President Joe Biden’s asylum ban may already be facing a mountain of problems as the administration looks to enforce the order in the coming days and weeks.
Since Biden signed an executive order Tuesday that prohibited migrants from seeking asylum if they show up at the U.S.-Mexico boundary, immigration experts have laid out a myriad of issues with the plan — including possible loopholes that cartels could take advantage of, a lack of funding support an increase in deportations, and exemptions within the order that could be exploited.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) predicted that Mexican criminal organizations, known as cartels, are already at work decrypting the new rules to come up with ways around them.
“If past is precedent, expect the Biden administration to continue to shirk the rules on the book while bad actors look for loopholes,” Grassley told the Washington Examiner in a statement.
NumbersUSA, a Washington group that advocates reducing immigration levels, said the order failed to include funding for the additional work that will be required of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as well as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to carry out countless more removal flights to the more than 150 countries.
“This proclamation provides no operational relief to DHS, does nothing to deter any illegal border crosser, and is simply a political gambit,” Numbers CEO James Massa wrote in an email.
Democrats and the White House have blamed House Republicans for blocking additional funding for the border earlier this year. GOP lawmakers defended their decision at the time as not wanting to write a blank check to the government absent more action to deter illegal immigration.
Senior Biden administration officials who spoke with reporters in a call Tuesday said Republicans had “put politics over providing our border personnel the resources they need” by failing to pass packages twice earlier this year.
Administration officials also outlined a number of exceptions to the asylum ban during the call with reporters Tuesday, including “unaccompanied children, victims of a severe form of trafficking, [and] those who face an acute medical emergency or an imminent and extreme threat to life and safety.”
However, Grassley has concerns that the order contained too many exceptions that could become a problem for Border Patrol and ICE.
“This could very well encourage more illegal immigration at non-ports of entry and further exploitation of unaccompanied children, who are exempted from the order entirely,” Grassley said.
The International Rescue Committee organization said Biden’s order would create new problems by leaving asylum-seekers in “legal limbo,” unable to seek protections in the United States and, in turn, join family members already in the country. Asylum deterrence policies fail to consider that people fleeing their homes have not stopped fleeing.
“Measures that have attempted to deter migration at the US-Mexico border … have not stopped people fleeing their homes from trying to seek safety and, in fact, fueled repeat crossing attempts to seek refuge,” said Kennji Kizuka, asylum policy director for the International Rescue Committee, in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “Drastic changes in border policies also create fertile ground for misunderstanding and misinformation, which puts people who are already in need of protection at risk of human trafficking, kidnappings, exploitation, and other dangers.”
Although the Biden administration has made pathways for migrants outside the U.S. to seek admission legally, Democrats have castigated the White House for finding a way around international protections for migrants.
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Chair of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety, issued the following statement on President Biden’s executive action to effectively ban asylum requests at the southern border:
“This asylum ban will fail to address the challenges at our border, just as it did under the Trump Administration. It will lead to people with legitimate asylum claims being prevented from seeking safety and returned to harm,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) in a statement.
But other Democrats, including the New Democrat Leadership caucus in Congress, cheered the move and were hopeful that it would help control the unchecked border crisis five months ahead of the presidential election in November.
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“With today’s announcement, President Biden is taking decisive, commonsense action to restore order at the southern border at a time when Congressional Republicans continue to use it as a political football,” the New Democrat Leadership said in a statement. “This executive order will reduce the burden on Customs and Border Protection, immigration courts and the immigration system, and the communities we represent.”
The DHS and White House did not respond to a request for comment.