The top immigration official thinks that the border plan by Biden is working

Biden’s border plan is working? Here’s how the top immigration official says it’s working: An interview with We, The Voters 2024

As part of NPR’s We, The Voters 2024 election series, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the person tasked with executing Biden’s vision on immigration, sat for an interview with Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep.

Earlier this year, Mayorkas was impeached by House Republicans who alleged that his use of parole to allow some migrants into the country was unlawful. The charges were thrown out by the Senate.

Mayorkas said that his goal is to have legitimate asylum-seekers, individuals with successful claims to be able to avail themselves of humanitarian aid outside of the hands of traffickers.

Mayorkas says the numbers have decreased. Migration is a dynamic phenomenon, so the numbers increase and they decrease. The numbers have fallen. We have also removed or returned an historic number of people more this year than I think in any year since 2011.

We talked to John Modlin, the Chief patrol officer for the Tucson sector of the border, who said that he’s very busy right now. He said the increase began in 2021, just as the Biden administration was taking office, and that migrants say they believed the laws would be different and that they would be allowed in. I know the administration tried to message differently and told people not to come, but why do you think that didn’t work well?

Source: Is Biden’s border plan working? Here’s how the top immigration official says it is

Is Biden’s border plan working? Here’s how the top immigration official says it’s working: Does the mayorkas say yes?

Mayorkas: Absolutely. I won’t have the precise numbers, but I’m going to ballpark it. There were maybe about 560,000 encounters in 2018 and maybe close to a million in 2019.

Mayorkas: Well, remember what we are battling. We are battling sophisticated smuggling organizations that peddle in disinformation. We want to counter that reality with accurate information.

Inskeep: It seems to me that I could define your policy difference with Republicans in this way: You want people to come lawful. Republicans don’t want people to come or not so many people to come. That is a fair description.

Inskeep: Or they just feel the asylum seekers specifically are taking advantage of the system. Let’s talk about the asylum-seekers and not other kinds of immigrants who may come here legally.

The majority of people do not qualify, according to the Mayorkas, when you look at the numbers who have claimed and the numbers who succeeded.

Source: Is Biden’s border plan working? Here’s how the top immigration official says it is

Implications of the Bipartisan Border Law for Immigration Processes and Migrant Asylum: A Reply to a Mexican Congressman

We spoke to a Republican congressman who was born in Mexico. He says it’s taking too long for legal immigration applications to be processed, while the border is “wide open” for arriving migrants. Is there something unfair about the current state of the law that allows people to come and say, “I want asylum” and they usually get several years before a court hearing?

We would have been able to remove that individual if the legislation had been passed. And I would respectfully wish that the congressman had actually supported that bipartisan legislation rather than opposed it. If people really want to fix the system, then they should advance solutions rather than really dwell on the problem and frankly perpetuate it by declining to implement solutions.

The congresswoman makes a legitimate claim that individuals who are seeking other lawful processes, their cases are taking longer because we have had to allocate resources to the challenge at the border. The duration of time has been extended more than once. You know, the prior administration gutted our legal immigration system, financially gutted. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. If they had actually promulgated a fee rule that properly resourced that agency, the backlogs would not have accumulated as they have.

The failed bipartisan border that lost Republican support in the Senate after Trump opposed it was referred to by Mayorkas. The deal that would have allotted $20 billion for border security and made it tougher for people to claim asylum.

During Biden’s time in office, he dealt with a record number of border apprehensions and a backlogged immigration system. He’s also subject to competing criticisms that he is either too soft on immigration or that he has been too harsh on people trying to escape instability in their home countries.

Trump has vowed to be more aggressive on immigration in a second term, saying he would crack down on migrants and asylum-seekers at the border as well as immigrants already living in the country. In his first term, Trump implemented policies that separated children from their parents and ordered migrant asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases were reviewed.

Immigration policy analysts say the rule won’t have much effect on the number of people crossing illegally or on mass migration.

Immigration officials may reject an asylum claim if the person has a criminal history that poses a threat to national security. If that happened, the person would be deported.

This determination could happen during the ‘credible fear’ stage, within days of the migrant being encountered by immigration officials. This is the time when migrants feel that if they are sent to their countries, they will be killed or tortured.

The director of immigration policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center told NPR that most of the people arriving at the border are not going through the fear process. “So, the number of people (this rule) would apply to is small relative to the number of arrivals at the border right now.”

“We will continue to take action, but fundamentally it is only Congress that can fix what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system,” Mayorkas said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement attorneys are often unable to assess the severity of crimes committed by migrants seeking asylum, according to former chief counsel Paul Hunker.

Hunker said that people will be found to have committed particularly serious crimes when they really aren’t because of the new rule.

Biden’s Rule is Against Attacks on Asylum Seekers, a Critique of the Founding of the Paradox of Democracy

He said, “Now, desperately grasping to salvaged his failed presidency, President Biden attempts the most minimal action possible, hoping to mask the crisis he created.”

Raha Wala, the vice president for strategic partnerships and advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, said the rule is part of long standing efforts to “further curtail the due process rights of asylum seekers.”

Wala said that there’s almost no evidence that terrorists or criminals get into the asylum system on a systematic basis.

“Asylum seekers need to be prepared for their case and have counsel to help them through such a harrowing journey after being persecuted,” Wala said.

“The fact that Congress is doing nothing and putting this pressure on the administration, who then has to issue a (rule) and hope it doesn’t get hold up in adjudication is really perplexing,” Murray said.

A senior official with DHS told reporters Thursday they expect to publish the proposal on Monday, and provide for a 30-day public comment period. Officials hope a final rule would be implemented this year.

However, a similar proposal by former President Donald Trump in 2020 but was halted by a federal judge, and advocates expect Biden’s rule to also be challenged.