President Joe Biden’s about-face on U.S. immigration policy has pitted him against Democratic Latinos and immigrant advocacy groups as he tests out border procedures more in line with the Trump administration playbook ahead of another potential surge of illegal immigrants.
Biden debuted two changes over the past month that have progressive Democrats furious and fighting to prevent their implementation before a pandemic policy ends in May, which could trigger even more illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.
In late February, the Biden administration put forth a requirement that would deny immigrants headed to the U.S. southern border to seek asylum in the United States if they had already passed through another country and not chosen to apply for help.
The plan copies a Trump-era program known as the Safe Third Country agreements that the Biden administration wiped out after taking office in early 2021.
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This week, the New York Times reported that the White House is considering holding in custody immigrant families after they illegally cross the border. The move would not be a change in policy but rather a change in how existing policy is carried out.
Illegal immigrants are to face court proceedings for unlawful entry, but because there are more than 2 million pending cases before roughly 600 judges nationwide, cases are not heard for five to eight years.
A 2015 court ruling known as the Flores settlement agreement dictated that no child be detained in federal custody at the border for more than 20 days. Although the U.S. government has family residential centers across the country, the Biden administration chose early on not to place families there and instead spent tens of millions of dollars in 2021 to rent hotel rooms in border states to hold families for several days before admitting them to the U.S.
The prospect of detaining families has frustrated Biden’s supporters and left top Hispanic backers in the Senate feeling blindsided.
It also would directly contradict Biden’s 2020 promise before being elected.
“Children should be released from ICE detention with their parents immediately. This is pretty simple, and I can’t believe I have to say it: Families belong together,” Biden wrote in a tweet posted June 27, 2020.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), deputy chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, said he was “deeply troubled” by the rumor of the family detention proposal.
“As we work to address this crisis, we must move forward to implement solutions that treat families with humanity, and these reports are a reversal of the progress that we have made since the previous administration to stand in solidarity with these families as they seek asylum here in our nation,” Espaillat wrote in a statement.
Several Democratic senators who met with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas last month told Roll Call that no consideration to detain families was mentioned then.
“The lack of communication on immigration-related policy decisions is an insult,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) told the publication. “It would be like making civil rights legislative ideas and thoughts without checking with a congressional Black office. Not acceptable.”
Refugees International warned that detaining families would “be a huge and unconscionable step backward by the Biden administration,” according to Yael Schacher, the director for the Americas and Europe.
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Immigrant rights organization United We Dream has created a petition in protest of this proposal and compared it to people being held in “cages.”
“Reinstatement of family detentions would be a reckless and inhumane choice by the Biden Administration,” United We Dream wrote on the petition page. “Immigrant families should be welcomed to the U.S. & offered resources to remain healthy, safe, and free — not criminalized, traumatized, and detained.”
