The Biden administration is expected to take action next week to make it harder to lift its policy banning asylum for migrants who cross the southern border illegally, three people with knowledge of the matter said Thursday.
The action makes it increasingly unlikely that those restrictions, issued by President Joe Biden in June, will lift in the near future, cementing what had been a short-term fix into a central feature of the asylum system. The restrictions have thus far appeared to propel a major downturn in border crossings.
The change could come at a critical moment of the presidential campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris, who has worked to offset long-standing criticisms of the administration’s handling of the southern border. Harris plans to visit the border in Arizona on Friday.
The policy largely solidifies a shift from the long-standing U.S. promise to allow migrants who come into the country to apply for asylum, regardless of how they do it, and fundamentally alters years of past practice at the southern border.
The American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant advocacy groups have filed a legal challenge over the policy, saying it violates immigration laws. Immigration activists have said that the policy has sent people back toward danger, including those with legitimate asylum claims.
“This is punishment and deterrence at its worst and will wreak havoc on our global reputation and immigration system,” said Robyn Barnard, the senior director for refugee advocacy at Human Rights First. “Those who trumpet it as a success are ignoring the substance of what it does to vulnerable human beings.”
The Biden administration has said that migrants can continue to enter the country and seek asylum if they get appointments at ports of entry beforehand. The administration offers over 1,000 appointments a day to migrants seeking to enter the country.
The order issued in June allowed for the limits on asylum to be lifted if the number of people crossing illegally remained below 1,500 a day for one week. The changes that the administration plans to release next week would require the crossings to remain low for several weeks in order for the restrictions to be lifted.
The number of border crossings has not stayed low enough thus far to lift the restrictions, and an even longer period of low crossings seems unlikely.
Biden administration officials believe the change is necessary to make sure that any dip in crossing numbers is not just momentary — from temporary events like extreme weather — according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times.
The administration believes the order has made a major difference in the short time it has been in place. The number of crossings dipped to about 56,000 in July and around 58,000 in August — the lowest totals of the entire Biden administration. September numbers appear to be on a similar track: Border Patrol agents had made about 40,000 arrests as of this week, according to two people with knowledge of the data.
In December, the administration was dealing with record numbers, with some 5,000 migrants crossing on a given day, and about 250,000 arrests at the border for the month. Migrants were often quickly released and given notices to show up to immigration court, where cases can take years to complete.
“Since President Biden announced new, decisive executive actions to secure the border on June 4, encounters between ports of entry have dropped by more than 50% and remain at their lowest level in years,” Angelo Fernández Hernández, a spokesperson for the White House, said in a statement. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson declined to comment before the change had been issued.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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