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As of 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, the U.S. border with Mexico was closed to nearly all migrants seeking asylum on U.S. soil.
The drastic measure, the result of an executive order signed by President Joe Biden, is designed to keep the border closed at least until after Election Day, thus dispelling one of the incumbent president’s biggest weaknesses in his campaign against former President Donald Trump.
The question is to what extent this can be implemented, especially along a border more than 3,100 kilometers long that does not have the necessary capacity to accommodate the number of people who want to enter the United States.
As of Wednesday morning and into Thursday, it appeared to be working although it was still too early to make a real assessment. The migrants were returned from the border cities of Mexicali and Ciudad Juarez, and word spread.
Before the new restrictions took effect, migrants sought out border agents and turned themselves in, knowing that anyone who set foot on US soil could apply for asylum. They have often been released into the United States while waiting for their cases to be heard, which can take years.
Biden’s new order prevents this from happening. But there are plenty of ways to get into the country along the border — which runs from California to Texas — especially if there aren’t new resources to help police them.
US Customs and Border Protection publishes the number of crossings each month, so the effects of Biden’s order will be known within a few weeks.
Sin embargo, the main problem behind the Casa Blanca is that the republicans have a block of miles of millions of dollars from a financial institution that has a large pool of money in the country, if the suscita preguntas so much that the result is a large one at a time in the migration process. everyone.
“None of this solves long-term problems,” said John Sandweg, who was a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration. “Until Congress does something, we will continue to have serious problems at the border.”
Biden, under enormous political pressure to solve the problem of illegal immigration, issued the executive order after Republicans in Congress rejected a bipartisan bill in February that would also have closed the border.
The main difference between this legislation and Biden’s order is money. The president cannot use his executive authority to send billions of dollars in resources to the border; Congress needs to do this.
But Trump, who has made his radical stance on immigration a hallmark of his political brand, urged Republicans to reject the legislation, even though it includes some of the most restrictive measures Congress has considered in years.
On Tuesday, Biden blamed Republicans for forcing him to issue the order, but added that the “simple fact” was that he had to secure the border.
Biden would have to do it without the money the bill called for, including more than $7 billion directed to Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation flights and other expenses; $4 billion directed to Citizenship and Immigration Services for officials who handle asylum cases; More than $6 billion will go to Customs and Border Protection to hire more border agents and other resources.
The legislation would also have paid the salaries of more immigration judges in an effort to reduce a massive backlog of asylum cases that already stands at two million.
The new restrictions will not be lifted until the number of illegal crossings falls below 1,500 people for seven consecutive days and remains there for two weeks. We haven’t seen numbers this low in years; In December, there were about 10,000 illegal crossings per day.
Recently, the numbers reached about 3,000 crossings per day.
If the numbers can be reduced below this threshold, they will rebound when the seven-day average of daily illegal crossings reaches 2,500, which is common today.
Assuming the executive order survives legal challenges, which is expected, it could remain in effect for several months or longer.
“The threshold they have set is so low, it is unbelievable and unrealistic for a moment of historic migration globally,” said Adam Isaacson of the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy group. “This is not a mathematical coincidence: it is low enough to ensure that asylum between ports of entry will not return in the near future.”
Aline Corpus contributed reporting in Mexicali, Mexico, and Rocio Gallegos in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico.
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