Soon-to-be former Trump official and noted white supremacist Stephen Miller waited his entire life to make life miserable for brown people everywhere, and once in the White House used the full force of the federal government to do just that. Roll Call’s Tanvi Misra reports that the outgoing Trump administration took “over 400 executive and regulatory actions on immigration,” some of the most harsh ones of course led by Miller.
The incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden now faces a daunting task in beginning to reverse this anti-immigrant and anti-asylum agenda, the report says. While there’s indications that actions like reinstating the full Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program can be accomplished very quickly, “immigration analysts say unraveling many others won't be so easy,” Misra continued.
The Washington Post reported last weekend that believed to be among President-elect Biden’s day one priorities is putting DACA back in place, an action that “would likely only require a memo,” Migration Policy Institute analyst Sarah Pierce said according to The Texas Tribune’s Julián Aguilar. “And it would mean opening [the program] up to more than 400,000 young foreign nationals who are immediately eligible for DACA benefits but unable to apply,” she continued.
But as both The Texas Tribune and Roll Call reported, immigration policy experts said there’ll be other Trump-era actions that can’t be so quickly undone.
“Regulatory changes instituted by Trump, such as the public charge rule that denies green cards to immigrants deemed ‘likely’ to rely on public benefits, would have to go through a longer rulemaking process, even if they were enacted without public comment,” Roll Call reported. So, a delay because a Biden administration will do what the previous administration didn’t do: follow the rules.
However, the report continued, one thing to consider is that “because many of these rules are subject to litigation, it’s possible the future administration may be able to circumvent the regulatory process and revise them through the court process.”
Then-candidate Biden’s immigration plan also indicated that the cruel and illegal policy forcing asylum-seekers to wait for their U.S. immigration court dates in Mexico would be the first of the last administration anti-asylum policies to go. However, Migrant Protection Protocols, or Remain in Mexico, “might not be as easy to eliminate,” Aguilar reports.
“Procedurally that would likely require little more than a policy memo—that is actually how it was created,” Pierce said according to his report. “But there will be a lot of questions about what to do with the … individuals who are currently or were previously enrolled in MPP. Those questions will present a lot of political and logistical difficulties for the new administration.” But many likely have relatives already in the U.S. they can be paroled to, and some community based organizations would likely be able to assist with support from a new administration.
Following news this past weekend that impeached president Donald Trump had been defeated, some of nearly 70,000 asylum-seekers forced to wait in Mexico since the policy’s implementation in 2019 wept with tears of joy, BuzzFeed News’ Adolfo Flores reported. Jose Lopez, an asylum-seeker from Nicaragua, told BuzzFeed News that the mood at the Matamoros border camp was jubilant.
“[P]eople shouted and cried,” the report said. “Others, he said, prayed when the race was called on Saturday.” Asylum-seekers said Biden’s victory was also their victory. "We thanked God because he heard our cries," Lopez said according to the report. "We were victims of a project that was truly harmful to people’s humanity ... We thought we were invisible to the world, but we weren’t to God. We’re overjoyed right now."
