Sending immigrants to 5 cities and more deportations: Biden administration announces new changes to asylum policy

Joe Biden’s administration announced new changes to asylum policy this Thursday. The new rule would allow adults who are detained at border ports and released because immigration agents believe they have probable cause for asylum to be sent to five cities in the interior of the country so that a judge can decide their future in the United States.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) and Homeland Security (DHS) said the new asylum rule would “allow immigration court files to be processed more efficiently.”

During a press conference in Washington, DC, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that since the beginning of the fiscal year, as part of the White House’s efforts to control and reduce undocumented immigration along the Mexico border, there has been an accumulation of 10 million detections, including repeat offenses, by 2021.

The so-called new ‘Recent Arrivals (RA) file process’ will “help speedily resolve immigration cases of certain non-citizen adults attempting to cross irregularly between ports of entry at the Southwest border,” the two officials noted.

According to Thursday’s announcement, the Biden administration’s new asylum strategy would allow DHS and DOJ to “immediately impose consequences, including deportation, on aliens who lack a lawful basis to remain in the United States.”

The plan indicates that non-citizens with valid grounds for asylum “will receive immediate immigration relief or protection.” But those who lack evidence or demonstrate a credible fear of persecution are quickly deported.

The new rule was published in the Federal Register (official US journal) and opened for public comment. Once the period for comments closes, the government must consider them to develop a final rule set by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

“Today, we are establishing a process with the Department of Justice to expedite asylum procedures so that those who are ineligible for assistance are removed quickly and those who are eligible can receive protection as soon as possible,” Mayorkas told reporters. New Asylum Protocol.

“This executive action is not a substitute for the serious and much-needed changes that the bipartisan Senate bill would make; but, in the absence of action by Congress, we will do everything we can to more effectively enforce the law and discourage irregular migration.”

The changes noted by the DHS secretary are due to a proposal discussed by a bipartisan committee in the Senate between October of last year and January of this year, which is part of a White House plan to be included in the debate. Expenditure budget. But the plan was scrapped after a lack of votes from both Republicans and conservative Democrats.

In turn, he said, “the Department of Justice’s immigration courts are committed to the fair and efficient application of immigration laws.” And fair.

The Immigration Court (EOIR) is a department of the Department of Justice and operates under the command of the Attorney General.

According to explanations given by both Mayorkas and Garland, the new asylum rule seeks to fix an asylum system that has been overwhelmed by a historic avalanche of asylum cases at the border with Mexico since mid-2013.

To date, the Immigration Court has accumulated approximately 3.6 million cases and a backlog of approximately 10 million requests for immigration services services.

Aliens arriving at the U.S. Southwest Border often wait years to receive a final decision in immigration court. The 3.6 million cases accumulated in EOIR are heard by about 640 judges in courts across the country.

The government recognizes that there are insufficient resources, including insufficient judges and immigration lawyers, which hinders the speedy resolution of asylum claims and prolongs the length of the immigration court process.

These are the reasons Biden asked Congress for $14 billion last October to hire judges, create 100 immigration courts, hire asylum agents for the USCIS, and hundreds of agents for the Border Patrol.

Congress’s refusal to approve an immigration amendment in the budget debate has exhausted the White House’s ability to respond to the immigration crisis.

According to the announcement by Garland and Mayorkas, the government’s new asylum policy states that new cases of adults detained at the border and released because the government has probable cause to protect them will be placed in the RA Docket “and EOIR Judges.” The judgment of these cases will be given priority,” he said.

“The RA Docket operates in five cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.” Immigration judges will “strive to issue final decisions within 180 days, although the timing of a decision in any particular case is subject to case-specific circumstances and procedural safeguards, including allowing noncitizens time to obtain representation when necessary.”

Last week the two departments published a rule in the Federal Register that gives federal immigration agents more discretion to deny asylum claims at the border and expedite deportations.

“This rule will allow DHS (Department of Homeland Security -DHS-) to quickly deport people who are subject to sanctions and pose a risk to our national or public security,” the ministry said in a statement.

In turn, the DOJ sent a brief to a federal court in California seeking to modify the 1997 Flores Court Agreement, which regulates how the government processes unaccompanied minors detained at the border when they seek asylum.

The aforementioned agreement guarantees the best well-being of migrant children and guarantees them due process in secure facilities and allows them access to lawyers to assist them in their asylum processes. It also sets limits on the length of time that minors may be deprived of their liberty and prioritizes providing relatives with the understanding that undocumented presence is a civil offense and not a criminal act.

The Biden administration is seeking to withdraw from an agreement with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to receive minors detained by the Border Patrol for 72 hours.

Immigration lawyers and immigrant rights groups expect changes to asylum policy made by the Biden administration to be challenged in legal courts.