Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has reinstated another Trump-era border security policy that he had denounced and revoked shortly after entering office – one of the many Trump-era border security policies that Biden had rescinded that resulted in the record breaking illegal immigration crisis at the U.S. southern border.
Under the new rule, migrants who illegally cross the border will be ineligible for asylum unless they can prove they previously requested protection in a third country, according to internal documents obtained by CBS News. The rule disqualifies most non-Mexican migrants who enter the United States between ports of entry from asylum.
“Migrants who secure an appointment to enter the U.S. under a mobile app-powered system will not be barred from asylum under the policy. The rule will also not apply to unaccompanied children,” CBS News reported. “According to internal training documents, only migrants with ‘exceptionally compelling circumstances’ will be able to overcome the rule’s asylum bar. Those include migrants with an ‘acute medical emergency,’ those who face an ‘imminent and extreme threat’ in Mexico and victims of ‘a severe form of human trafficking.’”
The new rule is one of many Trump-era policies that Biden ended shortly after he entered office, and then reinstated after illegal immigration surged.
For example, Biden ended Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols — also called the “Remain in Mexico” policy — in early 2021, and then reinstated it in December.
Biden also spent a large portion of his presidency working to end Title 42, but in January 2023 he switched his stance and increased migrant expulsions under the policy. The policy officially ended on Thursday, which is expected to lead to the highest levels of illegal immigration ever, dwarfing the records already set under the Biden administration.
According to an internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document obtained by ABC News, the end of Title 42 will lead to as many as 18,000 migrants attempting to illegally cross the southern border each day.
“The DHS Office of Immigration Statistics (OIS) produced projections for post-Title 42 Southwest Border encounters describing low, medium, high, or very high encounter scenarios,” the document says. “These scenarios underpin planning assumptions that generate requirements which in turn drive operational execution. Based on these projections the SBCC is currently planning for 6,000, 12,000 (high) and 18,000 (very high) encounters per day.”