President Joe Biden plans to sign
three executive orders on immigration
Tuesday
that include measures to identify and reunify separated families at the border, review the 'Stay in Mexico' program for asylum seekers and study changes to the public charge rule. that makes it difficult to access green cards, according to its Administration.
All of them are immigration policies established by the Administration of the previous president, Donald Trump.
“President Biden's strategy is centered on the basic premise that our country is safer, stronger and more prosperous” with an immigration system “that welcomes immigrants, keeps families together, and enables newcomers and those who have lived here for generations contribute more fully [to the development of] our country, "said senior government officials when announcing the measures.
Meanwhile, on another aspect that causes great concern to many immigrants - the danger of being deported - Biden's promise to intervene immediately to guarantee relief to those affected has not yet been reflected in effective changes.
The president ordered many deportations to be halted for 100 days, but a federal judge temporarily blocked his directive, alleging that this action was taken irregularly, after Texas filed a lawsuit against it.
In the first 13 days of Biden's tenure, hundreds of immigrants were deported to various countries, including a witness to the massacre of Latinos in El Paso, Texas.
Legal experts assure that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE, for its acronym in English), has the power not to carry out deportations beyond the order of the federal judge, according to the news agency The Associated Press.
One of the measures that the president plans to take this Tuesday is the creation of a working group dedicated to identifying and reunifying migrant children separated from their parents at the border under the Trump Administration, according to senior officials of the current government, who defined this policy " a moral failure and a national shame ”.
"Nobody really knows" how many there are at the moment, although it is estimated that there may be "up to 1,000," these sources added.
Asked whether separated family members who are now outside the United States are planning to return, Administration officials said the task force will make recommendations on how to deal with these cases individually.
Another of the executive orders that Biden has prepared for this Tuesday instructs the Department of Homeland Security a review of the policy known as Stay in Mexico - officially, Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP, in English) -, implemented by Trump to force Asylum seekers on the southern border to wait for the resolution of their cases on the Mexican side, which has left tens of thousands of people stranded for months in dangerous border cities of the neighboring country.
Biden had already suspended the program so that no new cases are included in it.
However, its officials have not clarified what will happen to the people who are currently in Mexico, claiming that "the situation at the border will not change overnight" but that alternatives are being worked on.
More than 300 migrants deported from the United States and Mexico arrive in Honduras
Feb. 2, 202100: 20
In addition, the same executive order raises the need to help migrants' countries of origin to combat the problems that cause them to emigrate and collaborate with governments and NGOs to "improve their capacity to accept migrants."
In a third executive order, Biden will ask to review measures imposed by Trump that made it difficult for the undocumented to access legal status, such as obtaining green cards and naturalization.
For this, actions are planned such as changing the public charge rule that prevents access to permanent residence for beneficiaries of certain public aid, reducing the fees to request citizenship, reestablishing exemptions for this and alleviating the administrative workload due to accumulation. of requests.
With information from NBC News and AP.
