By Julia Ainsley -
NBC News
The Joe Biden Administration is preparing to announce a new immigration rule that seeks to stop the arrival of asylum seekers in the country, a plan that multiple human rights groups have criticized and compared to the anti-immigrant policies of former President Donald Trump.
The new rule, which
will be announced in a few weeks,
according to four senior officials of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), seeks to prevent migrants from applying for asylum in the United States after crossing the border, if they did not request it before in one of the countries they crossed, including Mexico.
The arrival of undocumented migrants at the southern border broke a record last year, so it is believed that this new measure seeks to prevent hundreds of thousands of migrants from seeking asylum in the United States this year, although the Biden government has opened some legal channels. for immigration.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas walks the border fence on a visit to Texas in May 2022. Joel Martinez / AP
Immigrant rights advocates and some Democratic figures have criticized Biden for this new plan, saying it is too similar to the one unsuccessfully tried to implement by Stephen Miller, the former Trump adviser who pushed a tough anti-immigrant agenda.
Keren Zwick, director of litigation for the National Center for Immigrant Justice, said her group and other partner organizations are ready to take on the immigration rule if it goes into effect, as they did when Stephen Miller did.
And she ensured that such a rule would not survive legal challenges.
[Uncertainty seizes the relatives of the migrants who died in Panama]
“If this proposed asylum ban rule has the effect we hope it will have: to unlawfully deprive you of access to asylum based on the mode of entry and/or transit route (of migrants),” Zwick said, “it would be invalid as similar rules that the Trump Administration tried to implement, but were found illegal by federal courts.”
[José had 11 loved ones on the bus with migrants that crashed in Panama. He lost eight]
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has denied that Biden's rule is similar to the Trump Administration's proposal.
“This is not a Trump-era policy,” Mayorkas told MSNBC on January 31.
“This is not a traffic ban.
We have provided a legal pathway for people to enter (the United States)."
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The legal path Mayorkas referred to, the extended humanitarian
parole
, was announced on January 5 and consists of allowing the monthly entry of 30,000 migrants from Venezuela, Haiti, Nicaragua and Cuba, as long as they have a sponsor in the United States.
It also allows immigrants from any country who are considered particularly vulnerable to request an exception to Title 42, the health measure due to the COVID-19 pandemic that still prevents many migrants from seeking asylum at the border.
However, the new policy expected to be announced in weeks
will not expand legal avenues for immigration
;
rather, it will prevent thousands of Central American migrants from applying for asylum at the southern border, according to the four DHS officials who spoke to NBC News.
The Biden Administration is already facing a lawsuit from 20 Republican states, which seek to block these new legal avenues opened by Biden.
Both this legal challenge by Republicans and the one that immigrant advocates hope to undertake when the new policy to restrict asylum is announced exemplify the difficulty of legislating immigration in such a polarized political environment.
Credible Fear Phone Interviews from the Border
Democrats and pro-immigrant groups applauded Biden at the start of his administration, when he said he planned to implement more humane immigration policies and mark a contrast to Trump, whose administration separated thousands of migrant parents from their children after crossing the southern border, between 2017 and 2018.
But border crossings with Biden have reached highs not seen in 20 years, and while they have declined recently, the possible end of Title 42 in May is expected to lead to a further increase.
[Migrants in Tijuana denounce increase in violent attacks]
As the Biden Administration looks for ways to stem the flow of immigration, more than 75 Democratic lawmakers have strongly criticized the new direction the government is taking on immigration.
In preparation for the announcement of the new immigration rules, Border Patrol has already begun installing
more phone booths at its immigration detention centers
, which are expected to be used to
quickly determine through a phone interview with an asylum officer if the migrants meet the requirements
to obtain it.
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If they are not allowed to seek asylum or do not qualify for other protections, such as those that exist for victims or potential victims of torture, the new policy will allow migrants in Border Patrol custody to be quickly removed or deported, according to DHS officials.
However, it is not clear how many migrants will be able to be expelled from Mexico, and of what nationalities.
This will depend on the ongoing negotiations with the authorities of that country, the sources said.