The Biden administration produced a new policy Wednesday to reject asylum claims from many illegal immigrants who leave their homes and cross through Mexico to reach the U.S., saying they’re probably regular migrants, not true refugees.
The regulation, finalized by Homeland Security and the Justice Department, gives the Biden administration a new tool to derail at least some of the surge of illegal immigrants heading toward the U.S. in anticipation of the end of the Title 42 pandemic border emergency.
Limiting asylum marks a significant reversal for President Biden, who complained in the 2020 campaign about a similar policy crafted by then-President Donald Trump.
Mr. Biden has been forced into a rethink after his relaxed policies spurred the worst border chaos in modern American history.
Under the new asylum policy, a migrant who leaves home and travels through other countries to reach the U.S. and tries to enter without pre-authorization will be presumed to be ineligible for asylum.
The theory is that if they were true asylum seekers in need of protection, they could have settled in any of those intervening countries. By continuing to the U.S., they are signaling that they’re regular migrants seeking better opportunities. That is not a valid reason for asylum under U.S. law.
Migrants can rebut the presumption against asylum if they can prove exceptional circumstances. Unaccompanied children are also exempt.
The new policy takes effect Thursday night, when the Title 42 expulsion power expires.
Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said the change is designed to try to force migrants to change their behavior and use legal pathways to enter the U.S.
He said the Biden administration has opened up new avenues, including an expansive use of parole powers, to create chances for hundreds of thousands of new migrants a year.
That did little to quell complaints from Mr. Biden’s usual allies on the left, who say he has retreated on his campaign promises and embraced troubling Trump policies.
Lee Williams, chief programs officer at Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said Mr. Biden’s new policy will “have a devastating impact on children and families already uprooted by unimaginable violence, persecution, poverty and climate disaster.”
He said the U.S., while challenged by the border chaos, has the wherewithal to welcome and house the millions of newcomers expected to stream into the U.S.
But Rob Law, a former senior official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, said the issue isn’t that the new policy is too harsh — in fact, it’s too lenient.
“Making it ‘harder’ to qualify for asylum is irrelevant because as long as illegal aliens can continue to make claims at the border, they will continue to be released into American communities where they have 5-10 years’ head start to disappear,” said Mr. Law, who is now director of homeland security and immigration at the America First Policy Institute.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.