Despite campaign promises to overhaul the system, immigration reform has stalled 18 months into the Biden administration, with the U.S. Supreme Court and lower federal courts dictating the most recent changes to the system.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s motion to halt the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, was upheld by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 ruling on June 30 in favour of the Biden administration.
For President Joe Biden, it was a rare victory among a succession of setbacks after the court’s term, particularly on the issues of abortion and climate change.
In an interview with ABC News on Sunday of last week, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas stated that the organization is preparing to end the Trump administration’s policy that required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases were being heard in U.S. immigration courts. But he noted that it would take time.
Mayorkas stated that for the District Court to remove the injunction preventing the program’s termination, “we need to wait until the Supreme Court’s ruling is actually relayed to the lower courts, to the federal District Court and to the Northern District of Texas.”
According to Syracuse University’s statistics, there are around 30,000 MPP cases that are still unresolved.
The Biden administration has come under fire for attempting to discontinue the “Remain in Mexico” policy, according to Florida Republican senator Marco Rubio.
According to Rubio in a written statement, “This decision will send yet another signal to the trafficking networks and cartels that America’s border is wide open.”
“President Biden’s careless speech and deeds encourage illegal immigration and harm our nation,”
Humanitarian Wrong Doing
The program’s termination, however, “is the first step toward remedying years of humanitarian injustice,” according to New Mexico Democrat Sen. Ben Ray Luján.
Tens of thousands of vulnerable children, families and other asylum seekers have been thrown into risky situations as a result of the destructive, xenophobic policy the Trump administration implemented, he claimed.
To “continue my career-long drive to improve our dysfunctional immigration system,” Luján said he is working with his Senate colleagues.
Mayorkas urged Congress to adopt immigration reform in light of the shocking finding in Texas of 53 migrants who had perished in an abandoned truck trailer while trying to enter the country illegally.
Additionally, he defended the administration’s rhetoric towards preventing migrants from entering the country illegally. Biden’s border strategy has been the target of numerous Republican attacks.
Since the border has been a problem for many years, Mayorkas said in the ABC interview, “Congress ultimately needs to adopt legislation to really repair our flawed immigration system.”
The death of the migrants discovered in the tractor-trailer was swiftly attributed to Biden by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott.
Abbott stated on Twitter, “Biden is to blame for these deaths.” He has dangerous open border policies, which is why they exist.
Karine Jean-Pierre, the press secretary for the White House, told reporters that “the fact of the matter is the border is closed, which is in part why you see people trying to make this risky journey utilizing smuggling networks” while speaking to them from Air Force One.
destiny of dreamers in the courts
Oral arguments were heard on Wednesday in a lower court in Louisiana about the fate of the almost 825,000 illegal individuals covered by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as Dreamers, without congressional action.
The program enables youngsters who were brought to the nation illegally to receive identification for employment and permits them to stay in the nation.
Texas said that DACA put an excessive burden on the states and that the Obama administration didn’t follow the correct procedures for executing the program in its original complaint with Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, and West Virginia.
In June, the program entered its tenth year, despite being intended to be a temporary solution until Congress could establish a pathway to citizenship for those youngsters, who are now adults.
Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California urged Democrats to be ready to enact legislation establishing a path to citizenship if they prevail in the DACA issue before the federal appeals court in New Orleans.
In a statement, she stated that “respect for our Dreamers must become the rule of the land.”
The US must “create a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers,” Vice President Biden stated in his State of the Union Address earlier this year. He urged Congress to approve legislation so that he could sign it into law.
But Congress has consistently blocked immigration reform and it is still largely in place.
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Conservative courts are currently preventing the Biden administration from ending the contentious Title 42 policy, among other things. When there is a health emergency, like the coronavirus pandemic, the U.S. can remove individuals who are requesting asylum.
According to Jeremy McKinney, president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, “We shouldn’t be exploiting a public health regulation to enforce immigration law.”
“Public health law should be based on research, not election-year politics, especially coming from the same ilk that has fought against every public health initiative since COVID began.”
The Biden administration attempted to end the program, but Texas filed a lawsuit and a Louisiana district court issued a countrywide preliminary injunction, ordering the White House to maintain the program. In an appeal, the Justice Department.
