy as insufficient. Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign press secretary, said in a statement: “If Joe Biden truly wanted to shut down the border, he could do so with a swipe of the same pen, but he never will because he is controlled by radical left Democrats who seek to destroy America.”
The action comes months after Senate Republicans, at Trump’s behest, voted down a bipartisan border security deal. Trump, wary of handing Biden a political victory on his signature issue, had announced his opposition to the bill and encouraged Republicans to block its advancement.
The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, last month held another vote on the border package, which included measures Republicans have been clamoring for, including a far-reaching clampdown on the number of migrants allowed to claim asylum. The measure failed, as expected, but Schumer hoped to underscore Republican resistance to the deal they helped negotiate.
Administration officials made clear on Tuesday that they do not view the new order as a replacement for congressional action, and they again called on Republicans to work with Democrats to improve the US immigration system. They blamed Trump for impeding the passage of the bipartisan border bill, accusing Republicans of prioritizing political gamesmanship over national security.
“That’s not how we should run a country,” an administration official said. “An election year should not prohibit us from getting the people’s work done.”