President Biden invited a group of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients in the Oval Office Friday amid a push for immigration reform in Washington.

Biden, facing a mounting migrant crisis at the southern border, is working to extend the DACA program, an Obama-era effort to protect people who were brought to the U.S. as children, which came under fire during the Trump administration.

Six DACA recipients, sometimes called “Dreamers,” were invited to the White House meeting.

Maria Praeli, a self-described “undocumented American,” was among those invited. She shared numerous photos from the trip to Twitter throughout the day under the hashtag, “#WeAreHome,” including one taken just outside of the West Wing.

The post Biden holds West Wing meeting with six illegal immigrants, ‘We are home’ first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

President Joe Biden signs a series of executive orders on health care, in the Oval Office, on Jan. 28, 2021.Evan Vucci / AP

President Joe Biden has signed a series of executive orders on a wide range of issues almost every day he’s been in office — from climate change to racial equality to curtailing the spread of Covid-19.

But for all the fanfare, it’s unclear how many are just symbolic gestures that will need legislative action in years to come. Congress, not the president, is tasked with making laws — a fact that Biden, who spent 36 years as a senator from Delaware, is surely aware.

“Big change, long-term change, less fragile change require legislation,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a government and legal studies professor at Bowdoin College who has studied presidential executive orders. Many orders also end up in lengthy court challenges, he said.

On the campaign trail, Biden frequently pushed back at demands from the liberal wing of his party for sweeping change by saying that he would need Congress to sign off on the largest changes.

The orders represent a White House effort both to reverse Trump Administration policies and to send an early signal to supporters that Biden intends to make good on his campaign promises.

Some of Biden’s executive orders have more of an impact than others. He has recommitted the U.S. to the Paris Agreement on Climate Change after Trump withdrew from it in 2017, for example, and reversed a Trump-era ban on transgender people serving in the military.

On Thursday, he signed an executive order to restore parts of the Affordable Care Act that Trump — through executive order — had dismantled.

But others Biden has signed appear more diffuse and aspirational.

One executive order directed governmental agencies to identify unspecified “actions” to address the current economic crisis resulting from the pandemic. It did not prescribe any specific actions.

Another order denounced anti-Asian discrimination and xenophobia. But it didn’t say how exactly that would be achieved.

Yet another calls on the Office of Management and Budget to “modernize and improve” the regulatory review process — but overhauling the regulatory review process was a top priority of the Trump administration, which worked for four years to change the system.

Experts point to the fact that executive orders are both simple to sign and simple to undo, creating confusion both domestically and internationally as one president is able to simply reverse policies enacted by another.

“The lack of continuity is an issue, and it does lead to a lack of stability for everyone from automakers to homeowners,” Rudalevige said.

White House advisers have been quick to defend Biden’s use of executive orders, particularly after The New York Times published an editorial Thursday urging him to “ease up” on the practice.

“We are not taking executive action in lieu of legislation: we are taking executive action to fix what Trump broke in the executive branch,” White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain wrote on Twitter.

“Of course we are pursuing our agenda through legislation,” White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield noted, pointing to the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief plan the administration is negotiating in Congress.

Presidents since George Washington have used executive orders to advance their priorities, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara. But the practice has become a flashpoint for controversy in recent years as Congress and the public have become more politically polarized.

Barack Obama sidestepped Congress to sign several high profile executive orders.

“I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone,” he announced in 2014, signaling that he would not wait for lawmakers to enact his agenda.

Obama’s most contested executive order, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, known as DACA, was an immigration measure he signed in 2012 aimed at offering limited legal status to some 700,000 immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children. The measure faced numerous court challenges and was effectively overturned by the Trump administration until the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Trump’s effort.

Trump took the use of executive orders even further, issuing almost as many in four years as Obama did in eight. Many of Trump’s orders, such as advancing the Keystone Pipeline and promoting a travel ban from several majority-Muslim countries, have been among the first Biden has sought to reverse.

Beth Fouhy is the senior politics editor for NBC News and MSNBC, based in New York.

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/fragile-change-biden-inks-executive-orders-many-lack-force-n1256165

The post ‘Fragile change’: Biden signs executive orders but many lack force first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

President-elect Joe Biden is already backpedaling on a dangerous campaign promise that pleased advocates of open borders, but would create a humanitarian and national security crisis on our border with Mexico.

While he pledged during the election campaign to roll back President Trump’s policies that have reduced illegal immigration on his first day in office on Jan. 20, Biden said Tuesday that it would take about six months to reverse Trump’s actions enforcing immigration laws.

The delay is a smart move, and Biden should use the first six months of his administration to backpedal further and embrace the reality that throwing open our borders to virtually unrestricted immigration would cause a crisis that would thrust border state governors into the greatest challenge of their careers.

BIDEN NOW SAYS IT WILL TAKE ‘SIX MONTHS’ TO REVERSE TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION POLICIES

But squaring his irresponsible immigration promises with reality won’t be easy for Biden, and will lead to an ugly fight with far-left Democrats.

Already radical “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has attacked the president-elect for pulling back on his campaign promise.

“This is a classic bait and switch,” Omar tweeted. “It perpetuates Trump’s dehumanization of migrants and breaks a core campaign promise. Democrats lose big when administrations won’t fulfill their promise. I urge the Biden transition team to reconsider this position.”

“Trust me,” Biden said Tuesday. He said he was already working with authorities south of the border to end President Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols — the “return to Mexico” policy — that was successful in quelling the human trafficking crisis on the border.

Biden now says he wants “guardrails” to prevent “2 million people on our border.”

But it’s already too late. Illegal immigration has risen, buoyed by the expectation of Biden ending Trump’s border enforcement efforts, coupled with some form of amnesty.

“During the presidential campaign, Biden promised to reverse President Trump’s strict immigration and border policies, which together with emergency travel restrictions because of the pandemic helped drive illegal immigration levels to historic lows after a surge last spring,” said John Daniel Davidson, a senior fellow with the Texas Public Policy Foundation. “Numbers are once again increasing as conditions deteriorate in Central America.”

Davidson and 23 other experts from the Heritage Foundation, government, and academia — both in the U.S. and Mexico — as well as four former members of Congress, gathered for a border crisis simulation for three days earlier this month. I designed and led the effort. The results were sobering. The team’s report can be read here.

The simulation projected that a renewed wave of illegal immigrant caravans will be headed for the U.S.-Mexico border by January.

The new border crisis would be worsened by a Biden administration slow to comprehend and react to the situation’s magnitude. This sluggishness would be compounded by three things:

1— Biden’s own history of slow and often wrong decision-making.

2— Biden’s appointees being ideologically sympathetic to increased illegal immigration.

3— A default assumption by Biden and his team that anything the Trump administration did was wrong.

Our simulation forecast that the illegal immigration crisis will intensify as the Biden administration implements its policy changes in the areas of border enforcement, a renewed and expanded Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, vastly expanded access to the U.S. asylum system, and proposed immigration reform legislation.

These shifts in policy and accompanying public announcements will, in and of themselves, serve as magnets to would-be illegal immigrants to the U.S.

Illegal immigrants from Central America pay drug and human trafficking cartels as much as $10,000 for passage into the U.S. These “services” include coaching on the keywords required to trigger credible fear standards to qualify for asylum.

One of the Trump administration’s innovations in this regard was to process asylum claims in Mexico rather than allowing migrants across the border and then assigning them a court date with an immigration judge in the hope that they will show up.

As the number of would-be migrants overwhelms the border, there will be vastly different responses by the governors of the two most-populous states, California and Texas. As a result, California is likely to eventually see far greater numbers of illegal immigrants on its border than is Texas.

California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has a well-established record of welcoming illegal immigrants. In a press release last year in response to Trump’s effort to tighten border controls, Newsom said: “Since our founding, this country has been a place of refuge — a safe haven for people fleeing tyranny, oppression, and violence.”

Newsom then signed a bill to provide taxpayer assistance to “asylum seekers,” a term that might be broadly interpreted by advocates of open borders as covering virtually all illegal immigrants.

In Texas, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has taken a different path. Abbott has shown no hesitation to deploy state assets, including the Texas National Guard, to reinforce the 1,954-mile border with Mexico while closely cooperating with the U.S. Border Patrol.

During our simulation, Gov. Abbott’s approach resulted in lawsuits claiming that Texas was stepping into immigration enforcement — exclusively the domain of the federal government.

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Imagining what might happen by June 2021, we projected that the U.S. Supreme Court would vote 6-3 in favor of Texas, ruling that “the federal government [was] openly abdicating its duty to secure the United States’ borders and enforce immigration law.”

We further projected that the Supreme Court would find that “Texas’ actions are an exercise of their constitutionally delegated state prerogatives, as reserved to them under Article 1, Section 10,” of the Constitution, with the state “in imminent danger …  [from] a surge of illegal aliens and goods across its borders.”

Under our scenario, once the Supreme Court ruled in Texas’ favor, migrants shifted west to the more welcoming California border.

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One last portent from our border crisis simulation was the appearance of carfentanyl, an opioid 100 times as potent as fentanyl. Carfentanyl, like fentanyl, is made in China and trafficked across our border with Mexico by the drug and human trafficking cartels. Its introduction would lead to a tragic increase in drug overdose deaths, along with injuries to law enforcement officers.

The above nightmarish scenarios are only some of the terrible results that would be caused by destroying the effective policies put in place by the Trump administration to control illegal immigration. The Biden administration will need to carefully consider these negative consequences before embracing immigration policies that will please the far-left but harm the American people.

Chuck DeVore is a vice president with the Texas Public Policy Foundation and served in the California State Assembly from 2004 to 2010.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/illegal-immigration-joe-biden-chuck-devore

The post Chuck DeVore: National security requires Biden to break campaign pledge on illegal immigration first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The most dramatic reversal in the Biden administration versus the Trump administration will come on President Donald Trump’s signature campaign issue from 2016: the border wall.

POLITICO illustration

President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to put a swift halt to border wall construction and loosen immigration restrictions imposed by Trump.

To pay for the barrier, Trump has siphoned billions from military construction projects and other programs over the past two years, much to the dismay of lawmakers in both parties. But legislative efforts to shield the Pentagon budget so far have fallen short, while legal challenges to halt construction of the wall are winding their way through the courts.

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1,” Biden told National Public Radio earlier this year. “I’m going to make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it.”

That could also mean withdrawing National Guard troops Trump sent to the border to support the Department of Homeland Security, a deployment extended through this year.

Beyond the wall, the president-elect’s broader immigration plans represent a complete reversal of the Trump administration’s policies over the past several years — and he can accomplish much of it fairly easily.

Biden wants to expand opportunities for legal immigration, including family and work-based visas as well as access to humanitarian visa programs. Biden’s immediate moves would largely entail rescinding various actions initiated under Trump that barred immigrants from certain countries and curtailed legal immigration, including new restrictions on asylum and rules making it harder for poor immigrants to obtain legal status.

Biden also has vowed to prioritize the reunification of any families still separated under the Trump administration’s now-defunct “zero-tolerance” policy — which led to the separation and detention of more than 2,800 migrant families and children in 2018.

Biden has faced criticism for the number of deportations that took place under the Obama administration, which deported 3 million undocumented immigrants over eight years. (The Trump administration has deported fewer than 1 million over the last three fiscal years.)

During his administration, President Barack Obama focused on deporting recent border-crossers and expanded a federal program that required local law enforcement to share fingerprint information with immigration authorities.

While Biden would continue the Obama administration’s enforcement focus on those who pose threats to public safety and national security, he also said the Obama administration waited too long to overhaul the immigration system, and he said he will make it one of his first priorities as president.

Biden also said he will take on the heavy lift of pushing comprehensive immigration reform through Congress — a feat not accomplished since 1986 — and create a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. in his first 100 days. During the 2008 campaign, Obama also promised to push for an immigration reform bill in his first year, but it never came to pass.

Biden has pledged to end workplace enforcement raids as well. Rules implemented by the Trump administration, such as “public charge,” which allows federal immigration authorities to deny green cards to legal immigrants if they’ve used certain public benefits, could also be undone, but that would require invoking the regulatory process, which would take longer.

In a twist, a federal court vacated the “public charge” rule Monday, teeing up a court battle that could land before the newly cemented conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Notably, Trump’s newest Supreme Court appointee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was involved in the case when it was before the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and will have to recuse herself from weighing in on the case again.

But there are a range of legal routes the Biden administration could take over the issue regardless of whether the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, including holding up the legal dispute by issuing a new rulemaking plan or settling the lawsuits challenging the rule in court.

In addition, Biden said he will restore the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants deportation relief and work permits to those brought illegally to the U.S. as children. The Trump administration tried to end the program, but that effort was blocked by the Supreme Court.

Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/07/joe-biden-policies-immigration-border-wall-433627

The post Biden will stop the border wall and loosen immigration again first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

President-elect Joe Biden has promised to put the coronavirus health crisis and economic recovery at the forefront of his agenda once in office. But his administration is also expected to address immigration — and to use executive orders to reverse many of outgoing President Donald Trump’s most controversial immigration policies.

The Biden administration has plans to restore the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA, and discontinue the use of Pentagon funds to build a wall at the southern border.

But will he go beyond rolling back the Trump administration’s policies, and commit to bringing about comprehensive immigration reform legislation, as he’s promised to do? And would Congress support this kind of immigration agenda?

“Joe Biden has to keep his promise if he wants to avoid being in the shadow of Barack Obama — of being called deporter-in-chief. I believe he will keep that promise,” said Paola Ramos, a journalist, and author who is the former deputy director of Hispanic media for the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign and a host for Vice News.

“It’s not only the politically right thing to do, or the moral right thing to do,” she said. “I think not doing anything can really cause Democrats a lot of harm in the long term.”

In a recent interview for Take Two’s immigration special, “The Invisible Wall,” host A Martinez spoke with Ramos and with Mike Madrid, a Sacramento-based Republican strategist and co-founder of the Lincoln Project, about what they think the political landscape looks like for immigration moving forward.

Here’s what they had to say. (Responses have been lightly edited for clarity.)

Given that the Biden-Harris team will need to put the pandemic and the economy at the forefront, what’s the argument for addressing immigration in the first 100 days? Why would it be important to do something? Or is it?

Paola Ramos: One of the critical reasons why Joe Biden will step into the White House in January is because of the way that immigrants and Latinos organized for him. For instance, we know that the reason why Maricopa County, Arizona flipped is because young Latinos organized for their parents — people that were deported under Joe Arpaio, people that were racially profiled under Joe Arpaio.

So it’s not only the politically right thing to do or the moral right thing to do. I think not doing anything can really cause Democrats a lot of harm in the long term. It can cause them the vote of confidence — a vote that if Joe Biden does not uphold his promise, as we saw with the Obama administration, can have pretty big and serious implications for Democrats in the long run.

(Note: Joe Arpaio is the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona who became known for his hardline tactics against undocumented immigrants. He lost his bid during the Republican primary earlier this year for his old position as Maricopa County sheriff.)

Mike Madrid: There’s both a moral element to addressing immigration, along with a political one. This has been a fight deferred for too many decades. It’s long overdue. The system is broken. Up until this point, I believe both sides sought partisan advantage, frankly, by not fixing it. We have to remember that both George W. Bush, who I helped get elected, and Barack Obama essentially chose not to push this and spend the political capital to get this done.

I believe the dynamics are much different now in this environment. I think with a very thin majority, Nancy Pelosi can probably work to get the Democratic votes together and I think Kevin McCarthy actually has some incentive to get this deal done, as does Mitch McConnell, I think. I think it’s really going to take the leadership of Joe Biden at this point. But it depends on whether the Democratic Party has other priorities as they did in 2008 or if they finally want to get this deal done. I believe they can if they forced the issue.

(Note: Immigrant advocates criticized President Obama over his administration’s handling of deportations and his failure to fulfill a campaign promise for immigration reform, particularly after the 2008 election when both the House and Senate were Democratic. )

We know that immigrating to the U.S. has never been easy. Policy problems long predated Donald Trump, which is why many presidents have talked about the need for reform. What can you tell us about the persistent problems that have led many to believe that our immigration system is fundamentally broken?

Ramos: In every story where I’m covering Latinos or immigrants, they remind me that this isn’t Trump’s problem. The wall isn’t Trump’s problem. The system isn’t his. It’s been this way for decades at this point. Let’s remember that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was created [in 2002] and the very premise of it was the criminalization of others. Moreover, a couple of years ago it was the Obama administration who deported more than three million people. It was the Obama administration who built a lot of the detention facilities we have now.

I think one of the most important things the immigrant community is looking for is having a DHS secretary who understands that the system is fundamentally broken, that has an extensive background on immigration and that respects the United States’ humanitarian obligations. I think immigration advocates are looking to have the right person … that can recognize and say out loud that our immigration system is broken.

Madrid: Immigration reform is always very difficult to do, which is why it’s oftentimes a once in a generation event. We began this journey essentially with the 1965 INA (Immigration and Nationality Act). We didn’t get it done until 1986 with the Immigration Reform and Control Act, and we have not touched it since. It is politically fraught, but like I said, I do believe that the politics now allow for a win for both sides — if this is done right.

At the same time, I do believe Donald Trump and Trumpism is not going anywhere. I believe he will be catcalling from outside the system and probably threatening Republican members who dare to do the right thing to get this done. But I think that getting this done will actually help some Republican members. I think it will happen, but I may be pollyannish when it comes to this. I thought it would happen in 2000 and it didn’t. But again, I think the politics allow for it now. We saw a split vote in Arizona and the Rio Grande Valley, so because of the Latino diversification, I think both parties have an opportunity to get a real deal done.

We’ve been hearing from immigration attorneys and experts that many of President Trump’s policies can be reversed through executive order, but others might take more time. What would you say is the one policy Joe Biden needs to prioritize in his first 100 days?

Ramos: First of all, I’d say all of them, because a lot of them are really easy to roll back. A lot of the Trump agenda was based on executive orders, so doing rollbacks is something pretty simple Joe Biden can do. But if I had to focus on two, I would say he has to revive DACA. He has to reinstitute that. I also think he needs to restructure ICE’s enforcement priorities. He needs to ensure that we go back to Barack Obama’s enforcement priorities, which focused on going after folks with criminal records. I think that’s going to make a big difference. I think it’ll send the right message to the immigrant community.

Madrid: I genuinely think it’s a comprehensive problem at this point. There’s no tinkering around the edges. It has to be fixed from top to bottom, or you’re just kind of like putting Scotch tape around a plumbing problem under the sink. It may work for a little bit, but it’s ultimately going to burst out and I think that’s kind of where we’re at.

Mike, we’ve heard a lot about how the Trump administration took a protectionist attitude toward immigration. Do you think that is representative of a wider thinking among GOP members who are still in power in Congress ?

Madrid: I think that has become the dominant thought. When I was first working on this issue in the Bush administration in 2000, the pre 9/11 era, there was a very different school of thought with Republican leaders and frankly, even the rank-and-file voter has changed markedly. The party has become much more isolationist, much more protectionist and much more nativist. I think that is the dominant thought from top to bottom, from elected leadership down to the voter base. So there’s not a whole lot of voices like mine in the party anymore. I’m kind of a quasi-Republican at this point. But I also don’t believe I’m alone.

Paola, as a Democratic strategist, what do you think Joe Biden’s biggest challenge will be and how important are those Senate seats in Georgia to getting a consensus on immigration policies?

Ramos: Joe Biden has to keep his promise if he wants to avoid being in the shadow of Barack Obama — of being called deporter in chief. I believe he will keep that promise. I think that the role of Kamala Harris will be fundamental and important. Let’s not forget that the very first bill that she introduced was one focused on immigration. It was about giving immigrants access to counsel as they cross the border.

Even if Democrats lose Georgia, if Biden does what he does best, which is be an incredible negotiator, he can get immigration reform done. It will take prioritizing the issue and keeping his promise. I feel pretty confident because I think they know what the stakes are if they don’t.

Can the U.S. reconcile its relationship with the immigrant community both here and abroad?

Madrid: I don’t know that it can be reconciled, but it can write a new history going forward. This country, whether right or wrong, has a long history of doing that. I’m not sure that you’re ever going to get a nativist population … at least half of us —[to] go through a reconciliation process, but we can start something new going forward.

Ramos: I think communities are traumatized. Pain has been done. They feel betrayed. But I think Joe Biden did a very important thing during one of the debates, which is that he apologized and he’s centered immigration in the first 100 days, so I do feel optimistic that some of the damage can be undone.

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Source: https://laist.com/2020/11/23/take_two_immigration_special_invisible_wall_biden_administration_trump_policies.php

The post How Will A Biden Administration Tackle Immigration After Four Years Of Trump? first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Those policies implemented by President Donald Trump helped define his legacy, fulfilling some of his campaign promises while enraging many Americans and further isolating the U.S. from the world. President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to reverse most of those restrictionist policies, but it could take months, or even many years, to do so.

In all, the Trump administration enacted more than 400 policy changes that have shrunk legal and illegal immigration channels into the United States. The process of overturning many of them will be straightforward — Biden can sign executive orders and his agency heads can issue memos or directives overriding Trump policies. Some changes, however, could take much longer to unwind due to long bureaucratic processes or legal challenges in court from states or groups that oppose the policy shifts.

Untangling the moves will be even more difficult given that so many of them overlap, forcing the Biden administration to carefully peel them back one by one without overwhelming the immigration system or encouraging a new wave of migrants. That conundrum can be seen most clearly along the southern border.

One Trump policy requires migrants to request asylum in Guatemala or Mexico before they reach the United States. Another Trump policy limits the number of people who can legally request asylum each day at U.S. ports of entry. And yet another Trump policy requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their immigration case is decided.

The end result has been about 25,000 migrants currently living in dangerous, makeshift camps in Mexican border towns. If the Biden team rescinds all those Trump orders, it will have to develop a new plan to handle those asylum seekers.

“Detangling everything Trump did at the southern border may be Biden’s biggest headache on immigration,” said Sarah Pierce, policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based, non-partisan organization that researches immigration policy.

President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden debate in September at Case Western University in Cleveland. Patrick Semansky, AP Images

The Biden team will also face intense pressure from immigration advocacy groups to grant entry to the tens of thousands of people who have been blocked from entering the U.S. by dozens of other changes made by Trump. His administration has blocked legal residents, relatives of U.S. citizens, refugees, asylum seekers, foreign workers, and others for a variety of reasons, including national security and public health throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

“You can come in on day one and…issue memos that will reset the world,” said Karen Tumlin, founder, and director of the Justice Action Center, a group that represents immigrants in court. “But can you unring the bell? Can you undo the damage?”

Biden will face a polarized nation when he’s sworn in, meaning he’ll likely face intense pushback in his attempts to reverse Trump’s immigration policies. And if Republicans maintain control of the Senate — which won’t be decided until two runoff elections in Georgia in January — he’ll likely be forced to act alone through executive actions.

“Some of (Trump’s policies) will remain in effect because the Biden administration will realize they are useful policies, or because they will not be able to undo them quickly because of wanting to avoid a political disaster of an influx at the border or because they receive so much push back in the form of litigation and just the fact that there is a certain amount of inertia with any government regulation,” said Jessica Vaughan, policy studies director at the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favored many of the policy changes implemented by the Trump administration.

Here’s a look at some of the key immigration policy changes Biden could attempt in his first 100 days in office, and the documents he will have to strike down in the process:

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.

Demonstrators hold signs and chant in the baggage claim area during a protest against President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel to the United States by citizens of several countries Sunday, Jan. 29, 2017, at Detroit Metropolitan Airport. Jeffrey M. Smith, AP

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 isn’t 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.”

Marielena Hincapié, who has fought against the travel ban in court as executive director of National Immigration Law Center, said rescinding the travel ban is not a “first 100 days” goal for a Biden administration but a “day one” move.

“It really is about restoring who we are as a nation and making sure that we once again see immigrants as a strength to the nation,” said Hincapié, who co-chaired the immigration section of a “Unity Task Force” created this summer by allies of Biden and his former Democratic challenger Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., to develop ideas and policies for a potential Biden administration.

How Biden could change it:

Biden can issue a new executive rescinding the ban and order the Department of Justice to stop defending the Trump ban in federal court.

Halting wall construction

The policy: Jan. 25, 2017, executive order Trump signed calling for the federal government to “plan, design, and construct a physical wall along the southern border.”

Building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border and making Mexico pay for it was Trump’s number one campaign promise.

Trump signed an executive order five days after taking office calling for the planning, designing and construction of a border wall. But Mexico’s president repeatedly said Mexico would never pay for the wall. And Congress refused to fund the $13.2 billion the Trump administration requested to pay for border wall construction.

As of July, the Trump administration had secured $15 billion for border construction, according to the Migration Policy Institute. But only about $4.4 billion came from funding enacted by Congress, according to a Congressional Research Service report. The remaining 60% came from funds the Trump administration diverted from Pentagon accounts for military projects to construct new and replacement fencing along the southern border. In February 2019, Trump declared a national emergency over the border crisis to secure money from military projects to fund border barrier construction.

There were 653 miles of border barriers in place when Trump took office in 2017, which covered roughly a third of the length of the southern border. Of the 653 existing miles of barriers, about 350 miles was fencing designed to block pedestrians and about 300 miles was barriers designed to block vehicles.

Since then, the Trump administration has completed about 400 miles of new and replacement fencing as of the end of October, with plans to complete a total of 450 miles by the end of 2020. Most of the new fencing is 18- to 30-foot high “bollard” fencing — long steel slats filled with cement.

How Biden could change it:

Biden told NPR that although he would not tear down any of the border barriers already built “there will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration.” But some border construction projects may still get built after Biden takes office because contracts may have already been signed. Biden will likely direct the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the agency overseeing the border fencing project, to conduct an analysis to decide which projects are worth completing, scaling back or terminating from a financial and border security stand-point.

“President Trump may have boxed in Biden, which could require that Biden has to complete certain portions of the wall whether he likes it or not,” said Scott Amey, general counsel for the nonprofit group Project on Government Oversight.

Reviving refugee system

The policy: Oct. 28, 2020, presidential determination signed by Trump capping refugee admissions at 15,000 for fiscal year 2021.

One of Trump’s first acts as president was to suspend the entire refugee program, and indefinitely block all Syrians from entering the United States, in the name of national security. The program was restarted in October 2017 but halted again in March in the name of public health as the COVID-19 pandemic spread.

All along, the president has warned about the dangers of refugees, who he views as national security threats and drains on the U.S. economy. “It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to your state,” Trump said during a campaign stop in Minnesota in October, referring to refugees living there.

Presidents have the power to set the number of refugees the U.S. will accept each year, and Trump has established record lows every year he’s been in office. The refugee cap has fallen from 110,000 in President Barack Obama’s final year in office to 50,000 during Trump’s first year in office, falling all the way to a 15,000 refugee cap announced by Trump in October, the lowest since the program was created in 1980.

The continuous reductions in refugee admissions have also led to layoffs and office closures at the nine humanitarian organizations that help relocate and assimilate refugees. Even if Biden raises the cap on refugees, it would take time for those organizations to rehire the staff needed to help refugees transition to the United States.

How Biden could change it:

Presidents usually set the refugee cap in the fall, just before the start of the new fiscal year. But Jacinta Ma, vice president of policy and advocacy for the National Immigration Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based group that advocates for immigrants, said Biden could immediately raise the refugee cap through an executive order. Trump set that precedent in March 2017 when he signed an executive order lowering the refugee cap to 50,000.

Protecting DACA

The policy: Sept. 5, 2017, memo signed by then-Homeland Security Secretary Elaine Duke terminating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Demonstrators who marched from New York City to Washington, D.C., arrive in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Nov. 10, 2019, to support the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and Temporary Protected Status (TPS). JOSE LUIS MAGANA, AFP Via Getty Images

After expressing support for undocumented immigrants illegally brought to the country as children during his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump announced in September 2017 that he was ending the Obama-era DACA program. Nearly 650,000 undocumented immigrants participated in the program, which protected them from deportation and allowed them to legally work in the U.S.

The Trump administration said it would end the program and gave Congress six months to pass a law to permanently protect the so-called Dreamers. The ensuing congressional battle resulted in a political slugfest that culminated in a temporary government shutdown, but no deal was struck.

The Dreamers were saved at the last minute by a federal judge, who ruled that the Trump administration used a flawed process to terminate DACA. That legal battle reached the U.S. Supreme Court in June, where Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal wing of the Court in a 5-4 decision that allowed the program to endure. The court also ordered the administration to start accepting applications again.

That decision led to widespread relief for Dreamers who depend on the program to work, go to school and live without the constant fear of being detained and deported. Soon after the ruling, Trump threatened to try and end the program once again.

How Biden could change it:

Preserving the program would be simple: Biden’s Department of Homeland Security could issue a new memorandum rescinding the 2017 memo that attempted to terminate the program. But Biden will also be urged by some Democratic lawmakers and pro-immigration activists to grant protections for Dreamers who were denied the ability to apply for the program during the two-year legal fight under Trump. He will be urged to expand the number of people eligible for DACA and to push Congress to pass a law to put DACA recipients on a path to citizenship.

Restoring the asylum system

The policy: June 11, 2018, decision signed by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions limiting who can apply for asylum in the U.S.

An asylum-seeking boy from Central America runs down a hallway after arriving from an immigration detention center to a shelter in San Diego on Dec. 11, 2018. Gregory Bull, AP

The Trump administration has tried a variety of tactics to limit or halt asylum requests along the southern border, with federal judges striking down several of them. But they have been forging ahead on their goal of redefining, and limiting, who can apply for asylum in the United States.

Asylum is granted to people who fear persecution in their home countries based on their race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or their political opinion. For years, that has included victims of domestic abuse and gang violence. But the Trump administration is trying to cut those groups out, which would be a particular blow to women and people in the LGBTQ community.

In 2018, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions intervened in the asylum case of a Salvadoran woman who had been repeatedly abused by her husband and could not seek help from the Salvadoran government. Sessions issued a 31-page order that claimed only victims of systemic repression by a foreign government, not “private” crimes committed by relatives or gang members, qualify a person for asylum.

“The asylum statute is not a general hardship statute,” he wrote.

Immigration attorneys challenged that memo in court and federal courts have responded with conflicting rulings, some bashing the Sessions directive and others upholding it. Blaine Bookey, the legal director for the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies who has represented the Salvadoran woman in court, said the memo has rendered asylum rulings in the U.S. a matter of chance.

“It still depends on the judge that you draw,” she said.

The Trump administration is trying to lock in Sessions’ directive through a new regulation, which has been moving through the rule-making process and could become a finalized federal rule in the coming weeks. Bookey describes the Sessions ruling, and the proposed rule, as “part of the administration’s larger web of cruel and unlawful policies that have resulted in denial of protections and a return to dangerous conditions and even death.”

How Biden could change it:

Biden’s attorney general could quickly rescind the Sessions memo, reverting U.S. asylum policy to how it stood before Trump took office. But if the regulation implementing that policy becomes final before Biden takes office, it would take months to propose a new rule and get it finalized because U.S. law requires new rules to go through a prolonged process of public comments, reviews, and final publication.

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.

Asylum seekers in Tijuana, Mexico, listen to names being called from a waiting list to claim asylum at a border crossing in San Diego on Sept. 26, 2019. Elliot Spagaf, AP

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.

The policy is intended to address an unprecedented rise in the number of migrants and migrant families arriving at the border seeking asylum. It’s also intended to address health and safety concerns resulting from overcrowding at ports of entry and CBP holding stations.

A class-action lawsuit filed in 2017 challenging the metering policy accused the Trump administration of trying to deter people from exercising their right to seek asylum under U.S. law. Critics also say metering pushes asylum seekers to cross the border illegally between official ports of entry, putting them in danger.

Under U.S. immigration law, people who arrive without legal authorization may seek asylum protections in the United States if they demonstrate a credible fear of persecution or torture if returned to their home country.

How Biden could change it:

Biden suggested during a Oct. 23 presidential debate with Trump that he would end the metering policy and return to allowing asylum seekers who arrive at the border to “make your case” based on the following premise, “why I deserve it under American law,” instead of “sitting in squalor on the other side of the river.”

To amend or end the policy, Biden would direct his U.S. Customs and Border Protection commissioner to issue a memo to CBP directors at ports of entry.

Ending ‘Remain in Mexico’ plan

The policy: Jan. 25, 2019, memo signed by then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen ordering asylum applicants to return to Mexico while their case is decided.

A woman reads a newspaper inside her tent as migrants camp out on the street outside an overflowing sport complex on Nov. 28, 2018, where more than 5,000 Central American migrants are shltering in Tijuana, Mexico. REBECCA BLACKWELL, AP

In late 2018, the number of Central American migrants reaching the southern border of the U.S. skyrocketed due to raging violence, food insecurity and misconceptions fueled by smuggling organizations that the United States was allowing in parents who arrived at the border with children. Many were requesting asylum, a claim that Trump administration officials repeatedly questioned.

To help stem that flow, administration officials tried to broker a deal with Mexico to house asylum seekers. When those talks faltered, then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen forged ahead on her own, signing the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as the “Remain in Mexico” plan, which forces asylum seekers to return to Mexico while their asylum case proceeds in U.S. immigration court.

The result was chaotic: migrants began creating makeshift camps in Mexican border towns, straining local resources and fostering unsafe living conditions for more than 60,000 migrants at its highest point. With no protection and no formal government response from Mexico, migrants complained of robberies, kidnappings, and unsanitary living conditions.

Nielsen and other Trump officials defended the plan, saying it was necessary to slow the flood of asylum seekers trying to enter the country. And they claimed it was needed because migrants who are released into the United States while their asylum cases proceed rarely appear at their court appearances.

But immigration advocates — and immigration court data — refute those claims. More than 80% of migrants who requested asylum from September 2018 to May 2019 attended all of their court hearings, according to a report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a research group at Syracuse University in New York. In the immigration plan that Biden pushed during his presidential campaign, Biden claimed he would end the Remain in Mexico plan within his first 100 days to “restore our asylum laws so that they do what they should be designed to do – protect people fleeing persecution.”

How Biden could change it:

The process to rescind the policy is simple — a Homeland Security official could simply issue a new memorandum rescinding Nielsen’s 2019 memo. But with tens of thousands of migrants waiting in Mexico because of the policy, the administration would need to develop a new system to allow them into the country and process their asylum requests.

Reopening the southern border

The policy: March 20, 2020, order signed by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield suspending entry of people from countries where a communicable disease exists.

Dulce Garcia, right, carries a cup of coffee as she crosses the border from Mexicali, Mexico, to Calexico, Calif., on July 22, 2020. Like many in Mexicali, Garcia lives in Mexico but works in Calexico. “Everybody’s scared of the pandemic but we have to cross,” Garcia said. “We have to survive.” Gregory Bull, AP

After limiting international travel from sections of China in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration largely sealed off the northern border with Canada and the southern border with Mexico in March.

To do so, federal immigration agents relied on a law that allows the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to halt admission of foreigners if their home country is suffering from a communicable disease.

Through September, Customs and Border Protection agents have forced nearly 200,000 migrants — some requesting legal entry to the U.S., some trying to cross the border illegally — to return to Mexico by citing Title 42. Those expulsions affect all migrants — adults, unaccompanied minors, family units — and can be carried out in just a couple of hours.

During a trip to Arizona, CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan praised the order as a way of slowing the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. He described the nearly 50,000 migrants caught along the southern border in August, as “50,000 potential carriers of a deadly disease.”

Immigration activists have objected to the blanket denial of would-be migrants, accusing the administration of using the COVID-19 pandemic as an excuse to achieve its long-standing goal of cutting off legal and illegal immigration from Mexico, Central America and South America.

How Biden could change it:

The CDC order must be renewed every 30 days, meaning Biden’s CDC director could decide to simply let the most recent order sunset or could issue new guidance limiting the use of Title 42.

Pulling back ICE agents

The policy: Jan. 25, 2017, executive order signed by Trump allowing immigration agents to target all undocumented immigrants for arrest.

One of Trump’s first actions after taking office was to eliminate the “enforcement priorities” established under Obama, which ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to focus on undocumented immigrants with criminal records and to avoid so-called “collateral arrests,” or picking up undocumented immigrants who they happened to come across each day.

Trump’s order allowed ICE agents to arrest any undocumented immigrant they encountered, even if the person only had immigration violations on their record. The result was noticeable: in the final months of the Obama presidency, nearly 90% of undocumented immigrants arrested by ICE had a criminal record. That figure fell to 64% by 2019.

The Trump administration also resurrected the practice of large-scale work-site raids, used often by President George W. Bush but largely abandoned under Obama. Under Trump, the largest was a raid of seven poultry plants in central Mississippi in August 2019 that led to 680 arrests of undocumented workers, at least two who were still breastfeeding when they were arrested.

Overall ICE arrests increased from 110,000 in 2016 to 143,000 in 2019.

How Biden could change it:

He could sign a new executive order that voids Trump’s directives and re-institutes the “enforcement priorities” for agents to target undocumented immigrants with criminal records.

Ending private immigration detention centers

The policy: Jan. 25, 2017, executive order signed by Trump that orders Homeland Security to “allocate all legally available resources” to add more immigration detention centers.

California’s Adelanto U.S. Immigration and Enforcement Processing Center operated by GEO Group, a Florida-based company specializing in privatized corrections. California passed legislation last month that will stop the use of private prisons (including for the operation of detention centers) in the state by 2028. Chris Carlson/AP

The federal government has long used private prisons companies to operate immigration detention centers, but Trump dramatically expanded the practice, leading to a record number of migrants detained and record profits for private prison companies.

The stocks of GEO Group and CoreCivic — the nation’s two largest prison companies — doubled in the days after Trump’s election. And in the four years since, ICE has signed contracts to open 19 new immigration detention centers run by private companies.

Critics have pleaded with ICE to cut its relationship with private prison companies given the widespread reports of abuse against detainees and substandard care for them. Biden has vowed to halt that practice, arguing that “no business should profit from the suffering of desperate people fleeing violence.” But that could be one of the most difficult immigration policies to change due to contractual obligations and the government’s reliance on the industry.

Over the past year, ICE has begun signing long-term contracts with private prison companies, cementing the relationship through several future administrations. In California, for example, ICE signed 15-year contracts with private facilities in San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego, meaning it would be difficult for a Biden administration to sever those contracts.

A USA TODAY analysis in 2019 found that more than 75% of the detainees held by ICE are housed in privately-run facilities. ICE only runs five detention centers, relying on state and local jails for the rest.

John Sandweg, who headed ICE in the Obama administration, said those numbers show that it would be impossible to simply cut off the private companies because ICE wouldn’t have anywhere to put the tens of thousands of detainees usually housed there. Instead, Sandweg said Biden would have to completely rethink the idea of immigration detention, relying more on supervised release programs and less on long-term detention.

“You cannot just turn those off,” Sandweg said. “The better question is, ‘How do we end detention as we know it?'”

How Biden could change it:

Biden could sign an executive order rescinding Trump’s detention-expanding directive and banning any new private prison contracts. But terminating existing contracts would take far longer and could require systemic changes — and congressional approval — that limits the number of migrants detained by the federal government.

Speeding up family reunifications

The policy: April 6, 2018, memo signed by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordering a “zero-tolerance policy” to criminally prosecute all illegal border crossers.

Trump’s public charge rule will make it harder for immigrants to become legal residents. Getty

The Trump administration’s public charge rule change would have allowed immigration officials to consider the use of food stamps, Medicaid, public housing vouchers and other forms of public assistance to deny green cards to immigrants.

The rule was part of the Trump administration’s overall efforts to reduce legal immigration. Administration officials said the change would ensure that legal permanent residents could support themselves, and hence not become a “public charge” dependent on government assistance. Critics called it a wealth-test that discriminated against working-class immigrants.

The rule has faced legal challenges and has been winding through the courts.

A federal judge blocked the rule five days before it was to take effect on Oct. 15, 2019. But the Supreme Court ruled in January that the government could begin implementing the rule except in Illinois due to other court rulings. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the rule would take effect on Feb. 24, 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic was beginning to hit the United States.

The new rule raised fears that immigrant families would avoid seeking medical attention because it could prevent them from getting green cards in the future. The Trump administration later amended the rule to say that COVID related medical care would not be considered by immigration officials when assessing green card applications.

In November, a federal judge struck down the public charge rule saying the Trump administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the law that governs the process for issuing new regulations. But an appeals court judge stayed the lower court’s decision pending an appeal. It’s possible that another court ruling could place the public charge rule on hold before the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration.

How Biden could change it:

Biden’s attorney general could drop the appeal, letting stand the federal judge’s ruling that the Trump administration unlawfully created the public charge rule, said Jesse Bless, director of federal litigation for the American Immigration Lawyers Association, a group representing 15,000 law professionals. Biden’s Department of Homeland Security may also try to create a new public charge rule that replaces Trump’s version with one more favorable to immigrants, Bless said. That would require following the same bureaucratic rule-making process that Trump used. The downside is that the rule-making process could take six months or longer before the new rule is finalized. A new public charge rule also could face legal challenges, Bless said.

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/12/how-biden-reverse-trump-immigration-policies/6228892002/

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Immigration advocates and even some Central Americans mulling entering the U.S. are reportedly rooting hard for a Joe Biden victory in November, encouraged by the Democratic nominee’s pledge to dismantle President Trump’s border policies.

Biden has said he plans on “modernizing” the U.S. immigration system by working with the international community and tackling “irregular immigration.” He further plans on re-establishing the nation’s “commitment to asylum seekers and refugees,” according to his campaign website.

That has buoyed the hopes of some who oppose Trump’s hard line on illegal immigration.

“I want Trump out,” a Honduran woman reportedly told the Center for Immigration Studies during a January fact-finding mission in Mexico, the Washington Times reported Thursday.

“I’ll wait for that because it would make things easier to get it,” she said while reportedly holding a child.

ORGANIZERS SCRAP NEXT PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE AFTER TRUMP SAID HE WOULDN’T AGREE TO VIRTUAL FORMAT

A cornerstone of President Trump’s successful 2016 campaign, when chants of “Build that wall!” echoed at his rallies, the illegal immigration issue has been almost absent from the debate stage so far this year.

Once he took office in 2017, Trump followed through with a massive immigration overhaul that included more than 400 executive actions on immigration, according to the Migration Policy Institute. His administration has also increased border regulations and asylum restrictions, created its Remain in Mexico program and attempted to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

ELECTION 2020 VOTER TURNOUT COULD BREAK RECORD WITH MORE THAN 8M BALLOTS ALREADY CAST

Biden has acknowledged “the pain” that was started under the Obama-Biden administration with the practice of family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border, and released a broad proposal he would try to implement if elected president on Nov.  3.

The former vice president has said he would prioritize restoring the asylum system while working toward new methods for immigration detention.

“If I’m elected president, we’re going to immediately end Trump’s assault on the dignity of immigrant communities,” Biden said in August during the Democratic National Convention. “We’re going to restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum-seekers.”

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Trump has not yet released any details on his second-term immigration policy plans.

But the president is likely to pursue continued work on the southern border wall and further attempts to dismantle DACA, while introducing a “merit-based” immigration system to replace the current system.

Trump has not yet released any details that spell out what the “merit based” system would entail.

Source:  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-has-immigrants-advocates-hoping-for-reversal-of-trumps-border-policies

The post Biden has immigrants, advocates hoping for reversal of Trump’s border policies first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the likely Democratic challenger in this year’s presidential election, promises to rescind many of the policies put in place by Trump’s administration and instead advance his own platform if he wins on Nov. 3.

Here is a look at some of their immigration stances.

CORONAVIRUS IMMIGRATION RESTRICTIONS

Trump has dramatically curtailed immigration and travel into the United States during the coronavirus pandemic, arguing the steps were needed for health reasons and to protect jobs for U.S. workers in the face of high unemployment.

During the pandemic, Trump has restricted the entry of many foreign workers and immigrants seeking “green cards” for permanent residency.

Biden tweeted at the time that Trump was banning immigrants to distract from his administration’s pandemic response and that “immigrants help grow our economy and create jobs.”

Trump also implemented a public health emergency policy that allows U.S. officials to rapidly deport migrants caught at the U.S.-Mexico border, including unaccompanied minors and asylum seekers, bypassing standard legal processes.

Biden has said he will pause deportations for 100 days after taking office, but his campaign did not comment on the coronavirus-related border rules.

When the Trump administration announced plans in July to restrict the entry of some foreign students to the United States, a policy it later had to rescind, Biden tweeted support for international students, saying they bring innovation to the country.

‘DREAMERS’

The Supreme Court ruled in June against Trump’s 2017 decision to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which protects from deportation immigrants popularly known as “Dreamers,” who were brought to the United States as children and have remained in the country illegally.

The high court’s ruling – which found Trump’s termination of the program was “arbitrary and capricious” – left the administration the option to try again to end it.

The Trump administration issued a memo in July that clamped down on DACA, blocking new enrollment and allowing only renewals that last one year, less than the current two-year period.

Launched by then-President Barack Obama in 2012, DACA grants deportation relief and work permits to about 644,000 mostly Hispanic young adults, but does not provide them a path to citizenship.

Biden has said he would reverse Trump’s “cruel” decision and strengthen protections for Dreamers.

He said he would make Dreamers eligible for federal student aid for college, and would back legislation that provides a path to citizenship for them as part of efforts to do so for all of the estimated 11 million immigrants living in the country illegally, including those who did not arrive as children.

Trump’s administration has prioritized arresting immigration violators regardless of their criminal histories or length of time in the United States.

US-MEXICO BORDER WALL

Trump’s promises to build a wall along the southwest border and to force Mexico to pay for it were the centerpiece of his hard-line immigration rhetoric during the 2016 campaign, energizing his supporters and enraging Democrats.

The administration has completed 265 miles of border wall, with a goal of 450 miles by the end of the year, but nearly all of those barriers replaced existing structures, according to U.S. border officials. Mexico has refused to pay for any of the construction, leaving the U.S. government to foot the bill, partially with billions of dollars in Pentagon funds.

Federal court records show the Trump administration has ramped up efforts to seize more land for the barrier.

Biden said last week that he would not tear down border walls built under Trump, but would stop construction.

Biden’s immigration plan would end the diversion of Pentagon funding to build the wall and focus instead on border enforcement like investments in improving the screening infrastructure at ports of entry.

FAMILY SEPARATIONS

Trump’s 2018 “zero-tolerance” policy to prosecute illegal border crossings led to several thousand children being forcibly separated from parents and legal guardians detained on the Mexico border.

The policy, described by the administration as a deterrent, sparked outrage, and the backlash led Trump to sign an executive order to end the practice. But the administration continued to separate hundreds of kids traveling with other adult relatives.

Biden would end the prosecution of parents for minor immigration violations, which he calls an “intimidation tactic,” and make it a priority to reunite any children still separated from their families.

TRAVEL BAN

Trump signed an order banning entry to immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries, a move Biden and other critics said discriminated against Muslims. A federal court blocked the initial ban, but in 2018 the Supreme Court upheld an amended version that has since been expanded to other countries.

The version upheld by the Supreme Court places restrictions on travelers from five majority-Muslim nations – Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Yemen. North Korea and Venezuela also face visa bars, but those measures affect relatively few travelers.

Trump placed restrictions on six additional countries in January, including Nigeria and three other African nations.

Biden has promised to rescind the bans, calling them an abuse of power “designed to target primarily black and brown immigrants.”

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Source: https://thehimalayantimes.com/world/trump-and-biden-take-sharply-different-paths-on-immigration/

The post Trump and Biden take sharply different paths on immigration first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

The Trump administration on Tuesday announced that it was halting applications to an Obama-era program that shields some illegal immigrants from deportations as it considers the policy’s future — just weeks after the Supreme Court shut down efforts to halt the program.

The Supreme Court ruled last month that the administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program was done in an “arbitrary and capricious” manner although they did not rule on the merits of the program itself.

MCENANY: TRUMP WOULD LIKE TO SEE ‘LEGISLATIVE FIX’ TO DACA, ORDER WILL FOCUS ON ‘MERIT-BASED IMMIGRATION’ 

As a result, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Tuesday that as it considers the future of the program, it will reject all initial requests for protection, as well as applications for Employment Authorization Documents.

“As the Department continues looking at the policy and considers future action, the fact remains that Congress should act on this matter,” acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said in a statement. “There are important policy reasons that may warrant the full rescission of the DACA policy.”

It is also renewing existing protections for only one year, rather than two.

Trump campaigned on repealing DACA in 2016 and has also floated a legislative fix for the program as part of a broader immigration deal.

DHS CHIEF HITS DACA RULING, SAYS IT USURPS EXECUTIVE BRANCH AUTHORITY

A federal judge in Maryland ruled this month that DACA should be restored to its original form before Sept. 2017, but the administration had not said if it would accept new applications.

Two weeks ago the president said he would be signing an executive order in the next few weeks, including a “road to citizenship” for DACA recipients.

“I’m going do a big executive order, I have the power to do it as president and I’m going to make DACA a part of it,” Trump said in an interview with Telemundo anchor Jose Diaz-Balart. Trump added he was still working on the “legal complexities” of keeping DACA in the order.

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Days later, Trump again touted that he would be “taking care” of DACA.

“We’re going to be taking care of DACA,” Trump said at a Rose Garden briefing. “I’m going to be signing immigration action, very big merit-based immigration action.

Fox News’ Morgan Phillips, Ronn Blitzer, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-administration-daca-applications

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In a memorandum issued by then-Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, detailed the administration’s reasons for rescinding the program, citing among other things, “serious doubts about its legality.”

Those in favor of the program argue against sending young people back to countries they don’t remember, especially as their parents took them from as children to bring them into the United States illegally.

Sheldon Johnson, a DACA supporter outside of the court said, “It’s supposed to be the home of the free and the land of opportunities.”

In court, attorneys for the plaintiffs tried to make the case allowing DACA to wind down would have a negative impact on the U.S. workforce, military and economy as a whole.

One of the central reasons this case ended up at the U.S. Supreme Court is because Congress has yet to pass comprehensive immigration reform. So when the Trump administration rescinded doctor and lower courts blocked that it made this the battleground at least for now.

Ken Cuccinelli, acting Director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services, says Congress should take notice.

They complain to us continually about things they have control over they complain about us wrapping up DACA program, they have the power as the Congress to make it a legal visa program,” he said in an interview Tuesday.

He said President Trump is willing to have a conversation with lawmakers re-visiting DACA but for now would refuse to enforce a policy it considers illegal and unconstitutional.

A decision is expected in the spring.

Source: https://wgme.com/news/videos/supreme-court-hears-case-on-daca

The post Supreme Court hears case on DACA first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.