Facing pressure from voters, Biden administration begins making moves on the border

The Biden administration rolled out a new rule aimed at speeding up the process for asylum claims at the border as President Joe Biden is facing pressure to slow down illegal crossings that have become a political headache for his reelection campaign.

Thursday’s rule announced by the Department of Homeland Security would allow asylum officers to determine if a person seeking asylum presents a threat at an earlier stage in the process than current rules, which allow someone to continue in the asylum process even if they have a criminal history or pose a risk to national security. The current rules can drag cases out for years and is resource intensive, the administration said.

“The proposed rule we have published today is yet another step in our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of the American public by more quickly identifying and removing those individuals who present a security risk and have no legal basis to remain here,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “We will continue to take action, but fundamentally it is only Congress that can fix what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system.”

Biden is weighing whether to roll out more executive actions on the border as his administration is facing pressure from lawmakers and voters to address higher levels of illegal crossings and sporadic scenes of chaos at a handful of entry points.

Along with Republicans that have railed against his immigration policies since he took office, Biden is being pressured by some Democrats to take executive action on the issue. A group of 15 Democrats sent Biden a letter earlier this week calling on him to use tools that don’t need congressional intervention to secure the border.

"It has become clear that the current situation remains untenable, but with Republicans playing politics on border security, it is time for your administration to act," the letter said. "We urge you to use all tools at your disposal, including executive action, to better address security at the Southern border, interdict illicit fentanyl and allow for orderly legal immigration."

But the asylum policy is also receiving pushback from Democrats, who are upset about the attempted crackdown without helping people who were brought to the country illegally as children, putting him in a difficult spot politically.

“He is stuck in the middle and regardless of what decision he makes, he's going to anger some faction that he needs come November,” said David Cohen, a professor a political science professor and director of the University of Akron’s Applied Politics program. “That's why you're elected president. Especially on tough issues like immigration and the war in Gaza, you have to try to block out the politics. You have to do what you think is right and is in the best interest of the country.”

Biden has tried to flip the issue on Republicans after the House rejected a bipartisan Senate compromise bill that would have hired additional border agents and immigration judges, expedited the asylum process and added technology to entry points that could detect drugs in vehicles. The bill stalled out in the House due to GOP demands for harsher policies Biden and the Democratic Senate would not sign off on and pressure from Trump, who called on GOP lawmakers to vote against the bill.

There are slim odds of Congress moving toward another legislative solution to the issues with the border and the country’s inefficient and backlogged immigration system as Election Day is less than six months away, meaning any changes will have to come through executive orders and rulemaking from the Department of Homeland Security. Immigration experts generally agree that the most efficient solutions to deal with the problems at the border require Congress to act, which they have been mostly unable to do dating back decades and multiple administrations.

“Congress deserves the blame. Congress has shirked its responsibility for decades and every time they've had a president make a good-faith effort at coming up with bipartisan immigration reform, Congress has killed it,” Cohen said.

Immigration and the border have consistently ranked highly in priority lists for voters in public opinion surveys, many of which have also found Biden is underwater in voters’ approval of his handling of the issue. A Monmouth University poll released last week found immigration was the most important issue outside of the economy and inflation, and Gallup polling has had immigration as the No. 1 issue for three straight months.

Most of the voter pressure on immigration comes from Republicans, but it is also important to a sizable piece of independents, who are the subset of voters that are likely to decide who wins the White House on Nov. 5. The breakdown of the Electoral College votes is projecting to come down to a small group of swing states that have been decided by relatively small totals over the last two cycles involving Trump.

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