Activists on the precipice of achieving the most open border policy toward illegal immigrants in modern American history suddenly find themselves battling the man they thought was their ally: President Biden.
The advocates are pleading with the president to welcome the migrants massing for a run at the border next week with the expiration of Title 42, the pandemic-era policy that has allowed for the expedient expulsion of some border jumpers. They are watching in horror as the Biden administration flirts with a return to tough policies pioneered by President Trump.
The latest is a report that Mr. Biden might revive Trump-era restrictions requiring asylum-seekers who have traversed other countries to reach the U.S. to go back to those countries and apply for asylum rather than demand a right to apply in the U.S.
Church World Service pronounced itself “deeply disturbed” by the idea, and the American Civil Liberties Union said Mr. Biden would undermine his promises of humane treatment if he tries to derail the flow of people making their way to the U.S.
“If he were to revive Trump and Stephen Miller’s transit ban — cutting off lifesaving access to asylum for all migrants other than people from Mexico — there would no longer be a shred of pretense that he is committed to protecting those fleeing persecution and violence,” said Jonathan Blazer, the ACLU’s director of border strategies.
That pressure has put Mr. Biden and his team in a bind.
They appear to be searching for ways to slow the expected surge but risk being shamed for turning to methods that worked for the Trump administration.
Chad Wolf, acting homeland security secretary in the latter part of the Trump years, said the solution is no secret.
“What we did is we just enforced the law,” he told The Washington Times. “We looked at what was on the books, and we let law enforcement agents enforce the law.”
He said, though, that enforcement can’t be just for a single policy such as expulsions or asylum cooperative agreements.
“It’s a combination of all of them,” Mr. Wolf said. “When one fails, there’s four behind it that pick up the slack. … You’ve got to take a comprehensive approach and do six, seven.”
The problem, he said, is that the Biden administration has given no evidence of any enforcement. Otherwise, officials would be publicly sending a signal to the smuggling cartels that the U.S. has raised its defenses.
“There is no plan in place by the administration,” he said.
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, the top Republican on a key subcommittee with oversight of the border, shared that sentiment after the Homeland Security Department briefed his staff this week.
Mr. Lankford said the briefers were unable to provide any new details about how they would try to derail the looming surge, but have implemented plans to speed illegal immigrants through the catch-and-release process.
“They’re gearing up to expedite processing people into the country. They’re just not slowing down the number of people coming into the country,” Mr. Lankford said.
Indeed, the administration has reportedly asked Congress to include billions of dollars in the upcoming spending bill for processing asylum-seekers. Mr. Wolf said little of the money would go toward trying to stop the surge.
Title 42 is slated to expire Tuesday under the terms of a federal judge’s order.
The Biden administration has announced an appeal of the decision, but just to defend the legal prerogative to expel illegal immigrants in a future emergency, not to revive the current policy.
A cadre of Republican-led states has asked a federal appeals court to halt the lower court’s order, but no decision has been rendered.
During the height of the pandemic, Title 42 allowed the government to expel the majority of illegal border crossers. Even under a more reticent Biden administration, roughly half of illegal entrants at the southern border were expelled last year. In October, the latest publicly available data, it was roughly 35%.
Once Title 42 expires, analysts say, those who were expelled will be able to lodge bogus asylum claims and be released into the U.S.
Early estimates from the Homeland Security Department projected up to 18,000 illegal border jumpers a day. The record pace set by the Biden administration earlier this year was less than half that.
Analysts point to signs that migrants are already staging in Mexico or leaving Central America to take advantage of the end of Title 42.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visited El Paso, Texas, on Tuesday to get a briefing.
He said he was “mindful” of the challenges but tamped down on some of the more worrying estimates.
“What we do is we plan for what might occur, and we really develop different plans for different scenarios,” he told the El Paso Times.
He acknowledged that his department is looking at restrictions on asylum-seekers that the Trump administration capably used to stem the 2019 migrant surge.
“There are a lot of discussions about different ideas and how to address the number of encounters that we’re experiencing at the border. No decisions have been made,” Mr. Mayorkas told the paper.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, made a trip to his state’s section of the border on Monday. He checked in on a state-run migrant resource center and joined Marina del Pilar Avila-Olmeda, governor of Baja California, for a visit to a migrant shelter in Mexicali.
He said Republicans bear the blame for problems with the immigration system.
Democrats have generally cast the border chaos as a matter of money. They say the federal government needs to allocate more funding to welcome immigrants.
There are some exceptions.
Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas, both Democrats, joined Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Tony Gonzalez, both Texas Republicans, in a letter this week asking Mr. Biden to keep the Title 42 policy in place. They said Homeland Security’s statements to federal courts show that the administration is “almost completely reliant on Title 42 to control migration from Mexico and the Northern Triangle.”
They noted that the administration touted the success of Title 42 in combating a surge of Venezuelan migrants this fall.
“This situation is untenable, and we must work together to keep in place DHS’s authority to quickly expel migrants until an acceptable set of alternative policies and resources is put into place,” the lawmakers wrote.
Activist groups say it’s time to let the expulsion policy and other Trump-era solutions fade away.
“It is long past time for the Biden administration to keep its promise and protect the lives and rights of those seeking safety. The continued refusal to invest in the humanity of the most vulnerable undermines American values, and must come to an end,” said Meredith Owen, director of policy and advocacy at Church World Service.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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