A group of 77 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden criticizing his administration’s policies that restrict access to asylum for migrants at the southern border.
Signed by New Jersey Senators Bob Menendez and Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 74 other congresswomen, the letter argues that the new policies announced Jan. 5 open up more legal options for migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua , Venezuela and Cuba, and that eliminating the avenues for those nationalities to request asylum at the border is “disappointing.”
While 30,000 migrants from those four countries are eligible to apply for humanitarian parole protections, the government of Mexico has agreed to take back 30,000 migrants per month from those same countries as the Biden administration expands the aforementioned COVID protections. from the Trump era, known as Title 42.
At a press conference on Thursday, Menéndez said: “We recognize that the United States is experiencing a difficult immigration challenge at the southern border. But as elected officials we have a duty to propose legal solutions that protect asylum seekers while ensuring the removal of migrants who do not have a legal right to remain in the United States.”
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the administration was preparing to propose a new federal rule that would allow his department to deny the right to seek asylum at the southern border to migrants who do not seek asylum in a country through which they pass.
Stephen Miller, the senior adviser to then-President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration policies, filed a similar proposal, commonly known as a “traffic ban,” blocked by the courts in 2020.
Detentions at the southern border of Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans drop drastically
“Instead of issuing a new asylum transit ban and expanding Title 42,” the Democratic lawmakers said in the letter to Biden, “we encourage your administration to honor its commitment to restore and protect the rights of asylum seekers. and refugees”. The letter noted that asylum is an international right that should not be restricted.
In response, a White House official said: “Donald Trump tried to categorically ban asylum in the United States for everyone, everywhere. The Biden administration is creating safe and orderly pathways for people who want to apply for asylum in the United States. People can make an appointment from their phone to apply for asylum at a port of entry; In addition, they can use the expanded parole process or use the expanded refugee programs. That is not an asylum ban. It is a safe, orderly and humane process to seek asylum.”
Twenty Republican-ruled states, with the help of a group led by Miller, are trying to block the administration from pursuing those legal avenues in a lawsuit recently filed in Texas federal court.
Biden has come under intense criticism from both parties for his border policies. Republicans say they are not willing to negotiate on immigration legislation or more funding for border initiatives until the administration does more to secure the border.
He also faces lawsuits from immigration advocates for cutting off the roads for asylum seekers.
The administration alleges that since new policies for Haitians, Venezuelans, Nicaraguans and Cubans went into effect earlier this month, the number of people crossing the border from those countries has dropped dramatically.
