Allowing More Migrants To Request Asylum
The policy: Customs and Border Protection policy that restricts the number of people who can request asylum each day at U.S. ports of entry.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials began limiting the number of undocumented immigrants requesting asylum at ports of entry in Southern California in 2016 under the Obama administration, said David Bier, immigration policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based libertarian think tank.
The Trump administration continued the so-called “metering” policy in 2017 and then expanded it to ports along the entire southern border in 2018 after groups of mostly Central American migrants began traveling through Mexico in caravans and arriving at ports of entry. Under the metering policy, only limited numbers of migrants requesting asylum are allowed into the United States daily at each port to be processed. The number of asylum seekers allowed in each day is based on available space at U.S. holding facilities. The number varies daily from port to port, but generally fewer than 50 asylum seekers have been processed daily at each port and often less.
Those not allowed in are placed on informal waitlists and “turned back” to wait in Mexico. At times, the number of asylum-seekers waiting at ports has ballooned into the thousands. Some asylum seekers have reported waiting weeks and sometimes months.
How Biden could change it:
Pope Trump And Immigration
Bill Donohue comments on Pope Francis and Donald Trump:
Earlier today, I commented on how the media like to ask Donald Trump to opine about the popes position on immigration, but no one wants to ask Hillary Clinton about the popes position on abortion. Now the pope is being asked about Trumps position on immigration. The pope is making headlines everywhere for saying, Trump is not a Christian. But there is much more to this story than what is being reported.
First, the question to the pope inaccurately reflected Trumps views. Quite frankly, the pope was set up. The reporter told the pope that Trump wants to deport 11 million illegal immigrants, thus separating families. That is patently false. On August 16, 2015, Chuck Todd, on Meet the Press, asked Trump, Youre going to split up families. Youre going to deport children? To which Trump said, Chuckno, no. No, were going to keep the families together. We have to keep the families together. When asked where they would go, Trump said, We will work with them. So the pope was misled.
Second, after misrepresenting what Trump said, the reporter asked the pope if an American Catholic can vote for someone like this. This is rather amazing: Do some in the media now want the pope to tell Catholics who to vote for!
Border Security And Border Wall With Mexico
Trump has emphasized U.S. border security and illegal immigration to the United States as a campaign issue. During his announcement speech he stated in part, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems. … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” On July 6, 2015, Trump issued a written statement to clarify his position on illegal immigration, which drew a reaction from critics. It read in part:
A study published in Social Science Quarterly in May 2016 tested Trump’s claim that immigrants are responsible for higher levels of violent and drug-related crime in the United States. It found no evidence that links Mexican or illegal Mexican immigrants specifically to violent or drug-related crime. It did however find a small but significant association between illegal immigrant populations and drug-related arrests.
Trump has also called for tripling the number of Border Patrol agents.
Despite campaign promises to build a full wall, Trump later stated that he favors putting up some fences.
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Emboldened To Go Further
Biden has pledged to work with Congress on legislation that puts DACA recipients and the rest of the country’s estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants on a pathway to U.S. citizenship.
But he would need to muster enough support in a Congress that has failed to compromise on comprehensive immigration bills for more than a decade and that could continue to be divided come January 2021. Like Mr. Trump, Biden is likely to take executive action to implement immigration policy, including programs to shield “Dreamers” and other immigrants from deportation, experts said.
Former DHS officials cautioned that a Biden administration’s immigration actions would likely face legal challenges and could also be hampered by federal courts which have blocked many of Mr. Trump’s policies. Cuccinelli said that could happen but stressed that he believes unfavorable judicial rulings tend to go in a “one-way streak.”
“There are no conservative activist judges in any serious numbers, not like the left-wing judges we’re seeing making war on this president,” Cuccinelli said.
In the past year, Mr. Trump’s judicial appointments have sided with him in rulings allowing the administration to implement, among other measures, the public charge rule, broad asylum restrictions for border-crossers and the termination of deportation protections for roughly 400,0000 immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for years.
Nicole Sganga and Fin Gomez contributed to this report.
Trump Vs Biden Race To Dictate Fate Of Us Immigration For Years To Come
The 2020 presidential election will pit two drastically different visions on immigration against each other, with the victor retaining or assuming broad executive authorities that have dominated policy-making on the issue for decades in the absence of congressional action.
President Trump’s reelection would allow his administration to continue cracking down on unauthorized immigrants, limiting legal immigration and curtailing humanitarian protections for foreigners. During a second term, Mr. Trump could also see through major policy changes to the U.S. immigration system that have so far been stalled by federal courts.
If victorious, JoeBiden will inherit an immigration system transformed by hundreds of changes made by the Trump administration, including a series of restrictive asylum policies, sweeping green card rules, broader deportation priorities, a decimated refugee program and pandemic-era border restrictions.
Current and former senior Department of Homeland Security officials and people close to the Biden campaign said the process of unwinding the Trump administration’s immigration policies could be an arduous and long effort.
Cristóbal Alex, a senior Biden adviser, said the former vice president would take “immediate actions to undo Trump’s horrific immigration policies,” but conceded some “will take longer than others.”
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Eliminating The Travel Ban
The policy: Sept. 24, 2017, executive order signed by Trump to implement a travel ban, his third attempt to enact the ban.
After vowing on the campaign trail to implement a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims from entering the United States,” the president signed an executive order that did just that, temporarily barring people from seven majority-Muslim countries and completely halting the refugee program.
The first version was shot down by several federal judges. Trump then signed a second travel ban that was also eventually blocked by federal judges, including the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which concluded that the order was “steeped in animus and directed at a single religious group.”
The Supreme Court was in the middle of considering multiple challenges to the ban when Trump signed a third version of the travel ban in September 2017 that barred people from eight countries, including North Korea and Venezuela. That version was initially blocked by federal judges but ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court and remains in force today.
The Trump administration maintained that the ban was needed to overhaul the process used to vet foreigners to ensure that the country isnt allowing terrorists to sneak into the country through existing legal channels. But critics have continued fighting it through legal challenges and public pleas decrying what they still refer to as the “Muslim ban.”
How Biden could change it:
Trump Administration Officials On Immigration
| Cabinet White House staff Transition team |
| Policy positions |
President Donald Trump outlined ten policy actions he would like to take to address immigration law during his presidency. The ten actions are:
- Construct a wall along the southern border
- End catch-and-release programs
- Block funding for sanctuary jurisdictions
- Cancel unconstitutional executive orders and enforce existing immigration laws
- Suspend visas to individuals from countries where adequate screening cannot occur
- Ensure that foreign countries keep citizens deported from the U.S.
- Complete the biometric entry-exit tracking system
- End employment and benefits for individuals residing in the country without legal permission and
- Reform immigration regulations to benefit the country and its labor force.
The comments of members of the Trump administration on a variety of immigration issuesborder security, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, visa programs, and sanctuary jurisdictions, among othersappear below. For more on major immigration policy announcements and events, .
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Immigrants Hope Registry Saves Immigration Bill
Refugees and Asylum Seekers, including from Venezuela, Denied: At least one speaker at the convention discussed the protection Americans once offered Cuban refugees and spoke sympathetically about the victims of Venezuelas socialist government. For FY 2020, the Trump administration established an annual ceiling for refugees 84% lower than the final year of the Obama administration . As of July 17, 2020, only 7,848 refugees have arrived in the United States in FY 2020.
As of December 2019, 24,451 Venezuelans were in U.S. immigration court facing removal, an increase of 277%, from 6,492 in September 2018, reports the Syracuse University Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse . Rather than make things easier for fleeing Venezuelans, the Trump administration has tightened asylum standards, according to Miami New Times reporter Manuel Madrid, who writes that many Venezuelans consider being deported to Venezuela to be a death sentence.
Despite pleas from religious leaders, the administration has not designated Venezuelans for Temporary Protected Status and has continued to deport people back to Venezuela. Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed more than 900 people to Venezuela between 2017 and 2019. In FY 2016, the last full year of the Obama administration, 182 Venezuelans were removed, compared to 327 in FY 2019 under the Trump administration, an 80% increase.
President Trumps Executive Orders On Immigration And Refugees
President Trump signed three executive orders the week of January 23 which offend the dignity and threaten the rights of immigrants and refugees both in the United States and globally. On January 25 at the Department of Homeland Security , Trump signed executive orders on border security and interior enforcement. On January 27, he signed an executive order at the Pentagon on refugees and visa holders from designated nations.
Also Check: Is Trump A Great President
Conservative Activist Family Behind ‘grassroots’ Anti
Protests against state stay-at-home orders have attracted a wide range of fringe activists and ardent Trump supporters.
They have also attracted a family of political activists whom some Republican lawmakers have called “scam artists.”
A family-run network of pro-gun groups is behind five of the largest Facebook groups dedicated to protesting the shelter-in-place restrictions, according to an NBC News analysis of Facebook groups and website registration information.
The groups were set up by four brothers Chris, Ben, Aaron and Matthew Dorr and have amassed more than 200,000 members collectively, including in states where they don’t reside.
This sort of Facebook activity allows for a small group with money and media manipulation skills to simulate the appearance of a much larger movement, one expert said.
