President Joe Biden took major executive action Tuesday to bar virtually all migrants seeking asylum from doing so at the U.S. southern border.
The White House announced Tuesday afternoon that Biden is taking executive action to prevent illegal migrants from being able to seek asylum and remain in the United States.
“President Biden is issuing a presidential proclamation that will temporarily suspend the entry of noncitizens across the southern border,” said a senior administration official who briefed reporters about the executive order Tuesday morning.
The executive order, along with two rules issued by the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, will take effect immediately and allow federal law enforcement to quickly remove migrants after they cross illegally and are apprehended. It does this by not allowing migrants in custody to request asylum, thus allowing federal police to remove them from the country.
Migrants who do not express a fear of being returned home will be removed within “a matter of days, if not hours,” the first official said. For migrants who do state that they fear being returned to their home country, they will be screened against a “substantially higher standard” than the threshold that has been used as the basis for being able to seek asylum.
“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 first official said.
Under the new protocols, the asylum ban will remain in effect if the seven-day average of migrants apprehended by Border Patrol agents between the ports of entry is above 2,500 arrests per day. The ban will only be walked back if the seven-day average of migrants arrested drops below 1,500 apprehensions daily, according to the administration officials.
It is up to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to determine whether the number of crossings constitutes the ban remaining in place or being lifted. At present, approximately 4,000 to 5,000 migrants are being arrested daily.
“These actions will be in effect when high levels of encounters at the southern border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences, as is the case today, they will make it easier for immigration officials to remove those who are here unlawfully and reduce the burden on our Border Patrol agents,” said a second senior administration official who spoke with reporters.
When asked how the Biden administration arrived at the 2,500 figure, the second official said the number was “similar to” the levels negotiated under the failed Senate bipartisan bill.
However, the White House declined to answer a question about whether migrants who seek asylum at a port of entry would be counted toward the 2,500 threshold. Migrants who apply for admission prior to arriving at the border through the CBP One phone app will not be counted toward the daily cap.
Migrants arrested attempting to enter Florida and Puerto Rico by sea are also banned from seeking asylum.
But the Biden administration has carved out some exceptions to the new protocols.
Under the new process, migrants will not automatically be as easily able to avert deportation by making a general claim of being afraid to return home. Migrants will only go through a screening process to see if they have a credible fear for seeking asylum if they specifically “express a fear of return to their country or country of removal, a fear of persecution or torture, or an intention to apply for asylum.”
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Unaccompanied migrant children will not be immediately turned away. Adult migrants who present “exceptionally compelling circumstances” will also be exempt from the asylum ban, according to the administration officials.
Biden administration officials said that they are prepared to defend the asylum ban from lawsuits and added that the Biden administration had improved the asylum system for migrants abroad to seek admission to a greater extent than any previous administration.