Biden Administration Introduces Sweeping Asylum Overhaul as Title 42 Expires

With Title 42 set to expire Thursday, the White House announced on Wednesday a new set of sweeping rules to curb the anticipated influx of illegal migrants.

The Biden administration will now begin denying entry to all migrants who do not first seek asylum in a transit country or apply for protection in America using an online form before arriving at the border. Moreover, Venezuelan, Haitian, Cuban, and Nicaraguan nationals caught illegally crossing the Southern border will be deported back to Mexico.

Complimenting these new initiatives, the White House has disclosed plans to open at least 100 regional processing centers while granting 30,000 humanitarian exceptions to the new asylum rules per month.

“Our plan will deliver results, but it will take time for those results to be fully realized,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas noted. “We are clear-eyed about the challenges we are likely to face in the days and weeks ahead, which have the potential to be very difficult.”

For those that successfully cross the border, ankle bracelets will be worn by the head of households awaiting immigration trials, which will occur within a month of arrival.

However, the new rules have been condemned by activist organizations and academics.

“It’s really sending this message that we can trade away the right to asylum in order to effectuate some border policies,” Blaine Bookey, an academic with the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California College of the Law at San Francisco, told the Washington Post. “It’s really peddling this narrative that seeking asylum at our border is not legal. The law is very clear.”

A similar note was struck by Mark Hetfield, the chief executive of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) calling Biden’s decision callous. “To expect someone to seek protection in a country where they can’t protect their own people is absurd,” Hetfield told the Post. “We know that people are fleeing violence and are fleeing for their lives.”

In early May, Biden dispatched 1,500 soldiers to help Border Patrol units manage the surge of migrants that’s expected to follow the expiration of Title 42, a pandemic-era public-health measure that allowed Border Patrol to immediately expel certain asylum seekers.

“These 1,500 military personnel will fill critical capability gaps, such as ground-based detection and monitoring, data entry, and warehouse support, until CBP can address these needs through contracted support. They will not be doing any law enforcement work,” a federal official told CNN at the time.

Last Monday, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz shared on Twitter that federal agents had apprehended over 22,000 individuals and confiscated more than 800 pounds of methamphetamine in the past three days alone.

On Tuesday, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) tallied almost 11,000 illegal crossings, the highest one-day total ever recorded, the Post found.

Nearly 3 million migrants have been denied entry to the United States under Title 42 since it was first activated under Former President Donald Trump back in March 2020.