President Biden on Thursday will announce new immigration restrictions, including the expansion of programs to remove people quickly without letting them seek asylum, in an attempt to address one of his administration’s most politically vulnerable issues at a time when the nation’s attention is focused on Republican disarray in the U.S. House.
The measures will expand Biden’s use of “parole” authority to allow 30,000 migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela to come to the United States each month, as long as a U.S. sponsor applies for them first. But those who attempt to migrate through the region without authorization will risk rapid expulsion to Mexico, as the administration plans to expand its use of the pandemic-era Title 42 public health policy. Mexico has agreed to take back 30,000 border-crossers from those nations each month, U.S. officials told reporters during a briefing Thursday morning.
Biden is going to have as many legal problems as Trump did. The open-borders crowd will be screaming “betrayal!” after throwing its support to Biden in 2020. But realistically, it’s likely that the Supreme Court will end Title 42 sometime in the early summer, and Biden will have to recalibrate and retreat.
After eschewing a border visit for almost two years, Biden now says he’ll stop in El Paso on his way to Mexico City for a summit.
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Biden will stop in El Paso on Sunday, in advance of a trip to Mexico City next week for a regional summit, an administration official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity in accordance with the rules of the briefing. On Wednesday, Biden told reporters he wanted to see “peace and security” at the border and is “going to see what’s going on.”
It will be his first trip to the border as president and will likely attract international attention and be politically fraught. But the disarray among Republican members of the U.S. House has provided some political cover for the White House.
The Republican speaker dust-up won’t matter. Biden is going to have to address the massive influx of illegals and at least acknowledge some responsibility. It won’t affect his approval rating, but it will give Republicans some satisfaction that Biden was forced to acknowledge the crisis and offer some solutions advocated by the GOP.
