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ACLU Plans Lawsuit Over Biden's Trumpian Attack on Asylum Rights
"It was illegal when Trump did it, and it is no less illegal now."
Jun 04, 2024
The ACLU on Tuesday vowed to launch a legal challenge to U.S. President Joe Biden's executive order barring migrants who cross the southern border without authorization from receiving asylum.
Biden's executive action invokes Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act—previously used by the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump to deny migrants asylum—"when the southern border is overwhelmed."
Under the policy, asylum requests will be shut down when the average number of daily migrant encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500. Border entry points would reopen to asylum-seekers when that number dips below 1,500.
The president said he was acting, in part, because "Republicans in Congress chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security, twice voting against the toughest and fairest set of reforms in decades."
On Tuesday, the ACLU said Biden's policy will "rush vulnerable people through already fast-tracked deportation proceedings, sending people in need of protection to their deaths."
"We intend to challenge this order in court," Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, said in a statement. "It was illegal when Trump did it, and it is no less illegal now."
In July 2020 a federal judge in Washington, D.C. struck down the Trump administration's ban on most Central Americans and migrants from other countries.
ACLU chief political and advocacy officer Deirdre Schifeling said that "we need solutions to address the challenges at the border, but the administration's planned executive actions will put thousands of lives at risk."
"They will not meet the needs at the border, nor will they fix our broken immigration system," Schifeling added. "We urge the administration to uphold its campaign promise to restore asylum and mobilize the necessary resources to address the challenges at the border. It's not just the morally sound thing to do—it's good politics."
The ACLU pointed to polling showing that "voters nationwide and in battleground states largely reject enforcement-only policies that put vulnerable people in danger."
The group is advocating "balanced and humane solutions" including "improving processing at ports of entry and addressing the immigration case backlog by investing in immigration court judges and legal representation."
This isn't the first time that Biden's immigration policies have been likened to those of Trump, who is the presumptive 2024 Republican nominee despite having recently been convicted on 34 felony counts and facing 54 other federal and state charges across three cases.
One year ago, critics accused Biden of "finishing Trump's job" by implementing a crackdown on asylum-seekers upon the expiration of Title 42—a provision first invoked during the previous administration at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic and continued by Biden to expel more than 1 million migrants under the pretext of public health.
The international medical charity Doctors Without Borders—which has deployed aid teams along migration routes—warned Tuesday that Biden's new order will put vulnerable people who endure treacherous, sometimes deadly, risks trying to reach the United States "at even greater risk."
"In signing this executive order, President Biden has betrayed his promise to build a fair, safe, and humane immigration system," Doctors Without Borders USA CEO Avril Benoît said in a statement. "This order is not only counter to U.S. law and international law, it puts people's lives and health at risk."
"Today's decision will trap vulnerable people, including young families, in insecure cities in Mexico and put them in grave danger," Benoît added. "The Biden administration continues to prioritize optics and political expediency at the expense of thousands of people who are attempting to exercise their legal right to seek asylum."
Kica Matos, president of the National Immigration Law Center and the NILC Immigrant Justice Fund, said Tuesday that "President Biden's craven embrace of failed Republican policies is a mistake that will only lead to more harm and dysfunction at the U.S.-Mexico border."
"There is a better way," she stressed. "Rather than playing politics with people's lives, the president should pursue practical solutions that increase our capacity to welcome immigrants humanely. These solutions include timely and fair processing of asylum applications, expanding legal pathways, and supporting cities that are welcoming our new neighbors."
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Cruel Immigration Policies Are Not the Solution
Biden once seemed to understand that punitive measures were not going to make either immigrants or U.S. citizens safer, or make our immigration system more orderly. He must rediscover those commitments and stop playing politics with people's lives.
Mar 30, 2024
When President Biden was campaigning in 2020, he pledged to strengthen our country by supporting and welcoming immigrants. Early in his presidency, he began taking steps in that direction.
On his first day in office, Biden proclaimed an end to his predecessor’s “Muslim ban,” which summarily banned migration from several Muslim-majority countries. And In February 2021, Biden introduced an executive order aimed at reversing some of the Trump administration’s damage to our immigration system, from family separations to backlogs in our asylum system.
“Securing our borders does not require us to ignore the humanity of those who seek to cross them,” Biden said at the time. “Nor is the United States safer when resources that should be invested in policies targeting actual threats, such as drug cartels and human traffickers, are squandered on efforts to stymie legitimate asylum seekers.”
Biden seemed to understand that being “tough” does not mean you have to support cruel and ineffective policies. Unfortunately, as immigration has become a more polarizing topic, the administration has backed away from this more humane approach.
Instead, in many ways Biden has actually continued down Trump’s path on immigration.
For example, the Trump administration enforced a rule called Title 42 during the height of the COVID pandemic, which severely limited entry into the United States—supposedly to protect public health. Biden continued to implement that policy for years, even without the flimsy public health justification.
The bipartisan Senate border bill Biden recently endorsed includes funding for a border wall he once promised not to fund — along with new restrictions on asylum and a measure that would authorize the president to shut the border down completely. Biden is also considering using the same authority the Trump administration invoked in its Muslim ban to restrict asylum access.
A few weeks ago, Biden and Trump separately visited the U.S.-Mexico border. Instead of proposing actual solutions to support our immigration system, Biden uplifted the failed Senate bill—and even went so far as to invite Trump to “join him” in working to it.
During his State of the Union address in March, Biden had the opportunity to distinguish himself from Trump. Instead, his speech demonstrated a strong disconnect between his rhetoric and actions.
Biden said he would not demonize immigrants, but in the same speech used the offensive term “illegal immigrant.” No human being is “illegal.” Continuing to echo that language is dehumanizing and puts immigrant communities at risk of violence. (Biden later said he regretted using the term, but did not apologize for using it.)
Biden said he would not separate families, but his current and proposed immigration policies have separated and continue to separate families. He said he would not ban people from the country because of their faith, but his proposed action would make asylum harder for nearly everyone regardless of their faith.
Invoking his Irish heritage, Biden has alluded to the Great Famine in Ireland to sympathize with immigrants looking for a better life in the United States. But families seeking shelter today from similar hardship would have extreme difficulty getting into the country under the policies he wants to implement.
Biden once understood that punitive measures were not going to make either immigrants or U.S. citizens safer, or make our immigration system more orderly. He understood that we’d need to create pathways to legislation and citizenship, honor our responsibility to offer refuge to asylum seekers, and live up to our American values.
If Biden’s sincere about finding real solutions, he needs to remember those commitments. It’s time to stop playing politics with immigrants’ lives.
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Anti-Migrant Directives Under Consideration by Biden Slammed as 'Trump Policy'
"People seek asylum because they fear for their lives. President Biden would be making a grave mistake if he moves forward with this policy," said Rep. Chuy García.
Feb 21, 2024
Immigration rights advocates on Wednesday condemned President Joe Biden's reported consideration of a series of anti-migrant actions, including invoking an executive authority used by the Trump administration to make it more difficult for people to seek asylum in the United States.
According to reports, Biden is considering acting without Congress in an election year bid to stem the flow of undocumented migrants at the southern U.S. border.
"This would be an extremely disappointing mistake. Cruel enforcement-only policies have been tried for 30 years and simply do not work," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in response to the reporting.
"Democrats cannot continue to take pages out of Donald Trump and Stephen Miller's playbook—we need to lead with dignity and humanity," she added, referring to the former U.S. president and 2024 GOP front-runner and his xenophobic senior immigration adviser.
As Politicoreported:
Among the ideas under discussion include using a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act to bar migrants from seeking asylum in between U.S. ports of entry. The administration is also discussing tying that directive to a trigger—meaning that it would only come into effect after a certain number of illegal crossings took place, said the three people, who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.
A trigger mechanism was part of a bipartisan Senate border deal that never reached the floor earlier this month. During the deal's construction... Biden repeatedly said it would have given him the authority to "shut down" the border.
The White House is also reportedly considering invoking Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which empowers the president to ban entry to noncitizens who are deemed "detrimental to the interests of the United States." Trump repeatedly tried to use Section 212(f) as his administration pursued draconian anti-migrant measures. However, three levels of the federal judiciary, including the U.S. Supreme Court, blocked him from doing so.
The White House would not comment on the reports, but spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said that the Biden administration "spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system."
"No executive action, no matter how aggressive, can deliver the significant policy reforms and additional resources Congress can provide and that Republicans rejected," he added, calling on House Speaker Mike Johnson and House Republicans to "pass the bipartisan deal to secure the border."
In addition to expanding Title 42—a provision first invoked by the Trump administration at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic—to expel more than 1 million migrants under the guise of public safety, Biden also forced migrants to prove that they previously sought asylum in a third country before applying for U.S. protection.
"The cruel measures being proposed collectively create a government-mandated asylum ban."
The Biden administration also required asylum-seekers to schedule an appointment using an app that connects them to Customs and Border Protection instead of attempting to cross the border. Asylum-seekers often did not have internet access, and the app was riddled with glitches.
Title 42 ended last May, and a federal judge blocked some of Biden's other anti-migrant policies in July.
"What is needed now more than ever from the Biden administration is to ensure that any border security executive actions protect due process for asylum-seekers and provide resources for a fair, efficient, and humane asylum system," Murad Awawdeh, executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition, said in a statement on Wednesday.
"The cruel measures being proposed collectively create a government-mandated asylum ban, which even border officials contend will only create more chaos at the southern border, while failing to address the real issue at hand," he added. "We call on the Biden administration to abandon this cruel proposed plan and immediately invest in strategic, humane actions that will help secure our border and provide fair treatment for asylum-seekers."
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