Immigration Overhaul

Introduction

A boy walks amid tents at a migrant shelter in Tijuana, Mexico, on Dec. 17. The Biden administration faces major challenges in implementing its less-restrictive immigration policies as new waves of asylum-seekers reach the Southern border. (AFP/Getty Images/Guillermo Arias)

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Overview

The families began trickling out of a bus station in Honduras on Jan. 14, first in small groups and later in massive waves. By the next day, they had formed a caravan numbering in the thousands, all headed on foot, in cars or on packed buses to the border with Guatemala and, in the coming weeks, to what they hoped would be a new life in the United States.1

Within a week, most were back where they started. Guatemalan security forces, acting on public health concerns related to the coronavirus and on Trump administration demands to do more to stop migrants heading north, used tear gas, batons and riot shields to break up the caravan and send most of the would-be migrants home.2

Honduran migrants clash with Guatemalan security forces in Vado Hondo, Guatemala, on Jan. 17. Former President Donald Trump had conditioned aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras on their taking aggressive action to curb northward migration. (AFP/Getty Images/Johan Ordonez)

But smaller groups continued making their way north in January and February, driven by increasingly desperate conditions in Central America's Northern Triangle — Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — where poverty, gang violence and political instability have worsened due to the coronavirus and two devastating tropical storms in November.3

“There is no work in Honduras, especially after the two cyclones and the pandemic,” Dixón Vázquez, 29, said on Jan. 17. “Our goal is to reach the United States.”4

He and other caravan members said they see new hope in President Biden's vow to treat migrants — including asylum-seekers fleeing persecution and violence in their home countries — humanely after former President Donald Trump's four-year effort to sharply reduce options for both legal and undocumented immigrants.5

The expectations created by Biden's promise, however, threaten to create a new humanitarian crisis at the Southern border, as new waves of migrants flow northward from Central America and Mexico. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on March 16 that the government expects to encounter more migrants at the border in 2021 than in any year in the past two decades. The increasingly unmanageable situation led Biden, in an interview with ABC News the same day, to tell would-be migrants, “don't come” until his administration sets up policies and procedures to handle the new arrivals.6

Biden's long-term goal is to dismantle Trump's immigration programs while pursuing policies that acknowledge the “tremendous economic, cultural and social value” immigrants contribute. But the president faces major hurdles. Experts say the centerpiece of Biden's immigration agenda — legislation that offers millions of undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship but does not contain the enforcement provisions Republicans typically demand — stands little chance of passage in a closely divided, highly polarized Congress.7

“In its current form, it's a nonstarter,” says Lora Ries, a senior research fellow for homeland security at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Other changes Biden wants to make through executive orders or rule changes likely will run into legal or logistical challenges, as immigration competes with the coronavirus and the economy for the president's attention. In one early setback, a federal judge granted a request from Texas to block one of Biden's first immigration actions: suspension of most deportations for 100 days.8

Immigration experts say growing chaos along the U.S.-Mexico border poses an even bigger threat to Biden's immigration agenda. Apprehensions of migrants at the border — including unaccompanied children — have spiked in recent months, alarming immigration officials and testing Biden's ability to maintain order while demonstrating compassion.

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“If there is another humanitarian crisis at the border, it would … lessen the likelihood of getting Republican support in the future for bigger immigration legislation,” said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington.9

Republicans increasingly view deteriorating conditions at the border as a powerful weapon in their 2022 midterm election strategy. During a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border on March 15, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California described the new waves of migrants as “a Biden border crisis.”10

Trump, aided by his top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, used his executive power to make more than 400 changes to immigration policy. Biden can use his own executive power to immediately reverse some of those changes, but others are deeply embedded in federal regulations, experts say.11

“It's policy after policy layered on top of each other,” said Stephanie Leutert, director of the Central America & Mexico Policy Initiative, a research program at the University of Texas at Austin. “Each one is going to take a very long series of steps to unwind responsibly.”12

Further complicating Biden's plans, many of the country's 240,000 border and immigration agents remain loyal to Trump, immigration advocates say. And Miller is actively working to undermine Biden's immigration agenda, partly by encouraging GOP members of Congress to attack it.13

Despite such obstacles, Biden already has reversed some of his predecessor's most significant immigration changes. He has halted work on Trump's signature project, a wall along the Southern border; reversed Trump's ban on travel to the United States from some Muslim-majority and African countries; scrapped a ban on new permanent residency permits, or “green cards”; and ordered a review of Trump's restrictive asylum policies and other barriers to legal immigration, with the goal of eventually ending them.14

Among other things, Biden's executive orders, proclamations and memos on immigration aim to:

• Create a task force to reunite hundreds of children forcibly separated from their parents at the Southern border, mostly due to Trump's “zero tolerance” policy that ramped up prosecutions of migrants caught crossing the border without permission. Department of Homeland Security officials rescinded the zero-tolerance policy on Jan. 26.15

• Stop enforcing Trump's “public charge” rule denying a green card to foreigners deemed likely to rely on public benefits such as housing assistance or Medicaid.16

• Suspend Trump's “safe third country” deals with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which allowed U.S. officials to immediately return asylum-seekers to the region if they failed to seek asylum there before arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. Biden also wants to spend billions to help Northern Triangle countries attack the crime and poverty that lead people to migrate northward.17

• Reaffirm that about 645,000 “Dreamers,” undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, remain shielded from deportation under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. A Supreme Court ruling last June blocked Trump's 2017 attempt to scrap the program, but it faces other court challenges.18

• Review the Migration Protection Protocols policy, known as Remain in Mexico, which requires asylum-seekers to wait south of the border while their requests for entry into the United States are processed. Homeland Security officials halted new enrollments under the policy on Jan. 20, and in February authorities began allowing Remain in Mexico asylum-seekers into the United States while their cases are reviewed.19

• Raise the annual cap on refugee admissions to 125,000 for fiscal 2022, which begins Oct. 1. Trump had reduced the cap to a record-low of 15,000 for this fiscal year. Refugees — those fleeing persecution in their home countries — are people whose requests to move to the United States have been screened and approved by U.S. officials, unlike asylum seekers, whose requests have not yet received such approval.20

Hundreds rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 as the court hears arguments on the legality of the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program, which prevents the deportation of more than 600,000 people brought to the U.S. as children. (Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla)

During last year's presidential campaign, Biden had promised to immediately rescind Remain in Mexico and other Trump border policies. In December, he revised that timeline to six months, saying that acting too quickly could put “2 million people on our border.” More recently, Biden has encouraged Mexico and Guatemala to continue preventing Central American migrants from reaching the United States, and his administration has warned potential asylum-seekers against traveling to the border right now, saying the vast majority will be turned away.21

“I can say quite clearly: Don't come,” Biden said in the ABC interview. “We're in the process of getting set up, don't leave your town or city or community.”22

But Biden is taking other actions that experts and even some of the president's fellow Democrats say are creating confusion and encouraging further migration to the border. Besides allowing Remain in Mexico migrants into the country, for example, administration officials plan to convert migrant family detention centers in South Texas into processing facilities that will quickly screen families seeking asylum and release them into the United States within 72 hours.23

“As you move people faster (into the United States), that provides an incentive to keep the pipeline of people from Central America to continue coming,” Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Tex., said on March 6.24

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Biden continues to enforce Trump's coronavirus emergency order — known as Title 42 — that requires immigration officials to summarily expel migrants who arrive at the border without documents. But he has exempted unaccompanied children from the order, even as immigration facilities strain to accommodate new waves of unaccompanied children and other asylum seekers.

During the first five months of fiscal 2021, border officials reported 396,958 “encounters” with migrants at the Southern border, which includes detentions of those trying to cross without legal permission, often repeatedly, and expulsions under Title 42. That is almost double the number from the same period last year. In February, officials reported 100,441 encounters, more than five times last year's low of 17,106 in April. Detentions and expulsions remain below mid-2019 levels, but the recent buildup risks further burdening an immigration court system already facing a record-setting backlog of 1.3 million cases.25 (See Short Feature.)

“We need to prepare for border surges now,” Timothy Perry, chief of staff at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for apprehending undocumented immigrants in the country's interior, cautioned in a Feb. 12 email to other ICE officials. “We need to begin making changes immediately.”26

Increasing encounters involving unaccompanied migrant children are proving especially problematic. During the first five months of fiscal 2021, such encounters were up 74 percent compared to the same period last year, and rose 61 percent, to 9,457, between January and February. The New York Times reported that the number of unaccompanied children detained along the border tripled in the two-week period ending March 9.27

Construction crews work on a new section of a wall near Tijuana along the Southern California border with Mexico. President Biden halted work on the Trump administration's plan to extend the wall. (AFP/Getty Images/Guillermo Arias)

On March 15, border officials were holding more than 4,000 children — a record — in adult detention facilities as federal health officials struggled to find space for the children in shelters with restricted capacity due to the pandemic. Federal law requires that migrant children be transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours, but many of the youths had been held longer than that. In February, officials reopened a Trump-era shelter in Texas to house hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children, sparking criticism from immigration advocates.28

“It goes absolutely against everything Biden promised he was going to do,” said Linda Brandmiller, an immigration attorney in San Antonio, Texas.29

Authorities are considering housing some unaccompanied children at Fort Lee, a military base in Virginia. In March, Biden deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to the Southern border to help care for unaccompanied migrant children, a sign that the number of those children is reaching crisis levels. FEMA planned to use a Dallas convention center as a temporary shelter for thousands of migrant teens.30

Border officials also are struggling to cope with migrants who have tested positive for the coronavirus. Authorities in at least one border community say immigration agents failed to notify them before releasing infected migrants into their area.31

Meanwhile, officials also have issued temporary guidelines for ICE agents, directing them to prioritize national security threats, recent border-crossers and criminals with aggravated felony convictions who might pose a threat to public safety. The number of arrests by ICE agents has fallen sharply since Biden became president.32

Groups that advocate for migrants have praised most of Biden's immigration moves, but they also say he should act more quickly to dump Trump's policies, including the Title 42 order.33 “The Biden administration has done a lot through executive action, but there are still many policies in place that are harming immigrant communities,” says Jorge Loweree, policy director at the American Immigration Council, a Washington advocacy group for immigrants.

Conservatives and former Trump officials counter that Biden's moves ignore the previous administration's success in deterring mass migration at the Southern border and combating what they say are asylum-seekers' often fraudulent claims of “credible fear” of persecution or torture back home. Trump called such claims “a big fat con job.”34

Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando, Fla., on Feb. 28, Trump said Biden has “triggered a massive flood of illegal immigration into our country, the likes of which we have never seen before.”35

Already, conservatives are attacking Biden's legislative proposal, which would create an eight-year path to citizenship for the about 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States and would allow Dreamers to apply for citizenship after just three years. Ries says Biden's proposal shows he is taking direction from “a radical left that will not give up on just opening the border — and doing it now.”

Despite such criticism, public opinion appears to be shifting in Biden's favor on at least some immigration issues. A Quinnipiac University poll conducted between Jan. 28 and Feb. 1 found that 65 percent of respondents supported allowing undocumented immigrants to remain in the United States and eventually apply for citizenship. And most respondents said they backed Biden's decisions to halt construction on Trump's border wall (54 percent) and reverse Trump's travel ban (57 percent).36

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Last year, in a first for a Gallup survey, the share of Americans supporting more immigration exceeded those who opposed it. The survey found that 34 percent supported more immigration, up from 27 percent the year before, while the percentage favoring decreased immigration fell to a new low of 28 percent.37

Biden hopes to build on that support by reminding Americans that immigrant scientists “are on the frontlines of research” to develop coronavirus vaccines and treatments. And immigration advocates note that many of those providing essential services during the COVID-19 pandemic — from delivery drivers to hospital workers — are undocumented immigrants.38

“There's more support for immigrants in the U.S. than ever before,” Loweree says. “If there was ever a moment when immigration reform actually should pass in Congress, this is it.”

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Background

Early Trends

The demographic trends that helped Donald Trump win election in 2016 on a hard-line, anti-immigrant platform began taking shape more than 50 years ago, after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.39

The law focused on family reunification and attracting skilled workers and ended discriminatory quotas first enacted in the 1920s that had favored immigrants from Northern Europe. But, in a classic case of unintended consequences, illegal immigration from Western Hemisphere countries, which had not previously been subject to quotas, and legal immigration from Asia and Africa surged. Over the next three decades, more than 18 million legal immigrants moved to the United States, more than triple the number admitted over the preceding 30 years.40

“Inadvertently, the 1965 legislation created the perfect conditions for an explosive growth in undocumented immigration from Latin America,” says Julia Young, an associate professor of history at The Catholic University of America in Washington.

Immigration policy dramatically shifted again in 1986, when President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act, combining tougher border enforcement with provisions that eventually allowed 2.7 million undocumented immigrants already in the United States to become legal permanent residents.41

Other comprehensive immigration reform measures failed in 2006 and 2013 after running into fierce opposition from House Republicans because they would have provided a path to citizenship for additional undocumented immigrants.42

President Barack Obama created DACA in 2012, preventing about 800,000 young undocumented immigrants from being deported. But he also deported about 2.8 million undocumented immigrants, more than any other administration — including Trump's. The Obama administration also began detaining migrant families in 2014 until courts halted the practice a year later.43

Trump Policies

Trump began reshaping immigration policy immediately after taking office in 2017, authorizing construction of additional sections of a wall along the Southern border, banning travelers from some Muslim-majority countries and expanding the criteria for deportations.44

Trump pursued what he called a “merit-based” plan for admitting highly skilled, financially secure immigrants while excluding most other foreigners. But Congress was unenthusiastic about taking up the plan, at least partly because it did not address the DACA program and because some Republicans opposed its restrictions on legal immigration. So, Trump resorted to executive action.45

“He stuck to his guns and said, ‘Well, I'll do it myself,’” said Theresa Cardinal Brown, director of immigration and cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a think tank in Washington.46

Immigration measures stalled in Congress during Trump's tenure. The Senate emphatically rejected a 2018 White House-backed proposal to provide $25 billion for Trump's border wall and restrict legal immigration while offering a path to citizenship to 1.8 million Dreamers. The House passed legislation the following year giving Dreamers a chance at citizenship, but the Senate never considered it.47

Central American migrants, mostly from Honduras, are crammed into a truck in 2018 as part of a caravan traveling through Mexico to seek asylum in the United States. The Trump administration sought to deter them by making them ineligible for asylum if they crossed the border illegally, but a judge struck down the proposal. (AFP/Getty Images/Alfredo Estrella)

During his administration, Trump slashed refugee admissions to record-low levels, sharply limited access to asylum and permanent residency, ended Temporary Protected Status for immigrants from some countries plagued by civil war or natural disasters and made it more difficult for lawful permanent residents to become citizens.48

Other Trump policies included:

• Widespread use of family separation at the Southern border to deter migration, first as a pilot program in 2017 and later as part of Trump's zero tolerance policy, announced in April 2018. More than 5,000 families were torn apart before Trump ended the practice two months later in response to public and congressional outrage, but the separations continued on a limited basis. When Trump left office, the whereabouts of about 600 of the children remained unknown.49

• An effort in 2017 to end DACA, while calling on Congress to devise a strategy for protecting Dreamers.50

• Announcement of the public charge rule in September 2018. The Supreme Court had agreed to review the rule, but those cases were dismissed in March at the request of the Biden administration and groups challenging the rule.51

• The January 2019 imposition of the Remain in Mexico policy, which resulted in about 69,000 migrants being forced to wait in Mexico — often in squalid, crime-infested camps — while their asylum requests were processed. When Biden took office, about 25,000 migrants were still waiting in such camps.52

• A February 2019 declaration of a national emergency at the border to divert already appropriated Pentagon money and other government funds for a border wall, circumventing Congress' power of the purse.53

• Suspension of $450 million in foreign aid to Northern Triangle countries in June 2019 on grounds they were not acting aggressively enough to curb northward migration. Critics assailed the move as counterproductive, saying the money was used to mitigate the poverty and crime that spurred migration. The Trump administration later restored some of the aid, citing “great progress” by Northern Triangle countries in containing migration.54

• A July 2019 policy disqualifying Central American migrants from asylum unless they first applied for relief in one of the countries they had passed through on their way north. A U.S. district judge struck down the policy in July 2020.55

In early 2019, a rising tide of asylum-seekers created what federal officials described as a humanitarian and security crisis at the Southern border. But in response to the administration's hard-line policies, encounters at the border dropped 76 percent between May 2019 and March 2020.56

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By then, the coronavirus was spreading throughout the country, and Trump accelerated his anti-immigration actions on the grounds that he was protecting public health. In March 2020, he directed officials to immediately deport without a hearing all migrants who showed up at land borders without documentation. Later that year, he halted issuance of new green cards for family members of U.S. citizens and highly skilled workers hoping to emigrate to the United States. He also canceled routine visa appointments and suspended naturalization ceremonies.57

During his first three years in office, Trump's anti-immigration efforts resulted in record-low caps on refugee admissions. But the impact of his policies was less dramatic in other areas. “At the end of the day, he was not that successful in making huge changes,” says Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

The number of green cards issued between 2017 and 2019, for example, declined only slightly and was in line with previous trends. Grants of asylum dropped from 2019 to 2020 but actually rose over the three-year period, even though immigration judges increasingly denied requests.58 “He pushed the immigration court system to push out more [asylum] cases,” Chishti says. “The more cases you push out, the more cases get approved.”

The pandemic, however, “brought about a dramatic reduction in immigration, unlike anything seen in years,” said the Migration Policy Institute. As U.S. consulates closed, immigrant visas issued abroad fell 45 percent in fiscal 2020, and temporary work visas declined 54 percent, the institute said.59

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Current Situation

Dramatic Shift

Biden's legislative proposal on immigration — the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 — would be the most significant overhaul of immigration policy since 1986.60

It would allow an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who pass background checks and were in the country as of Jan. 1 to apply for a green card after five years of temporary legal status. They could then apply for citizenship three years later. Currently, it takes five years to obtain citizenship after receiving a green card. A separate group composed of Dreamers, Temporary Protected Status recipients and undocumented farmworkers could apply for a green card immediately, followed by the same three-year path to citizenship.61

Biden's measure also would:

• Allow certain immigrants deported during the Trump administration to seek permission to reunite with family or to re-enter for other humanitarian reasons.62

• Raise caps on employment-based and family visas and begin reducing a backlog of green card applicants.63

• Authorize a four-year, $4 billion program to help Northern Triangle countries address government corruption, poverty and other problems, and establish facilities in Central America where people could apply to resettle in the United States. The bill also would revive an Obama-era program allowing at-risk Central American children to reunite with U.S.-based family members.64

• Offer community-based alternatives to immigrant detention and change the term “alien” to “noncitizen” in immigration laws.65

• Expand technology at the Southern border for detecting illegal drugs and boost training in cultural awareness, ethics, community policing and other areas for ICE agents and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (USCBP) officials, who are responsible for securing the Northern and Southern borders.66

• Hire new immigration judges and expand their discretion in providing asylum and other relief.67

Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who is leading the fight for Senate passage of the administration's proposal, said voters handed Biden a mandate that includes “fixing our immigration system, which is a cornerstone of Trump's hateful horror show.” But he acknowledged that getting the measure adopted “will be tough.”68

In the House, Democrats can afford to lose just five votes in their caucus if Republicans are united in opposition. In the evenly divided Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris could cast tie-breaking votes — but passing most major legislation requires 60 votes to overcome the threat of a filibuster, so Biden will need support from at least 10 Senate Republicans. It is unclear that support exists, especially since the GOP became more anti-immigrant under Trump.69

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., described the Biden proposal as “blanket amnesty” for people in the country illegally, and Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., claimed it showed “no regard for the health or security of Americans, and zero enforcement.”70

Democrats have not settled on a strategy for advancing Biden's priorities. Some, including Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., favor breaking the proposal into separate pieces and passing some measures using a process called budget reconciliation, which requires only 51 votes in the Senate. Other Democrats, including Menendez, want to move forward with a single bill. Democrats also could fold individual immigration proposals into other high-priority bills or move to eliminate the filibuster. Biden has said he opposes doing away with the filibuster but would support making it more difficult to use.71

Meanwhile, House Democratic leaders are moving ahead with smaller bills that would offer a pathway to citizenship to Dreamers and Temporary Protected Status recipients and would offer green cards to undocumented farmworkers.72

President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas meet virtually on March 1 with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to discuss immigration challenges along the U.S.-Mexico border. (Getty Images/Anna Moneymaker)

Biden will feel intense pressure to compromise on his proposal, even as progressives oppose any concessions and have urged the new president to abolish ICE and make illegal entry a civil rather than a criminal offense. Biden pledged on the campaign trail to rein in ICE but not eliminate it. Mayorkas, the first Latino to head the Department of Homeland Security, has said he opposes abolishing ICE, which is part of the agency. Both ICE and USCBP are currently run by temporary heads, and Biden has yet to nominate replacements.73

Progressives already are angry that some Democrats sided with Republicans in voting to deny coronavirus stimulus payments to undocumented immigrants.74 Biden also faces trust issues with some Democrats and advocacy groups due to his association with Obama's immigration policies when he was vice president.

“Family detention was used widely in the Obama administration,” says Nithya Nathan-Pineau, an attorney and strategist for the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, an advocacy organization in San Francisco. “There were a lot of things that happened during the Obama administration that advocates have not forgotten.”

Family Reunification

Biden will have a similarly difficult task reuniting families separated at the border. The location of more than 600 children remains unknown after their parents were detained or deported and the children were sent to shelters, foster homes or relatives in the United States.

“There's no central database with information on where the parent and child went,” says Nathan-Pineau.

Even assuming the parents can be found, Biden must decide whether to allow the reunited families to remain in the United States and, if so, under what conditions. His executive order creating the reunification task force raises the possibility the families will receive legal status.75

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been working with other groups to find the children's parents, says Biden needs to offer legal status to all 5,500 families who were separated. “Given what the … families have been through, they deserve to be reunited and given safe refuge in the United States,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project.76

Immigrant advocates want Congress to criminally punish Trump officials responsible for the separations. They point to a report released in January by the inspector general at the Homeland Security Department that says then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions told U.S. attorneys in May 2018, “We need to take away children” in order to deter migrant families from seeking asylum at the border.77

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Outlook

Investment Choices

Biden's success in moving his immigration priorities through Congress depends largely on keeping large waves of asylum-seekers away from the Southern border, experts on both sides of the immigration debate say. Numerous family groups of migrants, including some from Haiti and Africa who have come up from South America, continue flowing toward the Southern border, according to reports from Mexico.78

“It would undermine most of (Biden's) plans,” Alex Nowrasteh, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington, said of the possibility that new arrivals could overwhelm immigration facilities. “American voters want order on the border.”79

The Migration Policy Institute's Chishti and other experts say avoiding such a crisis will require cooperation from Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries.

After meeting on March 1, Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador affirmed their commitment to cooperating on migration issues, but it was unclear whether Biden can count on Mexico's help in keeping migrants from the border.80

Growing pressure at the border also will test Biden's theory that helping Northern Triangle countries combat poverty and gang violence will be more effective than Trump's approach of withholding aid as a penalty for increased migration. Ries at the Heritage Foundation says Trump was right to condition U.S. aid on efforts by Northern Triangle countries to control their own borders.

“The U.S. has poured foreign aid into that area for decades,” she says. “If it's not tied to anything, history has shown that money goes wasted.”

Chishti agrees that trusting Northern Triangle countries to make their own decisions on spending U.S. aid would be a mistake. But if Biden requires that the aid be earmarked for job, education and anti-corruption programs, he says, “that may pay more dividends.”

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Pro/Con

Should Congress approve a path to citizenship for the nation's 11 million undocumented immigrants?

Pro Nithya Nathan-Pineau Policy Attorney and Strategist, Immigrant Legal Resource Center. Written for CQ Researcher, March 2021 The goal of immigration reform should be to create a system that welcomes immigrants, recognizes their full humanity, treats everyone with dignity and provides a path to citizenship. Pushing immigrants into the shadows, forcing them to live in constant fear of being separated from their families and basing immigration policy on hatred and alarm has brought the U.S. immigration system to its current state. The only path forward is an entirely new framework built on inclusion and recognition of the contributions made by immigrant communities. While the executive branch has broad powers to influence and affect immigration policy, Congress must act to dismantle the harm inflicted on immigrant communities and create a pathway to citizenship. For the vast majority of immigrants in the United States without legal status, no path to citizenship exists. This inexcusable travesty must be addressed immediately. Rather than forcing immigrants to live in fear and denying them health care, the right to work and other basic necessities, Congress must create an accessible, inclusive path to citizenship that does not create barriers, such as excessive fees or extensive criminal carveouts based on previous contacts with the criminal justice system. Such barriers will exclude many people and continue perpetuating injustice. Congress' program must include a broad, inclusive path to citizenship, because only as citizens do immigrants have the full rights and responsibilities enjoyed by their American-born family members. Temporary programs leave immigrant families and their futures' up to the whims of future administrations, do not provide a pathway to permanent status and do not allow family members to apply for entry on behalf of other family members living in dangerous situations back home. In 2020, the United States witnessed a reckoning with racial inequity and police brutality, founded in white supremacy, built into our government structures — including the immigration system. This has led to the criminalization and demonization of immigrants, culminating in the racist and xenophobic rhetoric and policies adopted by President Donald Trump. As public awareness of how racial bias infects our legal system grows, we will continue to push policymakers to reject immigration outcomes that rely on that system. And we have the American public on our side. Polls show overwhelming support for transforming the immigration system. The forces against us are white supremacy and racism. Which side would you want to be on in this fight?

Con Lora Ries Senior Research Fellow for Homeland Security, The Heritage Foundation. Written for CQ Researcher, March 2021 No, Congress should not pass legislation to legalize the millions of individuals illegally present in the United States. Congress has an obligation to enact and enforce laws that lead to an orderly immigration system for our sovereign nation and for the American people. Over the past three decades, any discussion of legislation to give green cards to those here illegally has consistently triggered increases in the number of migrants from Central America, Mexico and elsewhere, inducing them to journey to the United States in the hope of obtaining green cards. Illegal immigration at the border is rising again, as migrants seek to benefit from President Biden's campaign promise of amnesty. Within just the first few weeks of the new administration, the Border Patrol is reporting more than 3,500 daily encounters, up from around 1,000 a day. These are crisis numbers — the very opposite of an orderly immigration system. The rise shows that the Biden administration has done enough damage to border security by suspending the effective “Remain in Mexico” program and declaring an end to the safe third-country agreements with the governments of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Congress should not perpetuate or encourage even more illegal immigration by negotiating or debating a legalization program for illegal aliens in the United States. The administration claims the number of illegal residents eligible for green cards is 11 million. Yet a Yale-MIT study estimates the number to be more than 22 million. Notably, the left has purposely stymied gathering accurate data on the number of those illegal immigrants through the U.S. census and other means of data sharing. It would be the height of irresponsibility for Congress to pass amnesty legislation when it has no idea how many people are truly eligible for the benefit. Passing amnesty in the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act did not end illegal immigration. It merely generated the next cycle of illegal immigration, which has grown into numbers that dwarf the 3 million who applied under the 1986 amnesty. A new amnesty will perpetuate this cycle, rendering our immigration laws, passed by Congress, meaningless. The Remain in Mexico program and safe third-country agreements demonstrated that enforcing our immigration laws prevents illegal immigration. Congress should build on that success, rather than repeating past, failed amnesty legislation, particularly with an unknown applicant population size and cost. Americans want law and order, not more immigration chaos.

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Discussion Questions

Here are some questions to think about regarding immigration reform:

• Did President Donald Trump have a significant impact on immigration?

• Is Congress likely to enact President Biden's immigration reform package, in whole or in part? If in part, which elements are most likely to achieve passage?

• Does the current immigration system reflect U.S. values?

• How did the 1965 and 1986 immigration reform packages affect the influx of people from Latin America?

• Would Biden's plan to enable undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children to eventually attain citizenship spur further influxes of undocumented immigrants?

• Imagine you are a parent with young children living in Central America. You hear from a relative living in the U.S. that there are job opportunities in the relative's community and that you could stay with your relative temporarily. Would you risk taking your children north and trying to enter the U.S.? Why or why not?

• Now imagine that you are a local official in a U.S. community near the U.S.-Mexican border. How would you feel about Biden's efforts to make immigration policy less restrictive?

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Short Features

Swamped Immigration Court System Hinders Biden's Goals

“Chaotic, crowded and confusing.” That was how Associated Press reporters summed up what they observed while visiting immigration courts around the country in November 2019.1

The reporters found some immigration judges handling nearly 90 cases a day in a losing battle to keep pace with a massive, systemwide backlog of cases. And many migrants were waiting years for a hearing in their effort to avoid deportation, only to have the hearing postponed due to an overcrowded docket or because no interpreter could be found.

“It's been more difficult to get my client's case heard than to litigate [it],” W. Paul Alvarez, an immigration attorney in Mount Kisco, N.Y., said. “It's kind of crazy.”2

Today, the backlog of cases in immigration courts is even worse, after more than doubling during former President Donald Trump's tenure. Courts in California and Texas face the largest caseloads. Immigrants targeted for deportation, who are overwhelmingly from Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico and El Salvador, now wait an average of more than four years just to have their case heard.3

The backlog poses a serious challenge to President Biden as he works to erase Trump's hard-line immigration policies and fulfill a campaign promise to “preserve the dignity of immigrant families, refugees and asylum-seekers.”4

“Even if the administration halted immigration enforcement entirely, it would still take more than … Biden's entire first term in office — assuming prepandemic case completion rates — for the cases now in the active backlog to be completed,” according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research organization at Syracuse University that analyzes federal government data.5

Already, Biden has significantly narrowed the criteria for deportation. But he also has begun allowing thousands of migrants — required under a Trump-era policy to wait in Mexico while their asylum claims were processed — to enter the United States, a move that will add to the immigration court backlog.6

The nation's 69 immigration courts and their 520 judges handle civil cases in which undocumented immigrants apprehended by immigration authorities at the border or inside the country are fighting deportation, often without an attorney. Such proceedings do not occur until any criminal prosecution for illegal entry has been completed. Many people appearing in immigration court are seeking asylum, claiming they would be in danger if returned to their home country. Others request cancellation of deportation orders, or even legal permanent residency, for various reasons, such as having strong family ties to a legal U.S. resident.7

When Trump became president in 2017, the immigration court system faced 542,411 pending cases. That increased to almost 1.3 million during Trump's four-year focus on expanding deportations of undocumented immigrants, combined with temporary courtroom closures due to the coronavirus pandemic. Although the budget for the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which manages the immigration court system, rose 53 percent between fiscal 2017 and fiscal 2020, that was not enough to keep pace with the growing workload.8

Long Description

Biden has promised to double the number of immigration judges and wants Congress to restore those judges' “discretion to review cases and grant relief to deserving individuals,” something advocates for immigrants say was almost nonexistent under Trump. In January, Biden replaced James McHenry, Trump's director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, with Jean King, the agency's former general counsel, naming her acting director.9

McHenry defended his agency's work in November 2019, telling Congress that while cases were seriously backed up, the immigration court system had made “considerable progress … restoring its reputation as a fully-functioning, efficient and impartial administrative court system fully capable of rendering timely decisions consistent with due process.”10

Trump said in 2018 that he would prefer to make immigration courts unnecessary, arguing that undocumented immigrants should be immediately sent back to their home countries “with no judges or court cases.” But that would violate the Constitution's guarantee of due process for every “person” in the country, a guarantee the Supreme Court has said extends to undocumented immigrants.11

Judicial discretion is not a certainty in the immigration court system, as it is in other courts, because the system is part of the executive branch.12 “The Department of Justice controls the immigration courts,” says Greg Chen, senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a Washington group that advocates for improved immigration laws.

Advocates for immigrants said Trump's administration appointed immigration judges who favored deportation and pressured judges to resolve cases quickly rather than fairly, partly by setting quotas for closing cases. The rate at which judges denied asylum increased from about 55 percent to 72 percent under Trump, according to TRAC.13

About 300 judges appointed by Trump “demonstrated highly biased viewpoints against asylum seekers and other people … appearing before the court,” Chen says.

In a December 2019 lawsuit, six immigrants' rights groups accused Trump administration officials of manipulating the courts “to serve an anti-immigrant agenda.” Trump's former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who served from February 2017 to November 2018, said reforms were needed to root out bogus asylum claims.14

Turnover among immigration court judges increased significantly under Trump, with many judges retiring in response to what they viewed as the administration's attacks on due process. “Judges are going to other federal agencies and retiring as soon as possible,” said A. Ashley Tabaddor, then-president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, the union representing immigration court judges. “They just don't want to deal with it. It's become unbearable.”15

The union and many immigration experts want Congress to establish an independent immigration court system outside the Justice Department's control.16

“We won't see progress in immigration courts until we create a court system that is not as subject to political influence as it is today,” says Austin Kocher, a research associate professor in communications at Syracuse University who works on TRAC.

— Val Ellicott

[1] Kate Brumback, Deepti Hajela and Amy Taxin, “AP visits immigration courts across US, finds nonstop chaos,” The Associated Press, Jan. 19, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1l0fc8j7.

[2] Ibid.

[3] “The State of the Immigration Courts: Trump Leaves Biden 1.3 Million Case Backlog in Immigration Courts,” Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Jan. 19, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/65mrqnz9; Julián Aguilar, “President Biden's early immigration overhaul has overlooked one growing problem: A massive court backlog,” The Texas Tribune, Feb. 4, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/46kg9nnu.

[4] “The Biden Plan for Securing Our Values as a Nation of Immigrants,” Biden Harris Campaign, undated, https://tinyurl.com/kbn6e8nn.

[5] “The State of the Immigration Courts,” op. cit.

[6] Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti, “New Biden rules for ICE point to fewer arrests and deportations, and a more restrained agency,” The Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4oaz5vlc; Elliot Spagat, “Biden to slowly allow 25,000 people seeking asylum into US,” The Associated Press, Feb. 12, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4mk2r62l.

[7] “Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR),” U.S. Department of Justice, undated, https://tinyurl.com/4lqu327g; “Executive Office for Immigration Review Announces Investiture of 20 New Immigration Judges, Resulting in a 70 Percent Expansion of the Immigration Judge Corps Since 2017,” U.S. Department of Justice, Oct. 9, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/5fsh9r4r; “Access to Counsel,” National Immigrant Justice Center, undated, https://tinyurl.com/duc2zb3e; “The Trump Administration's ‘Zero Tolerance’ Immigration Enforcement Policy,” Congressional Research Service, Feb. 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/runu63el; and “Executive Office for Immigration Review: An Agency Guide,” U.S. Department of Justice, December 2017, https://tinyurl.com/1omoofxh.

[8] “The State of the Immigration Courts,” op. cit.; Cristobal Ramón and Lucas Reyes, “Interior Enforcement Under the Trump Administration by the Numbers: Immigration Courts,” Bipartisan Policy Center, April 27, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/rbez9ksx.

[9] “Fact Sheet: President Biden Sends Immigration Bill to Congress as Part of His Commitment to Modernize our Immigration System,” The White House, Jan. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/3cw4ja2f; Josh Gerstein and Sabrina Rodriguez, “Biden administration replaces top immigration court official,” Politico, Jan. 27, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/129ab6we.

[10] “Executive Office for Immigration Review Director James McHenry Testifies Before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs,” U.S. Department of Justice, Nov. 13, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/hdkozmz5.

[11] Salvador Rizzo, “President Trump's misconceptions about immigration courts and law,” The Washington Post, June 26, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/vcuz6c2e.

[12] “Report on the Independence of the Immigration Courts,” New York City Bar, October 2020, https://tinyurl.com/yixt05xp.

[13] Amy Taxin, “Trump puts his stamp on nation's immigration courts,” The Associated Press, July 23, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/1tdv4yzy; “Asylum Denial Rates Continue to Climb,” Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Oct. 28, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/q75mkkel.

[14] “Case 3:19-cv-02051-SB,” U.S. District Court, District of Oregon, Portland Division, Dec. 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/fyjavc5t; Tom Dart, “Jeff Sessions accused of political bias in hiring immigration judges,” The Guardian, June 16, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/i1gplhc2; David K. Li, “The up-and-down relationship between Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump,” NBC News, Nov. 7, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/e3hbxv8u.

[15] “More Immigration Judges Leaving the Bench,” Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, July 13, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/smdraw8r; Alexandra Kelley, “Immigration judges are quitting and retiring early due to job stress,” The Hill, Jan. 27, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/24qyetcc.

[16] Ernie Smith, “Independent Immigration Courts Needed, Legal Groups Say,” associations now, July 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/syjdeb99.

Bibliography

Books

Goodman, Adam, The Deportation Machine: America's Long History of Expelling Immigrants, Princeton University Press, 2020. An assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois, Chicago, recounts the troubling history of efforts by public officials at all levels of government to single out immigrants for expulsion.

Hirschfeld Davis, Julie, and Michael D. Shear, Border Wars: Inside Trump's Assault on Immigration, Simon & Schuster, 2020. An editor (Davis) and a reporter (Shear) at The New York Times detail how former President Donald Trump and his top immigration adviser, Stephen Miller, worked to shut the nation's doors to asylum-seekers, refugees and other migrants while conditioning Americans to view immigration as a threat to national security.

Salam, Reihan, Melting Pot or Civil War? A Son of Immigrants Makes the Case Against Open Borders, Sentinel, 2018. A magazine editor and the U.S.-born son of Bangladeshi immigrants argues that unlimited immigration encourages income inequality and social injustice and recommends that U.S. immigration policy prioritize high skilled workers in order to avoid “a new populist revolt.”

Yang, Jia Lynn, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965, W.W. Norton and Co., 2020. The national editor at The New York Times looks at the activists, presidents and others who worked to abolish the discriminatory nationality quotas of the 1920s, setting the stage for the 1965 law that opened the country's doors to millions of immigrants.

Articles

Narea, Nicole, “Progressives are getting ready to push Biden on immigration reform,” Vox, Dec. 11, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1dk3ccky. An immigration reporter says some Democrats in Congress will demand that President Biden take aggressive action on immigration that includes creating alternatives to deportation and expanding immigrants' access to health care.

Reklaitis, Victor, and Robert Schroeder, “All of President Biden's key executive orders — in one chart,” MarketWatch, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yrza7ja9. The authors provide a concise summary of Biden's executive orders, proclamations and memoranda on immigration and other issues since taking office in January.

Shear, Michael D., “Democratic Lawmakers Introduce Biden's Immigration Overhaul in House,” The New York Times, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/e9s1zkoh. A reporter explains the key provisions of Biden's legislation to chart a new course for U.S. immigration policy and undo the actions taken by former President Donald Trump.

Wise, Alana, “Biden Team Unveils New Asylum System To Replace Trump's ‘Remain In Mexico,’” NPR, Feb. 12, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/187hyv8i. In allowing entry by asylum seekers forced to wait in Mexico under previous U.S. policy, the Biden administration faces a difficult challenge in avoiding a rush of migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Reports and Studies

“The State of the Immigration Courts: Trump Leaves Biden 1.3 Million Case Backlog in Immigration Courts,” Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Jan. 19, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/zyz1v3h1. A Syracuse University research center analyzes the backlog of immigration court cases hindering President Biden's efforts to reverse his predecessor's immigration legacy.

Loweree, Jorge, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick and Walter Ewing, “The Impact of COVID-19 on Noncitizens and Across the U.S. Immigration System,” American Immigration Council, Sept. 30, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1o6ar8py. An immigrant advocacy group catalogs the Trump administration's coronavirus-related policies on legal and illegal immigration.

Pierce, Sarah, and Jessica Bolter, “Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency,” Migration Policy Institute, July 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1axy7kij. A pro-immigration think tank analyzes President Donald Trump's more than 400 actions taken to reshape asylum policies, refugee programs, deportation priorities and other aspects of immigration.

Ries, Lora, “President Trump and Joe Biden: Comparing Immigration Policies,” Heritage Foundation, Oct. 21, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/56vf3j5a. A senior research fellow at a conservative think tank breaks down the policy differences between Biden and his predecessor on immigration policy, including the border wall, asylum programs and protections for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

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The Next Step

Biden's Plans

Ferris, Sarah, Heather Caygle and Laura Barrón-López, “‘Not quite ready yet’: Democrats won't take up Biden immigration plan this month,” Politico, March 4, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/5xrdahfy. House Democrats reportedly do not have enough votes yet to pass President Biden's comprehensive immigration bill.

Kumar, Anita, “Biden yet to act on overturning some Trump immigration policies,” Politico, March 9, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ykju7zaw. The Department of Homeland Security may ask courts to overturn Trump-era immigration policies, rather than replace them through the time-consuming process of issuing new regulations.

Min Kim, Seung, “Next Biden agenda items on immigration and infrastructure already running into trouble,” The Washington Post, March 11, 2011, https://tinyurl.com/hf4827hk. Facing dissension within their ranks about Biden's proposed immigration package, congressional Democrats may try to pass smaller pieces of the measure separately, such as creating a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children and permanent residency permits for farm workers without legal status.

Immigration Courts

Brache, Laura, “A Day With A Charlotte Immigration Attorney Inside One Of The Nation's Toughest Courts,” WFAE, March 11, 2011, https://tinyurl.com/5btendn4. A reporter follows an immigration attorney in Charlotte, N.C., where more than 80 percent of asylum cases end in deportation.

Frost, Amanda, “Deportation Without Disclosure: Immigration Courts Need Transparency,” Bloomberg Law, Feb. 23, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/6sxn3jje. A law professor argues that all immigration court rulings should be made public, after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that only the nation's highest immigration court must disclose its opinions.

Levinson, Reade, Kristina Cooke and Mica Rosenberg, “Special Report: How Trump administration left indelible mark on U.S. immigration courts,” Reuters, March 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ffza7sct. Judges appointed by President Donald Trump were more likely to deny asylum claims than those appointed by other presidents.

Remain in Mexico

Alvarez, Priscilla, “Infamous tent camp on US-Mexico border drawn down after Biden ends Trump policy,” CNN Politics, March 7, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/rysvzzsu. Temporary migrant camps in Mexico are emptying as the Biden administration allows an estimated 25,000 migrants who have active asylum cases to cross the border into the United States to wait for their cases to be adjudicated.

Kocher, Adam, “Biden ends policy forcing asylum-seekers to ‘remain in Mexico’ — but for 41,247 migrants, it's too late,” The Conversation, March 10, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/57k9ajud. Most of the asylum seekers forced to remain in Mexico during the Trump administration were denied asylum.

Smith, Michael, and Naureen S Malik, “Biden Ends Trump's ‘Remain in Mexico’ Rule, and a Border Camp Empties,” Bloomberg, March 1, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ypvuauzk. Migrants living in border camps in Mexico faced harsh and unhealthy conditions as they waited for their asylum claims to be processed.

Unaccompanied Minors

Blitzer, Jonathan, “Biden Has Few Good Options for the Unaccompanied Children at the Border,” The New Yorker, March 9, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/3y223mas. The Biden administration began accepting unaccompanied children claiming asylum at the border, reversing a Trump policy, but as space in shelters runs out the new rule has led to decisions to use adult holding facilities that were criticized during the Trump administration.

Miroff, Nick, “At border, record number of migrant youths wait in adult detention cells for longer than legally allowed,” The Washington Post, March 10, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/5h3nw9j6. Migrant teens and children are spending an average of 107 hours in concrete cells built for adults in Border Patrol stations as they await transfer to a shelter, a time period that is well over the 72-hour legal limit.

Romo, Vanessa, “Number Of Unaccompanied Minors Entering U.S. Soared In February,” NPR, March 11, 2011, https://tinyurl.com/2thre58n. The number of unaccompanied minors and families seeking to enter the United States through the Southwest border more than doubled from January to February.

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Contacts

American Civil Liberties Union
915 15th St., N.W., Washington, DC 20005
212-549-2666
aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights
Civil rights group that defends immigrants' rights and is working to locate migrant children separated from their families at the Southern border.

Federation for American Immigration Reform
25 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Suite 330, Washington, DC 20001
202-328-7004
fairus.org
Policy group that advocates for limiting immigration “to manage growth, address environmental concerns and maintain a high quality of life.”

Migration Policy Institute
1400 16th St., N.W., Suite 300, Washington, DC 20036
202-266-1940
migrationpolicy.org
A think tank that analyzes immigration data, recommends policies and tracks trends.

Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse
215 University Place, Suite 360, Newhouse II, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, 13244
315-443-3563
trac.syr.edu
Research group that analyzes and disseminates data on federal policies affecting immigration and other issues.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
111 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20529
800-375-5283
uscis.gov
Department of Homeland Security agency that oversees the country's immigration system.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection
1300 Pennsylvania Ave., N.W., Washington, DC 20004
877-227-5511
cbp.gov
Homeland Security agency that enforces immigration laws at the country's borders.

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Footnotes

[1] Reuters and Adry Torres, “Caravan of at least 3,000 Hondurans is marching to the US-Mexico border in time for Biden to take over as president,” Daily Mail, Jan. 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2z22hly5.

[2] Kirk Semple and Nic Wirtz, “Migrant Caravan, Now in Guatemala, Tests Regional Resolve to Control Migration,” The New York Times, Jan. 17, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2uxrxtc2.

[3] Isabel Mateos and María Verza, “Migrants on the move again in Mexico and Central America,” The Associated Press, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/s6jhve6z; “Guatemala buses more migrants back to Honduras; small groups press on toward Mexico,” The Associated Press/Fox News, Jan. 2021, https://tinyurl.com/39nfl4pg.

[4] Semple and Wirtz, op. cit.

[5] “‘No choice except to flee’: After back-to-back hurricanes, Central Americans go north,” NBC News, Dec. 4, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/7dbspc2a; “The Biden Plan For Securing Our Values As A Nation Of Immigrants,” Biden Harris campaign, undated, https://tinyurl.com/2c99s4ry.

[6] Matthew Impelli, “Read Homeland Security Chief Mayorkas' Full Statement on Migrant Situation at Border,” Newsweek, March 16, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/3927nsz9; Maegan Vazquez and Kate Sullivan, “Biden tells migrants not to come to US: ‘Don't leave your town,’” CNN Politics, March 16, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/nhhrc87x.

[7] “The Biden Plan For Securing Our Values As A Nation Of Immigrants,” ibid.; Cecilia Vega and Quinn Owen, “Democrats introduce Biden's immigration reform bill,” ABC News, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/1f4hymum; Adam Shaw, “Marco Rubio rejects Biden immigration bill, calls it ‘blanket amnesty,’” Fox News, Jan. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/lh0rbfw1.

[8] Chuck Lindell, “Judge blocks Biden's 100-day deportation pause in nationwide order,” Austin American-Statesman, Feb. 24, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/vumcw9c5.

[9] Daniel Gonzalez and Rafael Carranza, “Biden pushing for major immigration reforms, but another humanitarian crisis at the border could derail his agenda,” Arizona Republic, Jan. 29, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/1hf8z3kj.

[10] Sean Sullivan and Nick Miroff, “Biden faces growing political threat from border upheaval,” The Washington Post, March 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/pvtay6z6.

[11] Sarah Pierce and Jessica Bolter, “Dismantling and Reconstructing the U.S. Immigration System: A Catalog of Changes under the Trump Presidency,” Migration Policy Institute, July 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1axy7kij; Muzaffar Chishti and Jessica Bolter, “The ‘Trump Effect’ on Legal Immigration Levels: More Perception than Reality?” Migration Policy Institute, Nov. 20, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1h8nr3d5; and Arelis R. Hernández and Kevin Sieff, “Unwinding Trump's asylum policy will be major challenge for Biden,” The Washington Post, Dec. 2, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1w4mvm94.

[12] Hernández and Sieff, ibid.

[13] Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Michael D. Shear, “Trump Loyalists Across Homeland Security Could Vex Biden's Immigration Policies,” The New York Times, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/pdvsr6u4; Maria Sacchetti and Nick Miroff, “Biden squeezed on immigration policy, bracing for border crisis,” The Washington Post, Feb. 24, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2p9jphch.

[14] Victor Reklaitis and Robert Schroeder, “All of President Biden's key executive orders — in one chart,” MarketWatch, March 9, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y9mqduou; Nicole Narea, “Biden's next executive actions address family separations, legal immigration, and asylum,” Vox, Feb. 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4n5omeeu; and Michael D. Shear, “Biden Revokes Trump's Pause on Green Cards,” The New York Times, Feb 24, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yem8uc5y.

[15] Dartunorro Clark and Julia Ainsley, “Biden signs immigration executive orders to address ‘moral failing’ of Trump's policies,” NBC News, Feb. 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/3b94sjay; Michael D. Shear and Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “Biden Issues Orders to Dismantle Trump's ‘America First’ Immigration Agenda,” The New York Times, March 11, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/1ror1bt9; and Justine Coleman, “DOJ rescinds ‘zero tolerance’ border policy behind family separations,” The Hill, Jan. 26, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/22bsnsth.

[16] Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Biden administration stops enforcing Trump-era ‘public charge’ green card restrictions following court order,” CBS News, March 10, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4wman987.

[17] “Biden administration suspends Trump asylum deals with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,” Reuters, Feb. 6, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/pxhg4t0p; Rebecca Beitsch, “Biden immigration policy looks beyond reversing Trump,” The Hill, Feb. 7, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/acsajbpd; and Jasmine Aguilera, “Joe Biden's Immigration Bill Aims to Address the Root Causes of Migration. Will it Work?” Time, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4s4e3su3.

[18] Julián Aguilar, “Joe Biden to pause border wall construction, issue protections for DACA recipients and roll back other Trump immigration policies,” The Texas Tribune, Jan. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2ojmwcvy.

[19] James Gordon, “Asylum seekers who Trump banned from the US stream across Gateway International Bridge from Mexico after Biden relaxed rules — with 500 expected by end of the week,” Daily Mail, Feb. 28, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yp7226h4.

[20] Abigail Hauslohner, “Biden seeks to restore ‘badly damaged’ refugee resettlement program,” The Washington Post, Feb. 5, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/1n6reat4; “Definitions: Refugee, Asylum Seeker, IDP, Migrant,” Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, undated, https://tinyurl.com/srncmcc.

[21] Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti, “Biden says he'll reverse Trump immigration policies but wants ‘guardrails’ first,” The Washington Post, Dec. 22, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/pvcnxo5u; Matthew Brown and Rebecca Morin, “White House says most migrants at border to be rejected, says administration needs time develop ‘humane’ process,” USA Today, Feb. 10, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/gnvqqye7; and Laura Gottesdiener, Frank Jack Daniel and Ted Hesson, “Tough migration enforcement south of border key to Biden plans,” Reuters, Feb. 12, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ysxehat3.

[22] Vazquez and Sullivan, op. cit.

[23] Maria Sacchetti, Nick Miroff and Silvia Foster-Frau, “Texas family detention centers expected to transform into rapid-processing hubs,” The Washington Post, March 4, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/bvkaht2v.

[24] “Transcripts,” CNN, March 6, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/zxj4n84b.

[25] “Southwest Land Border Encounters,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, March 10, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/munkzj7b; “The State of the Immigration Courts: Trump Leaves Biden 1.3 Million Case Backlog in Immigration Courts,” Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Jan. 19, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/1bqevsnp.

[26] Miroff and Sacchetti, “Biden squeezed on immigration policy, bracing for border crisis,” op. cit.

[27] “Southwest Land Border Encounters,” op. cit.; Zolan Kanno-Youngs, “A surge in migrant children detained at border is straining shelters,” The New York Times, March 9, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4ydhz8ma.

[28] Priscilla Alvarez, “More than 4,000 unaccompanied migrant children in Border Patrol custody,” CNN, March 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/6prk364e; Nick Miroff, “At border, record number of migrant youths wait in adult detention cells for longer than legally allowed,” The Washington Post, March 10, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/253x3czy; and Silvia Foster-Frau, “First migrant facility for children opens under Biden,” The Washington Post, Feb. 22, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/5fs4mvdc.

[29] Foster-Frau, ibid.

[30] Ted Hesson, “Exclusive: U.S. considering use of Virginia military base to house migrant children,” Reuters, March 5, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yfz79umw; Sacchetti, Miroff and Foster-Frau, op. cit.; Nick Miroff, “Biden will deploy FEMA to care for teenagers and children crossing border in record numbers,” The Washington Post, March 13, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/fsahrand; and Nick Miroff, “Biden administration will use Dallas convention center to shelter migrant teen boys,” The Washington Post, March 15, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/y76ud67c.

[31] Jon Gerberg and Maria Sacchetti, “A border community, ICE at odds over release of detainees with covid,” The Washington Post, March 14, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/3j8emxwc.

[32] Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti, “Immigration arrests have fallen sharply under Biden, ICE data show,” The Washington Post, March 9, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/8tvj4uzc.

[33] Suzanne Monyak, “Despite travel ban repeal, Trump orders still keep immigrants out,” Roll Call, Jan. 28, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2r2qw2qe; Will Weissert and Nomaan Merchant, “Immigrants, activists worry Biden won't end Trump barriers,” The Associated Press, Feb. 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/c25veyun; and Isabela Dias, “The Biden Administration Is Telling Asylum Seekers They Still Have to Wait,” Mother Jones, Feb. 10, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yu7swkxw.

[34] Donica Phifer, “Donald Trump Calls Asylum Claims a ‘Big Fat Con Job,’ Says Mexico Should Stop Migrant Caravans From Traveling to U.S. border,” Newsweek, March 29, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/c56ajsai.

[35] Adrian Carrasquillo, “Trump, Miller Think Road to 2022 Victory Is Immigration, Democrats See It as a Failed Playbook,” Newsweek, March 1, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/d8hm5rsw.

[36] “61% Optimistic About Next Four Years With Biden In Office, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; 68% Of Americans Support The $1.9 Trillion Stimulus Relief Bill,” Quinnipiac University Poll, Feb. 3, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/mbz2w96g.

[37] Mohamed Younis, “Americans Want More, Not Less, Immigration for First Time,” Gallup, July 1, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/2cwl66ou.

[38] “Executive Order on Restoring Faith in Our Legal Immigration Systems and Strengthening Integration and Inclusion Efforts for New Americans,” The White House, Feb. 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/w7gzxxng; Nicole Prchal Svailenka, “Protecting Undocumented Workers on the Pandemic's Front Lines,” Center for American Progress, Dec. 2, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1lfv84wv.

[39] “Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965,” History, Art & Archives, U.S. House of Representatives, https://tinyurl.com/mkyth9u3.

[40] Ibid.; Douglas S. Massey and Karen A. Pren, “Unintended Consequences of US Immigration Policy: Explaining the Post-1965 Surge from Latin America,” Population and Development Review, 2012, https://tinyurl.com/2ntcb3zr.

[41] Ingrid Rojas, “The 1986 Immigration Reform Explained,” ABC News, May 5, 2013, https://tinyurl.com/3chl2v2u.

[42] Miriam Valverde, “Did Senate pass immigration bills in 2006, 2013 and House failed to vote on them?” Politifact, Jan. 26, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/4v2hrksg.

[43] Amanda Sakuma, “Obama Leaves Behind a Mixed Legacy on Immigration,” NBC News, Jan. 15, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/2deatfye; “Judicial Rulings Ending the Obama Administration's Family Detention Policy: Implications for Illegal Immigration and Border Security,” U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, Jan. 10, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/6484fhhk.

[44] Avalon Zoppo, Amanda Proença Santos and Jackson Hudgins, “Here's the Full List of Donald Trump's Executive Orders,” NBC News, Oct. 17, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/jdunm2ql; “Trump administration widens net for immigrant deportation,” BBC News, Feb. 21, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/1icxdps5www.

[45] Catherine E. Shoichet, “What ‘merit-based’ immigration means, and why Trump keeps saying he wants it,” CNN Politics, May 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/4zmnzty3; Maegan Vazquez, Kevin Liptak and Lauren Fox, “Trump unveils new (likely doomed) immigration plan,” CNN Politics, May 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/1boxp6x4; and Jill Colvin and Astrid Galvan, “Trump offers confusion, contradictions on immigration order,” The Associated Press/The Washington Post, July 20, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/fdj9s384.

[46] Miriam Valverde, “Donald Trump's immigration promises: failures and achievements,” Politifact, July 27, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/3mesyduj.

[47] Burgess Everett, “McConnell: Senate will ‘probably not’ vote on Dreamers bill,” Politico, June 5, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/463fq592; Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Michael D. Shear, “Senate Rejects Immigration Plans, Leaving Fate of Dreamers Uncertain,” The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/ij1u8l1s; and Billy Binion, “House Tries to Give ‘Dreamers’ a Path to Citizenship, but Mitch McConnell Won't Even Consider the Bill,” Reason, June 6, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/3e8f6vnv.

[48] Peniel Ibe, “Trump's attacks on the legal immigration system explained,” American Friends Service Committee, Blog, April 23, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/4tju43ds.

[49] David Shepardson, “Trump says family separations deter illegal immigration,” Reuters, Oct. 13, 2018, https://tinyurl.com/xhgz3wr9; Nila Bala and Arthur Rizer, “Trump's family separation policy never really ended. This is why,” Think, July 1, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/yzn8tl5u; Nicole Narea, “The Trump administration knew exactly what it was doing with family separations,” Vox, Oct. 7, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/3v87ay8c; and Daniel Gonzalez, “628 parents of separated children are still missing. Here's why immigrant advocates can't find them,” Arizona Republic/USA Today, Dec. 11, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/vc7h3e4s.

[50] Tal Kopan, “Trump ends DACA but gives Congress window to save it,” CNN Politics, Sept. 5, 2017, https://tinyurl.com/3kka9992.

[51] Miriam Jordan, “Trump's ‘Public Charge’ Immigration Rule Is Vacated by Federal Judge,” The New York Times, Nov. 2, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/nw749aje; Amy Howe, “Cases testing Trump's “public charge” immigration rule are dismissed,” SCOTUSblog, March 9, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/durs5hya.

[52] Gordon, op. cit.

[53] Peter Baker, “Trump Declares a National Emergency, and Provokes a Constitutional Clash,” The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/42blxhcg.

[54] Deirdre Shesgreen, “In shift, Trump administration says it will restore some U.S. aid to Central America,” USA Today, Oct. 16, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/7fgy32gt.

[55] Spencer S. Hsu, “Federal judge strikes down Trump asylum rule targeting Central Americans,” The Washington Post, July 1, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/you7wuqp.

[56] “Southwest Border Migration,” op. cit.; “Illegal Immigration Hits 12-Year High; More than 76,000 Migrants Cross in February,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, March 6, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/sxlztpgh.

[57] Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Kirk Semple, “Trump Cites Coronavirus as He Announces a Border Crackdown,” The New York Times, March 27, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/4x33ggns; Danilo Zak, “Immigration-related Executive Actions During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” National Immigration Forum, Nov. 18, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/4aopdbpb; and Danilo Zak, “President Trump's Proclamation Suspending Immigration,” National Immigration Forum, June 23, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1o3fw5qt.

[58] Chishti and Bolter, op. cit.; Ryan Baugh, “Refugees and Asylees: 2019,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, September 2020, https://tinyurl.com/crs5uv8s; Justin Fox, “Trump Didn't Actually Accomplish Much on Immigration,” Bloomberg Opinion, Feb. 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/sz4qrqf8; “Table 1. Persons Obtaining Lawful Permanent Resident Status: Fiscal Years 1820 to 2019,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Oct. 27, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/s0txeqm1; and “Asylum Denial Rates Continue to Climb,” Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, Oct. 28, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/q75mkkel.

[59] Chishti and Bolter, op. cit.

[60] Nicole Narea, “Biden's sweeping immigration bill, explained,” Vox, Jan. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/12pil023.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Democratic lawmakers unveil Biden-backed immigration overhaul bill,” CBS News, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4f7e4qua.

[63] Camilo Montoya-Galvez, “Biden plan would offer legal status to farmworkers, ‘Dreamers’ and other undocumented immigrants,” CBS News, Jan. 20, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2lnxoav7.

[64] Ibid.

[65] “Senate Bill: U.S. Citizenship Act,” American Immigration Lawyers Association, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/l1rc28jq.

[66] Ibid.

[67] Ibid.

[68] “Biden's Immigration Plan Would Offer Path to Citizenship for Millions,” The New York Times, March 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ga10rkew; “Biden's Bold Immigration Overhaul May Face a Republican Wall in Congress,” Reuters/U.S. News and World Report, Jan. 21, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/3nuybght.

[69] Eliza Relman, “Republican voters have become more xenophobic as Trump has normalized racist rhetoric,” Business Insider, July 18, 2019, https://tinyurl.com/iaeod1k2.

[70] Jordain Carney, “Biden reignites immigration fight in Congress,” The Hill, Jan. 30, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/1t39tvhj; Alan Fram, Lisa Mascaro and Bill Barrow, “Biden immigration plan opposed by GOP, conservative groups,” The Associated Press, Jan. 19, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/4nosjfw4.

[71] Laura Barrón-López, Heather Caygle and Anita Kumar, “Biden's immigration bill lands on the Hill facing bleak odds,” Politico, Feb. 18, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/j14k01a2; Laura Barrón-López, Anita Kumar and Sabrina Rodriguez, “Biden open to breaking his immigration bill into pieces,” Politico, Jan. 26, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/fnrnhkve; and Kate Sullivan, “Biden says he supports bringing back the Senate's talking filibuster rule,” CNN, March 16, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/6mjr6jwn.

[72] Seung Min Kim, “Next Biden agenda items on immigration and infrastructure already running into trouble,” The Washington Post, March 11, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/8y9zwt22.

[73] Sabrina Rodriguez, “Biden wants to undo Trump's family separation legacy. It won't be easy,” Politico, Jan. 31, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/7ru5909s; Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti, “New Biden rules for ICE point to fewer arrests and deportations, and a more restrained agency,” The Washington Post, Feb. 7, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/3xc8nb74; Adam Shaw, “Biden DHS nominee Mayorkas says ICE should not be defunded, despite liberal calls,” Fox News, Jan. 19, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/1dsxap6u; Alana Wise, “Senate Makes Alejandro Mayorkas First Latino Head of Homeland Security,” NPR, Feb. 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/15w2pesq; “Leadership/Organization,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Feb. 5, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/ttevwkk6; and “ICE Leadership,” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, accessed March 11, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/49xb8mh3.

[74] Burgess Everett and Marianne Levine, “Dems split as progressives rage over immigration vote,” Politico, Feb. 8, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/mlq7nupg.

[75] Elliot Spagat and Josh Boak, “Biden signs immigration orders as Congress awaits more,” The Associated Press, Feb. 2, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/1xr756s3.

[76] Rick Jervis, “Biden's effort to reunite Trump-era separated families is trickiest immigration challenge,” USA Today, Jan. 25, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/krxsi6h9.

[77] Nicole Narea, “What Biden could do about family separations,” Vox, Dec. 28, 2020, https://tinyurl.com/1gani6fa; “Review of the Department of Justice's Planning and Implementation of Its Zero Tolerance Policy and Its Coordination with the Departments of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services,” U.S. Department of Justice, January 2021, https://tinyurl.com/xs2pbh34.

[78] Todd Bensman, “Aspiring Immigrants, Foregoing Caravan Tactic, Are Massing in Northern Mexico on Biden Promises,” Center for Immigration Studies, Feb. 19, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2vuk589n.

[79] Gonzalez and Carranza, op. cit.

[80] Anne Gearan et al., “Biden meets with Mexican president amid growing pressure on immigration,” The Washington Post, March 1, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/2rh4tdn4.

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About the Author

Val Ellicott is a Washington-based writer and editor and a former editor at CQ Researcher. Before that, he worked for 14 years as an editor at Gannett and USA Today in Washington, and spent 12 years covering investigative stories, court news and the medical beat at The Palm Beach Post in Florida. He received a masters degree in journalism in 1986 from Columbia University.

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