As president-elect Joe Biden is bound to start his presidency amid a surge in detentions at the Mexican border, reportedly prompting his advisers to think about keeping some Trump administration immigration policies to avoid inspiring a good bigger rush.
Biden’s promises to propose amnesty legislation and to adopt policies stand threatened with the upsurge of immigrants as these policies were meant to defer deportation and permit applicants to await amnesty decisions within the US.
According to the Wall Street Journal the transition team has grown concerned and is trying to make a decision which policies to vary and when to avoid creating the looks of leniency.
“I don’t see any recipe that doesn’t have them as overwhelmed as we were in ’14 and ’18,” former patrol acting director Ron Vitiello told the Journal.
The Journal further reports that about 4,630 minors were detained in October, up from 712 in April. the speed grew in November, with 1,000 minors in only six days.
There’s an identical increase in family units, up to 4,501 in October from 716 in April.
Biden spokesmen didn’t immediately answer an invitation for comment.
Immigration was a serious campaign issue, with Biden and President Trump swapping allegations of treating illegal immigrants and asylum seekers inhumanely.
“Who built the cages, Joe?” Trump had repeatedly asked the president-elect at the ultimate presidential debate.
Biden said last month he will propose a bill in his first 100 days in office that gives a pathway to citizenship “for over 11 million undocumented people,” or the approximate total number of illegal immigrants within the US, creating a possible scramble to the border.
He also has vowed to finish Trump’s “remain in Mexico” policy, forcing Central American migrants to remain in Mexico while the US reviews their asylum claims.
Border officials struggled in 2014, under President Barack Obama, with a surge in unaccompanied minors. Some were drawn by the hopeful future expansion of the 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which offers work permits and protection from deportation for people brought illegally to the US as children.
Some photos of the youngsters detained in 2014 were employed by media outlets to criticize Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ “zero tolerance” policy for illegal crossings.
While Biden was vice president, Obama was disdainfully called the “deporter in chief” by left-wing immigration activists. Trump, who campaigned against illegal immigration and built an outsized new border wall, lagged behind Obama in annual deportation figures.
