President Biden plans for more house arrests for immigrants who enter U.S. illegally

The moves are among a handful of major changes Biden is proposing in his administration’s approach to handling the flow of migration at the border, where encounters with migrants are rising again.

The president is also calling for $375 million to speed up the asylum system, including hiring more than 1,000 new U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officers to adjudicate claims on the border, rather than sending them to backlogged courts.

His budget request asks for more than $2 billion to stand up emergency shelters for unaccompanied children, an effort to avoid the overcrowding in Border Patrol facilities that sparked outrage a year ago. His budget would also spend roughly $150 million to fund attorneys for migrants in detention or facing deportation, which would be a first. The government has not paid those costs in the past.

Immigrants’ advocates say the president’s budget — which is only a proposal, as Congress controls federal spending — would mark the most significant steps yet to build what Biden has described as a more humane immigration system.

“I do see it as a positive indication that significant changes are coming to the border, and quite possibly very soon,” said Jorge Loweree, policy director at the American Immigration Council.

Conservatives say it’s sending a message that will only encourage more migrants to seek to enter the U.S.

“They’re looking for catch-and-release,” said Lora Ries, a research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation and a former Department of Homeland Security official. “They’re fine with that policy, even though it clearly sends the message south to future migrants and smugglers who advertise this, and it just keeps the illegal flow continuing unencumbered.”

Deciding on expulsions

The president’s budget calls for hiring 300 new Border Patrol agents and 300 new Border Patrol officials to process migrants. It would increase funding for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s victim assistance program by $12 million and spend $18 million to crack down on human trafficking.

The budget proposal comes as border crossings appear to be on the rise again. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz said Tuesday that 7,000 migrants are being stopped crossing the border daily from Mexico, up from a daily average of about 5,900 in February, the Associated Press reported.

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is weighing whether to keep in place a public health order issued by the Trump administration during the coronavirus pandemic that it has used to immediately expel most migrants crossing the southern border.

Under the rule, known as Title 42, migrants are denied the opportunity to plead their asylum case. The Biden administration has used Title 42 to expel migrants 426,819 times so far in the fiscal year that began Oct. 1, according to Border Patrol data. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is reviewing the order and is expected to make a decision in the coming days on whether to keep it in place.

Democrats have ratcheted up pressure on Biden to scrap Title 42, which they say undercuts the legal asylum system and is unjustifiable with the decline in COVID cases.

“For more than two years, asylum-seekers have been illegally expelled from the United States without the due process they deserve,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat, said in a statement. “Trekking hundreds or thousands of miles across dangerous terrain is not something people do when they have better options. Those who seek asylum at our nation’s borders are fleeing from oppression and violence, and they just want a place where they can be safe.”

Republicans in the Texas congressional delegation — and two border Democrats — meanwhile, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra on Tuesday, warning that scrapping the order would spark a much bigger wave of migration at the border.

Experts say ending the order would almost certainly lead to an increase in migrants attempting to cross.

But they say the order has also driven up the number of encounters with single adults who are expelled and simply return to try to cross again. Nearly a third of the single adults stopped by the Border Patrol in February — 30 percent — tried to cross at least once in the 12 months prior, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported. That was more than double the average rate at which the Border Patrol encountered repeat crossers from fiscal years 2014 to 2019.

U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo and Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen joined the Republicans in urging Biden keep Title 42 in place, writing that over the past nine months, the administration has used it to expel between 45 percent and 57 percent of migrants encountered at the border. They wrote that South Texas mayors have told them that local nongovernmental organizations are completely at capacity in terms of lodging and other services and that local transportation hubs have been “overwhelmed with migrants, many of whom lack the financial means to purchase tickets.”

“We understand that this legal authority is temporary and tied to the COVID-19 public health emergency, but DHS appears unprepared to handle a likely unprecedented increase in apprehensions along the southwest border,” they wrote. “If the CDC were to rescind its Title 42 order at this time, Border Patrol facilities and local communities would be forced to absorb at least double the current number of migrants, likely with catastrophic results.”

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