WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is expected to sign an executive order Tuesday that would allow the U.S. to turn away migrants who enter the country without lawful authorization if there are high numbers crossing the border.
The lawmaker, who was briefed by White House officials over the weekend, spoke to USA Today on condition of anonymity about the plans.
The closure would be automatically triggered if more than 2,500 migrants enter through any legal port of entry.
Biden plans to use Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to carry out the measure. Former President Donald Trump relied on the same provision of immigration law when he introduced restrictions during his presidency.
“As we have said before, the Administration continues to consider a range of policy options and remains committed to taking action to address our dysfunctional immigration system,” a White House spokesman said in a statement.
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At a White House meeting in late May, members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus urged Biden not to use the same provision of the law to carry out the executive order.
News of the Biden administration’s latest order came just 24 hours after Mexico’s historic election.
Mexicans overwhelmingly voted for Claudia Sheinbaum with more than 58 percent of the vote to govern America’s largest trading partner. Despite deep cross-border economic ties, the relationship between the United States and Mexico has long been tested by shared challenges in immigration and drug trafficking.
more:Mexico has a new president, Claudia Scheinbaum. What does this mean for the United States?
Earlier this year, a bipartisan deal collapsed in the Senate that would have allowed for an automatic restriction on the entry of asylum seekers if the number of migrants crossing the border reached certain thresholds. The bill would have set the conditions for restricting asylum if the number of migrants in any given week, including at a port of entry, averaged more than 4,000, and would have forced a closure if the average exceeded 5,000.
Illegal migration at the U.S. border has surged since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Biden administration has been working to contain border crossings ever since, with mixed results.
The executive order addresses one aspect of immigration: asylum seekers who cross the border rather than sneaking across it and turn themselves in to Border Patrol agents.
“The Biden administration is reportedly planning to cap the number of asylum applications, which would violate U.S. refugee law and the Refugee Convention,” said Marisa Limon Garza, executive director of the El Paso, Texas-based Las Americas Immigrant Rights Center.
“We have established processes for screening and vetting asylum claims,” she said. “Denying access to these processes makes women, children and families fleeing violence more vulnerable to those who seek to prey on them.”
David Beer, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, criticized Biden’s proposal as unworkable.
“Since fiscal year 2019, there has been one month outside of fiscal year 2020 where arrests were below 1,500 per day,” Beer said. In X’s post“This is a ridiculous suggestion.”
US law is contradictory: travel between ports of entry is illegal under Title VIII, but under the same US law, migrants retain the right to seek asylum when they do so.
Asylum seekers continue to try their luck between ports of entry, even as Biden created new legal pathways.
U.S. Border Patrol encounters and arrests exceeded 2.4 million in fiscal year 2023, the highest number ever recorded.
So far this fiscal year, the Border Patrol has reported more than 1.5 million encounters and arrests.
Illegal crossings were down in March and April compared with the same period last year, a trend that many observers attribute to Mexico’s efforts to stop migrants from reaching the U.S. border.
