Biden’s border plan working? Here’s how the top immigration official says it’s working: An interview with Steve Inskeep

As part of NPR’s We, The Voters 2024 election series, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the person tasked with executing Biden’s vision on immigration, sat for an interview with Morning Edition’s Steve Inskeep.

Earlier this year, Mayorkas was impeached by House Republicans who alleged that his use of parole to allow some migrants into the country was unlawful. The Senate quickly dismissed those charges.

Alejandro Mayorkas: What we want to do and what we do is enforce the law. If someone applies for asylum in the US and their claim succeeds, they will have established a legal basis to remain in the country. If their claim fails, then they are to be removed from the United States. We do our best to enforce the law.

Mayorkas stated the numbers have decreased. The numbers increase and decrease as a result of migration. But the numbers have decreased. We have also removed or returned an historic number of people more this year than I think in any year since 2011.

We talked with John Modlin, the chief patrol officer for the Tucson sector, who said that it’s very busy right now. According to him, it was the Biden administration that started the increase in 2021, as migrants believed the laws would be different. I know the administration tried to message differently and told people not to come, but why do you think that didn’t work well?

Source: Is Biden’s border plan working? Here’s how the top immigration official says it is

Biden’s border plan working? Here’s how the top immigration official says it’s working: Is there an “extremal” plan?

Mayorkas is absolutely correct. I won’t have the precise numbers, but I’m going to ballpark it. There were maybe about 560,000 encounters in 2018 and maybe close to a million in 2019.

Mayorkas: Well, remember what we’re fighting. The organizations that peddle in fake news are being fought. We try to counter that reality with accurate information.

Inskeep spoke. It seems to me that you want people to come lawfully and that is part of your policy difference with Republicans. Republicans don’t want a lot of people to come. Is that a fair description?

Inskeep: Or they just feel the asylum seekers specifically are taking advantage of the system. People who are seeking asylum should not be discussed with others who may be able to come here legally.

The majority of people don’tqualify, when one looks at the numbers who succeeded and those who didn’t, I would respectfully submit.

Source: Is Biden’s border plan working? Here’s how the top immigration official says it is

A Reply to the Arizona Senator’s Critique of the Bipartisan Border Security Proposed by President Donald W.B.I.L. Biden

We talked to the Arizona congressman, who was born in Mexico. He says that it takes too long for legal immigration applications to be processed and the border is open for arriving migrants. Is it unfair that you can come and say, “I want asylum” and get several years before a court hearing when you really want to stay in the country?

The bipartisan legislation would have eliminated the years-long process between encounter and final adjudication in our ability to remove that individual. I would have liked the congressman to support the legislation rather than oppose it. If people really want to fix the system, then they should move towards solutions rather than continuing to work on the problem and declining to implement them.

The congresswoman makes a legitimate claim that individuals who are seeking other lawful processes, their cases are taking longer because we have had to allocate resources to the challenge at the border. That’s not the only reason that the duration of time has been extended. The prior administration gutted the legal immigration system. United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. If they had actually promulgated a fee rule that properly resourced that agency, the backlogs would not have accumulated as they have.

Editor’s note: Mayorkas referred to a failed bipartisan border that lost Republican support in the Senate after Trump opposed it. The border security deal would have made it more difficult for people to claim asylum.

During his presidency, Biden dealt with a record number of apprehensions at the border, as well as a backlogged immigration system. He’s also subject to competing criticisms that he is either too soft on immigration or that he has been too harsh on people trying to escape instability in their home countries.

Trump has vowed to be more aggressive on immigration in a second term, saying he would crack down on migrants and asylum-seekers at the border as well as immigrants already living in the country. In his first term, Trump created policies that separated thousands of children from their parents and ordered migrant asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases were evaluated.

“It will change the process slightly,” said Jennie Murray, the president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group National Immigration Forum. If the rule can shorten the long wait for asylum in the United States, that will be a net positive for our immigration system.

If the person has a criminal past, the immigration officials at the Southern border could quickly reject the asylum claim. The person will be deported if that is the case.

This determination could happen during the ‘credible fear’ stage, within days of the migrant being encountered by immigration officials. This is the stage when migrants claim that they are going to be tortured or killed if they are sent back to their countries.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the proposed rule “is yet another step in our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of the American public by more quickly identifying and removing those individuals who present a security risk and have no legal basis to remain here.”

“We will continue to take action, but fundamentally it is only Congress that can fix what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system,” Mayorkas said.

Paul Hunker, who worked for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as a chief counsel for eight years, said ICE attorneys struggle with assessing the severity of crimes committed by migrants seeking asylum.

Hunker said that the new rule would empower other immigration officials to determine if a person has committed a serious crime when they aren’t.

A Motion to Propose a Rule to End the Asymmetries of President Biden and the Crimes He Hesheldon

“Now, desperately grasping to save his failed presidency, President Biden tries the least amount of action possible, hoping to mask the crisis he created,” Abbott said.

Raha Wala, the vice president for strategic partnerships and advocacy at the National Immigration Law Center, said the rule is part of long standing efforts to “further curtail the due process rights of asylum seekers.”

Wala said that there was no evidence that terrorists or criminals were getting in on a systematic basis through the asylum system.

“Asylum seekers need to be able to prepare for their case, to have counsel to withstand the incredible scrutiny and trauma that they experience on what is often a long and arduous journey after being persecuted,” Wala said.

“The fact that Congress is doing nothing and putting this pressure on the administration, who then has to issue a (rule) and hope it doesn’t get hold up in adjudication is really perplexing,” Murray said.

The proposal will be published on Monday and will have a public comment period of 30 days, according to a senior official with the DHS. Officials hope a final rule would be implemented this year.

Donald Trump had a similar proposal in 2020 halted by the federal judge, and so advocates expect Biden’s rule to also be challenged.