Immigration agencies to turn focus on threats
The Biden administration has ordered U.S. immigration agencies to focus their energies on threats to national security, public safety and recent border crossers, ending a four-year stretch during the Trump administration that exposed anyone in the United States illegally to deportation.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary David Pekoske issued a memo hours after President Joe Biden’s inauguration Wednesday setting strict limits for arresting and deporting migrants while the department reviews its policies and practices. He also imposed an “immediate” 100-day pause on the deportations of certain noncitizens, to take effect no later than today. Pekoske is in charge as the Senate considers the nomination of Alejandro Mayorkas, the former deputy Homeland Security secretary during the Obama administration.
The memo is the first step in a broader plan to find a different solution for the 11 million migrants in the United States, many of whom have lived here for years and have U.S.-citizen children. Many are essential workers — delivery workers, caregivers, even physicians — but Congress has not passed a major citizenship bill since 1986.
Biden has unveiled legislation that would allow millions to apply for citizenship, following in the footsteps of former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who attended his inauguration Wednesday, and also advocated, albeit unsuccessfully, for an immigration overhaul.
Trump took a starkly different approach, often characterizing migrants as criminals and winning praise from his team for taking the “shackles” off immigration agents and allowing them to deport anyone, including migrants arrested for traffic offenses.
Despite spending billions of dollars to jail record numbers of migrants, Trump did not deport as many people as his predecessor, in part because of major resistance from immigration lawyers and “sanctuary” jurisdictions that refused to hand over migrants to the federal government for deportation after they were arrested for state or local crimes.
In the memo, Pekoske ordered Homeland Security’s chief of staff to review the agency’s immigration policies over the next 100 days and recommend revisions.
The memo applies to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which enforces immigration laws in the interior of the United States, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which patrols ports and borders, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which handles applications for immigration benefits such as green cards and citizenship.
During the review, the agency said it will impose “sensible priorities” for enforcing civil immigration laws. Starting Feb. 1, migrants eligible for deportation will fall into three categories: National security threats, such as spies or terrorists, border crossers who arrived on or after Nov. 1, and aggravated felons currently serving time for crimes such as murder or drug trafficking, after they are released from prison.
Meanwhile, construction crews building the steel wall along the U.S.-Mexico border were ordered to a halt Wednesday after Biden delivered on a campaign promise and hit “pause” on the Trump administration’s infrastructure project.
Biden’s presidential proclamation rescinded the national emergency declaration used by Trump to divert about $10 billion from Defense Department accounts toward the barrier, one of the costliest federal infrastructure projects in U.S. history.
It directs private contractors to stop work “as soon as possible but in no case later than seven days,” while launching a full assessment of the project to determine whether its funding sources are legal and whether they can be allocated elsewhere.
“It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall,” Biden’s proclamation states. “I am also directing a careful review of all resources appropriated or redirected to construct a southern border wall.”