- Several former Trump administration officials believe that the Biden administration’s pause of an asylum rule shows it is not effectively addressing the crisis at the southern border.
- The Biden administration has paused the use of asylum officers to refuse or deny migrants’ claims at the southern border, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday.
- “The Biden Administration’s reactive and ineffective border strategy is on display yet again with this move. Instead of thinking long term when this rule went into place and the eventual conclusion of Title 42, the administration continues to be more reactive than strategic. Another missed opportunity,” former acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf told the DCNF.
Several former top Trump administration officials believe that the Biden administration’s latest action to reverse an asylum rule it put in place shows they’re admitting defeat at responding to the migration surge at the southern border, they told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Biden administration is planning to pause a rule that dictates that asylum officers can reject or accept illegal immigrants’ claims at the southern border, the Los Angeles Times reported Wednesday. The Trump administration’s former acting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary, Chad Wolf, former acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) commissioner Mark Morgan and former acting DHS Chief of Staff Lora Ries believe that the Biden administration is showing it has failed to reduce the asylum case backlog and is anticipating a surge of migrants at the end of Title 42, which the previous White House implemented to expel certain illegal immigrants to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, they told the DCNF. (RELATED: ‘Catch And Deport’: Nikki Haley Visits Border And Delivers Her Plan To Solve Crisis)
The Biden administration implemented the change to more quickly process asylum cases, instead of adding them to a years-long wait for adjudication in court, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a May 2022 statement on the new rule.
“The Biden Administration’s reactive and ineffective border strategy is on display yet again with this move. Instead of thinking long term when this rule went into place and the eventual conclusion of Title 42, the administration continues to be more reactive than strategic. Another missed opportunity,” Wolf told the DCNF.
The Biden administration has said it’s pausing the rule to prepare for Title 42’s end on May 11, according to the LA Times.
Former U.S. Customs and Border Protection acting Commissioner Mark Morgan (YouTube//The Daily Signal)
“I think the reality is they realized the logistical nightmare they would create by having asylum officers begin overseeing the process of granting asylum, especially with the anticipated increase in illegal immigration following the removal of Title 42. So it will be the status quo for all involved – catch, release, repeat,” Morgan told the DCNF.
“As soon as they figure out the logistics to improve their newly created processing enterprise, they will undoubtedly implement this rubber stamp policy and continue to facilitate the worst border security crisis in our lifetime,” Morgan said.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has recorded more than 2.3 million migrant encounters in fiscal year 2022 and more than 1 million between October and February at the southern border.
“The Biden Administration’s idealistic view of ‘fixing a broken asylum system’ has hit the cold reality of operations. They couldn’t make it work on the ground, especially with an anticipated surge of illegal aliens following the Title 42 termination,” Ries told the DCNF.
“The administration is admitting several things with this. First, illegal immigration begets more illegal immigration. The administration’s tactics are not working at stemming the flow. Not their ‘root cause’ efforts, not their increase in number of ‘lawful pathways,’ nor their empty threats of removal if illegal aliens continue to cross between ports of entry or bypass safe countries,” Ries said.
Migrants seeking asylum wait an average of 4.3 years nationwide to appear in court, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Ries said Biden’s latest move to scrap the asylum rule shows it had little effect in fixing the backlog.
“Also, they are admitting that the asylum workload was never going to decrease by simply allowing asylum officers instead of immigration judges to review asylum officers’ cases; it would simply add an additional USCIS process step, which gives aliens yet another bite at the apple to get to an asylum grant,” Ries said.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
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