President Joe Biden on Monday announced that he would be tightening further his previous executive order capping the number of asylum claims in an effort to keep illegal crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border under control.
Biden in June issued a presidential proclamation that aimed to control the number of daily unlawful border crossings amid a peak in illegal border encounters and polls indicating voter dissatisfaction with his handling of the crisis. The adjustment to the policy doubled down on the order by extending the number of days it would take at a certain threshold for it to be deactivated, according to a White House press release.
The president’s original order temporarily suspended the entry of foreign nationals across the U.S.-Mexico border after the number of average border encounters exceeded 2,500 a day over a week time period, according to the administration’s announcement. The executive order was meant to stay in effect until two weeks after there had been a seven-day average of fewer than 1,500 encounters along the southern border.
The White House will now tweak the threshold at which the partial asylum ban would be deactivated, making it more difficult for federal officials to do away with the order, according to the administration’s Monday statement. Under the changes, the threshold for deactivating the asylum restrictions would only happen after the seven-day average remains below 1,500 for 28 days.
“With respect to Proclamation 10773, to ensure that the threshold to discontinue the suspension and limitation on entry reflects a sustained decrease in encounters, I have now determined that the suspension and limitation on entry in that proclamation should be discontinued only after the Secretary of Homeland Security has made a factual determination that there have been 28 consecutive calendar days in which the 7-consecutive-calendar-day average of encounters is less than 1,500,” Biden announced in a White House press release.
Unlawful border crossings have steadily dropped since the June executive order went into effect, according to the latest CBP data. The administration recently boasted that the executive order has led to a more than 50% reduction in border encounters between ports of entry.
The result has brought some relief to an administration that has presided over a massive wave of illegal immigration into the country and to Vice President Kamala Harris as she attempts to shift to a more hardline stance on border security amid her presidential campaign.
Harris visited the border on Friday and vowed to get tough with foreign nationals who attempt to enter unlawfully.
“If someone does not make an asylum request at a legal point of entry and instead crosses our border unlawfully, they will be barred from receiving asylum,” Harris said during the visit, according to NPR. “While we understand that many people are desperate to migrate to the United States, our system must be orderly and secure, and that is my goal.”
Under the Biden-Harris administration, Border Patrol agents have encountered more than seven million migrants unlawfully crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, according to the latest CBP data.
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