Photo: Migrants, seeking to reach the border between Mexico and the United States
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday, June 4, signed a decree introducing a new measure to protect the US-Mexico border. The decree gives authorities the ability to quickly deport migrants if their numbers exceed a specified limit.
The measure, which limits the number of asylum seekers, will be used when the number of people detained by the Border Patrol exceeds 2,500 per day, people familiar with the matter said. To lift asylum restrictions, the number of illegal border crossings must drop to 1,500 per day, one of the sources said, Reuters reports.
The restrictions will not apply to unaccompanied minors.
The move, coming in an election year, is expected to attract lawsuits from immigrant groups and civil rights advocates who have criticized Biden for adopting the hard-line policies pursued by his predecessor Donald Trump.
Since taking office in 2021, President Biden has promised to reverse some of Trump's restrictions but has faced record numbers of migrants crossing the border illegally.
Ahead of the order's announcement, the Trump campaign issued a statement saying which calls Biden's order “an amnesty, not a border security measure” and again blamed immigrants for the rise in crime in the United States.
A number of studies by various think tanks indicate that immigrants are no more likely to commit crimes than Americans.
The new restrictions reflect a Biden-backed Senate bill that would deny migrants the right to seek asylum if the number of migrants number of people detained while crossing the border illegally will reach a certain level. The bill was drafted by a bipartisan group of senators, but Republicans rejected it after Trump opposed it.
"What I can say is that we are constantly and continuously looking at all options to… address the immigration system – a system that has been broken for decades," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday.
Jean-Pierre accused Republicans in Congress of not wanting to work with Biden and of blocking billions of dollars in border enforcement funding that the president has called on Congress to provide along with aid for Ukraine and Israel.
A growing number of migrants from around the world are also heading to Latin America and then north to the United States. In December, the number reached a record high of 10,000 a day.
The number of migrants caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border has fallen in recent months, a trend U.S. officials attribute in part to increased enforcement by Mexican authorities.
By Sergey Daga