President Biden moved Tuesday to wipe away more of the Trump immigration infrastructure, signing orders easing legal immigrants’ access to welfare and revoking his predecessor’s get-tough border policies.
Mr. Biden also created a task force to reunify families separated under the Trump zero-tolerance border policy of 2018. While thousands of children have been reunited, hundreds still have not been officially reconnected, nearly three years late.
A new White House coordinator has been tasked with reviewing other Trump-era policies Mr. Biden says erected barriers to legal immigration.
And Mr. Biden ordered Homeland Security to come up with plans to revoke President Trump’s asylum policies, which were used to solve the 2019 border surge and a rash of bogus asylum claims, but which immigration activists say have also shut down avenues for valid asylum seekers.
“This is about how America’s safer, stronger, more prosperous when we have a fair, orderly, more humane immigration system,” the president said in the Oval Office.
Mr. Biden said his order creating the family unification task force would “remove the stain” the separations left.
He also defended his brisk pace of executive orders, saying they were needed to combat Mr. Trump’s expansive policies.
“I’m not making new law, I’m eliminating bad policy,” he said.
The moves were cheered by immigration activists — though some groups said they still want Mr. Biden to do more.
Some activists have announced a rally Wednesday on Pennsylvania Avenue to demand the president free all illegal immigrant families being held for deportation.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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