It’s hard to overstate the potential destructiveness of the sweeping changes to US immigration policy currently being discussed as part of President Joe Biden’s negotiations with Republicans over aid for Ukraine and Israel.
For weeks, Republicans have demanded Democrats adopt new, harsher US-Mexico border policies in exchange for their support on a raft of foreign aid. The White House has reportedly conceded to significantly rolling back America’s historical commitments to asylum seekers and implementing a new system to crack down on undocumented immigrants already in the US. These mirror policies that former President Donald Trump — explicit in his intention to reduce US immigration levels, including legal immigration — had pursued while in office. That a Democratic administration would even contemplate them shows just how much Republicans have managed to shift what is politically acceptable on immigration in recent years.
“It’s shocking that the Biden administration would be going along with this, but it appears for political reasons they are contemplating that. It’s very sad,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.
Multiple reports have indicated that the White House is prepared to implement a new legal authority that would allow the US to rapidly expel migrants arriving on the border without processing their asylum claims. The new legislation would be similar to the Trump-era Title 42 policy, which operated on the grounds of temporarily curbing the spread of Covid-19, but without the pandemic-related rationale — and permanent.
The Biden administration has also reportedly said it would support expanding an existing legal authority known as “expedited removal” to rapidly deport undocumented immigrants who do not request asylum or who fail their initial asylum screenings, without a hearing. Under the expansion, the US would be able to subject immigrants anywhere in the US to expedited…
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