How Biden’s border plan was upended
Desire to undo Trump policy overtaken by influx of immigrants
McALLEN, Texas – For about four months before President Joe Biden took office, advisers engaged in intense internal debate about how quickly they should undo his predecessor’s hardline border policies.
The answer, almost always, was that Donald Trump’s mark couldn’t be erased soon enough.
Immigration advocates on the transition team defiantly shot down a detailed memo circulated among top aides that called for turning back some migrants who cross illegally by making them seek protection in other countries. They pushed back against estimates of soaring migration flows if Trump’s policies were dismantled.
In the end, Biden recognized predictions that more migrants might come to the border, but he was firm that policies instituted by Trump were cruel and inhumane and had to be jettisoned.
Biden took office on Jan. 20. Almost immediately, numbers of migrants exceeded expectations. Plans outlined in a December document to fully resume asylum processing at land crossings were soon overtaken by events.
Children traveling alone shattered previous highs in March, making up most of the more than 4,500 people housed in temporary tents that were designed for 250 under COVID-19 standards. The Border Patrol encountered migrants in South Texas more often than ever in June and July, dashing expectations for a common summer slowdown.
In September, about 15,000 mostly Haitian refugees were camped under a bridge in the small border town of Del Rio, Texas. The chaotic scene stretched on for days as migrants waded back and forth across a river for supplies and families slept in squalor. Images of agents on horseback corralling refugees went viral.
The administration began a massive expulsion of Haitians while allowing thousands to remain in the U.S. Its uneven response after months of rising arrivals sparked sharp criticism from both the right and left, illustrating the consequences of scrapping Trump’s policies without a new asylum system in place.
Some key developments could not have been predicted by any administration, and predating Biden was a major structural problem of immigration courts taking nearly four years on average to decide cases of immigrants not in custody.
But a close review of the last year – based on internal documents obtained by The Associated Press and AIM Media Texas and dozens of interviews with current and former U.S. and Mexican officials, migrants, shelter managers, advocates and others – shows how an administration stacked with seasoned immigration advocates was unprepared for the huge increase in people seeking refuge at the border. Many interviewed for this reconstruction spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized or comfortable discussing private deliberations.
When presented with specifics of the reconstruction, the White House defended its record.
“After four years of the Trump administration’s chaos, cruelty and misplaced priorities, the work to build a fair, orderly and humane immigration system will take time and won’t happen overnight,” said spokesman Vedant Patel. “In a short period of time, the Biden administration continues to make considerable progress delivering on its plan.”
Broken asylum system
While the Biden administration would work to undo policies put in place during and after a 2019 spike in arrivals at the border, it inherited an asylum system that has been broken for years. It sorely tested Biden’s predecessors.
In the summer of 2014, large numbers of unaccompanied children from Central America’s Northern Triangle countries – Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras – showed up along the Texas border in the Rio Grande Valley, a profound demographic shift from predominantly Mexican men that created what thenPresident Barack Obama called a “humanitarian crisis” and left a deep impression on more enforcement-minded aides who went on to serve in the Biden administration. Spikes have since occurred periodically.
Biden took office surrounded by immigration experts steeped with advocacy backgrounds. Esther Olavarria, an immigration attorney who worked for former Sen. Ted Kennedy and the Obama administration but spent much of her career as a Miami-based organizer, took a top spot on the White House Domestic Policy Council with Tyler Moran, who was then executive director of The Immigration Hub, a group of pro-immigration strategists.
Influential, more enforcementminded voices included David Shahoulian, who resigned last month for personal reasons as assistant Homeland Security secretary for border security and immigration, and Roberta Jacobson, a former U.S. ambassador to Mexico and career diplomat in Latin America who agreed to serve 100 days on the National Security Council as coordinator for the Southwest border.
‘Remain in Mexico’ winds down
Despite concerns, Biden was adamant about his campaign promise to start reversing Trump’s border policies by ending “Remain in Mexico,” known officially as “Migrant Protection Protocols,” under which about 70,000 asylum-seekers were made to wait outside the country for hearings in U.S. immigration court.
Crossings fell sharply after Trump expanded the policy in 2019, but migrants were forced to wait in dangerous and unfamiliar Mexican border cities where finding steady work was difficult and finding attorneys was nearly impossible. Human Rights First, an advocacy group, documented 1,544 examples of violent assaults, including murder, rape, torture and kidnapping.
The complicated logistics of allowing up to 26,000 asylum-seekers with active cases to return to the United States and remain free while their cases wound through the courts was a high priority in Biden’s first weeks.
All records were on paper, with few working phone numbers or addresses listed. U.S. authorities, working closely with United Nations organizations, worried about a rush to the border exacerbating public health and security concerns – and at the same time, sending a message to asylum-seekers who had returned to Central America to make the dangerous journey back north.
Despite the early hiccups, more than 11,000 asylum-seekers had returned to the United States by June 1, when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas officially declared the policy was over after a review found it yielded only “mixed effectiveness” on border security. Others whose asylum cases were dismissed or denied under Trump were allowed in starting in late June.