WASHINGTON--U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday instituted a broad asylum ban on migrants caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, a major enforcement move in the run-up to November elections that will decide control of the White House.
Migrants caught crossing illegally could be quickly deported or turned back to Mexico under the measure, which will take effect just after midnight. There will be exceptions for unaccompanied children, people who face serious medical or safety threats and victims of trafficking, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.
Biden, a Democrat, has toughened his approach to border security as immigration has emerged as a top issue for Americans in the run-up to Nov. 5 elections where he will face Republican Donald Trump, who made a hardline stance on immigration a centerpiece of his administration and vowed a wide-ranging crackdown if reelected. Biden took office in 2021 vowing to reverse some of Trump's restrictive immigration policies but grappled with record levels of migrants caught crossing illegally, a trend that has strained U.S. border authorities and cities receiving new arrivals.
During a White House press conference explaining the proclamation, Biden said asylum access would remain available to migrants who registered for an appointment using an app known as CBP One or used other legal pathways instead of crossing illegally.
"This action will help us gain control of our border and restore order into the process," Biden said. "This ban will remain in place until the number of people trying to enter illegally is reduced to a level that our system can effectively manage."
Even as Biden rolled out new restrictions, he criticized Trump's most controversial policies, including separating migrant families at the border and comments that immigrants in the U.S. illegally were "poisoning the blood of our country."
"I will never demonize immigrants," Biden said. When it comes to immigration policy, registered voters prefer Trump over Biden by a 17 percentage point margin, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted in mid-May.
The new asylum ban becomes active when the daily average of border arrests tops 2,500 over a week, and figures are currently higher than that, officials said on a call with reporters, requesting anonymity as a condition of the call. U.S. border arrests averaged 4,300 per day in April, according to the most recent government statistics available.
The ban will be paused when arrests drop below an average of 1,500 per day for three weeks. The last time crossings fell to that level was in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic in July 2020 when global travel was at historic lows.
Key operational questions about the measure's implementation remained unclear, including how the administration would quickly deport migrants from far-away and uncooperative countries and how many non-Mexican migrants Mexico would accept under the new enforcement regime. The new restrictions resemble similar policies implemented by Trump and use a legal statute known as 212(f) that served as the underpinning for Trump's travel bans blocking people from several majority-Muslim nations and other
