President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed three executive orders to begin the complicated process of reversing Trump-era immigration restrictions, frustrating lawyers and defenders who are begging the government to go faster for the sake of their clients.
Executive orders will create a task force to review the separation of families on the border by the Trump administration and an extensive analysis of asylum processing and the public collection rule – described as a wealth test for immigrants seeking green cards.
The orders came on the same day that Alejandro Mayorkas, a former senior official in the Obama administration, was sworn in as the first Latin and immigrant to command the Department of Homeland Security after the US Senate voted to confirm his nomination.
“We want to put in place an immigration process here that can – that is human, that is moral, that considers requests for refugees, requests for people to come – to this country, on the border, in a way that treats people as beings human beings, “White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters. “This is going to take some time. It won’t happen overnight.”
But immigration advocates say time is precious to asylum seekers who have been forced to wait in squalid border camps, crowded shelters and apartments in Mexico while their cases are examined in the United States.
A Human Rights First database tracked at least 1,314 public reports of rape, torture, kidnapping and other forms of violence against asylum seekers caught in the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP).
Linda Rivas, executive director of the Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, said she has received more calls from desperate clients in Mexico who want to know what will happen to them and their immigration audiences.
“This is not fair to them – the pain, suffering, hunger and violence will continue as the government looks at what to do next,” Rivas told BuzzFeed News. “We continue to urge them to act as quickly as possible. These people cannot continue to wait. “
Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, said that Biden’s executive orders will not lead to many immediate changes, but will initiate processes that can result in significant improvements, including the creation of a more robust definition of asylum, gradual entry for migrants fought in Remain in Mexico, rescinding the public prosecution and streamlining the citizenship application process. “
The executive order also required the Department of Homeland Security to stop implementing two controversial pilot programs – the Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP) and the Rapid Asylum Application Review (PACR) – which sought to quickly deport Mexican asylum seekers. and Central Americans on the southern border.
An executive order established a family separation task force to identify and reunify all children separated from their parents by the Trump administration.
A senior government official refused to commit to a specific way of bringing families together, saying it would depend on individual cases. Some advocates have been lobbying the government to allow deported parents to return to the United States and provide them with a path to legal permanent residence.
In mid-January, lawsuits over a federal family separation case against the government revealed that lawyers have yet to find the parents of 611 immigrant children.
For now, the task force will start working on a set of recommendations on how best to reunite families while also looking for those parents. Almost 400 of them are believed to have been deported without their children and about 200 are suspected of being in the United States.
A second executive order called for a review of several Trump policies that made it difficult for immigrants in the U.S. to apply for asylum, including the MPP, which forced thousands of immigrants to wait in dangerous Mexican border cities.
Linda Corchado, an immigration lawyer in El Paso, Texas, said the border was impacted by Trump-era programs.
“As lawyers, our work needs to mean something, but it cannot with so many mechanisms in place that diminish our defense,” said Corchado. “If what the Biden administration really seeks is equitable access to justice, we cannot wait another day, as another asylum seeker is illegally refused by Border Patrol agents on our border, while others are subject to additional damages in the MPP. ”
In his executive order, Biden said that Mayorkas should consider a phased strategy to allow immigrants subject to the MPP to enter the United States “for further processing of their asylum applications”. This suggests that the government is open to allowing immigrants and asylum seekers enrolled in the so-called Stay in Mexico program to be allowed to enter the United States to fight their cases. But defenders said the longer it takes for the process to start, the more immigrants are subject to dangerous conditions.
The Biden government has stopped enrolling people in the MPP, but that still leaves thousands of immigrants with pending hearings waiting south of the border. The program has already sent more than 70,000 immigrants and asylum seekers to Mexico while their cases are heard by a U.S. immigration judge, according to an analysis by Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
While there are 21,557 pending MPP cases, a report by the Robert Strauss Center for Security and International Law at the University of Texas at Austin said it was impossible to estimate how many of these immigrants are still waiting in the Mexican border cities.
Shortly after the election, advocacy groups provided the Biden government with a roadmap for how to conduct the MPP. Among these groups was HIAS, an American Jewish non-profit organization that provides help and assistance to refugees and asylum seekers. Andrew Geibel, a political adviser at HIAS, said they were told the White House had taken their plan into consideration.
“There is this perception that finishing MPP is a complicated process and takes time,” said Geibel. “We trust that the government will work hard to do this.”
Biden also ordered the government to consider reversing the Trump administration’s decision to end an Obama-era program that allowed Central American children to reunite with their parents in the United States. The program, said a senior government official, helped more than 1,400 children to enter the United States legally and safely.
The executive order also called for a review of Trump’s “safe third country” agreements with El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to provide protection for asylum seekers bound for the United States. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said in a statement that the United States “intends to suspend and terminate” bilateral agreements.
The third executive order instructed the Secretary of State, the Attorney General and the Secretary for Homeland Security to review the agency’s regulations and other actions that may be inconsistent with “strategies that promote integration, inclusion and citizenship” of immigrants.
The order also called for an immediate review of the Trump administration’s public charge rule, which allows the government to deny permanent residency to immigrants the authorities believe will use public benefits. Biden also ordered authorities to develop a plan that would remove barriers and improve the existing naturalization process.
“Much of the success behind this [executive order] will be in the details, said Penn State Law professor Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia. “But this first step, days after taking office, is important and signals that the Biden government is willing to consider all the tools in the executive’s toolbox to do long-awaited changes to our asylum system. ”