When President-elect Joe Biden comes into office, he will inherit the Trump administration’s restrictionist immigration agenda, which cut access to asylum and has kept migrants in limbo in Mexico while they await humanitarian protection in the US.Biden has promised swift change, but it won’t be simple.”They’re realizing that they have two months to figure out a really complicated mess of things,” a source familiar with the transition told CNN, referring to the Biden team. “People are really overwhelmed trying to figure out the sheer issues, the sheer number of pieces you have to coordinate. This is the genius of Stephen Miller.”Miller, President Donald Trump’s lead immigration adviser and the architect of his hard-line immigration agenda, has shepherded some of the most restrictionist immigration policies — and continues to do so — the intent of curtailing immigration to the US. The hundreds of executive actions rolled out by the Trump administration have drawn the ire of immigrant advocates and lawmakers, who argue they’ve betrayed the country’s welcoming stance.
The makeup of the Biden-Harris transition team reviewing the Department of Homeland Security appears to signal the incoming administration’s awareness of those actions, with Ur Jaddou, former chief counsel at US Citizenship and Immigration Services, as the team lead, and with the selection of Alejandro Mayorkas as Homeland Security secretary. But undoing policies — as Biden has said he’d do- will be a steep challenge, both logistically and politically.”They’re coming into the office with a mandate and an intent — in many ways needed and appropriate — to reverse Trump-era immigration policies,” a former Homeland Security official told CNN.
Even changes that are ultimately up to the president could face hurdles, including Biden’s pledge to bring more refugees to the United States. Biden has said he wants to raise the cap to 125,000 — an increase from the historic low of 15,000 put in place by the Trump administration.But a change in actual arrivals would require policy changes and new refugee interviews, according to a source familiar with the process. The diversion of refugee officers to work on asylum cases the past two years has also left the pipeline largely void of refugees who are advanced in the system, the source said. There are also challenges that arise with Covid-19, including US Citizenship and Immigration Services interview teams being unable to travel.Other pledges by the Biden administration include repealing regulations that have made seeking asylum in the US exceedingly difficult — a process that could take months. But in the near future, the most urgent challenge for a Biden administration might be how to execute those promises, while acknowledging the potential for a spike in migrants at the US-Mexico border.The Trump administration implemented two major policies on the US-Mexico border that were unprecedented — the so-called “remain in Mexico” policy, which returned non-Mexican asylum seekers to Mexico until their immigration court date in the United States, and a public health order, related to coronavirus, that allows for the swift removal of migrants arrested at the border.
Each of those policies has made claiming asylum in the US at the southern border nearly impossible, but the consequence of pulling them back too quickly could result in a sudden increase of migrants on the southern border.”You don’t want a surge to happen before you’re ready to handle it,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. “They’re going to have to rely on one of the policies they hate the most and that they disagree with philosophically, so that they can get to a long term fix.”
The former DHS official echoed that concern: “You have to have a pressure valve in place before you start unwinding down these policies or you’ll allow a crisis to generate.”