By Daniella Silva - NBC News
When President Donald Trump won the election in 2016, he did so on a promise to reform the immigration system, which became the mainstay of his campaign.
During his four-year tenure, he made radical changes, such as tightening border surveillance, and reducing refugee admissions and the right to asylum.
And he promised, of course, to build a wall across the border with Mexico.
"He is the only president in history, not just in modern history, who was elected on the basis of his political platform on immigration," says Muzaffar Chishti of the Institute for Migration Policy.
And he kept his promise.
He did not abandon her after being elected.
That is a great difference with respect to any previous Administration, "he highlights.
President-elect Joe Biden has said he will reverse a vast majority of those changes within his first 100 days in office, but experts say it could take much longer to see results.
[These are Joe Biden's immigration promises]
Three people involved in Biden's immigration platform revealed to NBC News that the modifications will not be easy and that they may not happen all at once.
On Tuesday, Biden announced his intention to nominate Alejandro Mayorkas as his secretary of Homeland Security, the first Latino and the first immigrant chosen to head that department.
Biden will nominate a Latino and an immigrant to lead the Department of Homeland Security
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Chishti recalls that Trump began his administration by issuing executive orders such as tightening the borders and a travel ban, and by the end of his term, he had mostly dismantled the asylum system.
The Immigration Policy Institute estimates that Trump took more than 400 executive actions to change the immigration system at an "unprecedented" rate.
Reset DACA
Chishti believes that one of the most feasible measures of the new administration may be to restore and expand protections under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects immigrants who arrived to the country when they were children but lacking legal status.
Another policy that Biden could quickly reinstate would be to reapply the Obama Administration's immigration law on dangerous criminals or threats to national security, he says.
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Stay in Mexico Program
Fernando García, executive director of the Border Network for Human Rights, estimates that one of the changes that will be more difficult to correct is the Trump Migrant Protection Protocol, also known as
Stay in Mexico
, by which the Government sent back to that country to tens of thousands of asylum seekers to wait for their cases to be studied.
Ending that program will not answer the question of what to do with those still waiting on the other side of the border or how and when to bring them back, which could be a time-consuming process, García said.
"Ending [that protocol] does not mean that we now have the ability to bring everyone back immediately and I am very concerned," he says.
"How are we going to handle it?"
['Stay in Mexico': a year of chaos, improvisation and despair]
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Family separation
Another change that will take time will be reuniting the hundreds of families that are still separated as a result of Trump's controversial policy that separated thousands of children from their parents at the border, Garcia says.
As NBC News reported, attorneys tasked with finding migrant parents separated from their children by the Trump Administration have yet to find the parents of 666 of those children.
"We need to unite these families," he says.
["They hunted us and took my baby from me": this Guatemalan mother was a victim of family separation from migrants in the US]
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The public charge rule
According to Chishti, reversing the public charge regulation would likely take some time as well.
The rule, which denies immigrants from obtaining any kind of legal status if they receive food stamps or other public benefits, is currently being challenged in court.
"If it took Trump a year to put it in place, why should it take Biden less time to get rid of the measure?" He wonders.
[The United States assures that the new public charge rule will not apply to migrants affected by the coronavirus]
Access to asylum
It also considers that Biden will also face the daunting and important task of creating a fair and efficient asylum system after Trump basically dismantled it through a series of modifications of that policy that have included some agreements with several nations, such as Mexico and several Central American countries.
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“Did you build a beautiful wall from sea to sea?
That did not happen, but it could be argued on the other hand, he built a wall without using any brick because of the way in which he implemented the changes to the asylum system, ”he says.
"The changes in our asylum regime have been so profound that they have reduced the number of asylum seekers entering the United States to a minimum," he says.
["Has no sense!" A federal judge denies that the Border Patrol can conduct asylum interviews with immigrants]
Comprehensive immigration reform
For Chishti, one of the longer-term and potentially difficult changes would be to pass comprehensive immigration reform that grants legal status to undocumented immigrants, especially in a potentially divided Congress, where such proposals have historically failed.
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"I think it is the most difficult thing to achieve not only because of the pandemic but also because of the history of immigration reform in a divided government," he clarifies.
García says that while changing policy takes time, changing the narrative and the image projected by the United States on immigration are also fundamental.
"What I think about how national policies are developed is not only politics, but first there is a narrative that shapes that policy," he says.
"There is already some relief in border communities and families for a potential change [with Biden]," he concludes.
