Biden Moves To Undo Policies On Immigration

PAGAT AND JOSH BOAK

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - With a second wave of splashy announcements to undo his predecessor's immigration policies, President Joe Biden showed where he sees perils and limitations.

His orders Tuesday on family separation, border security and legal immigration bring to nine the number of executive actions on immigration during his first two weeks in office.

With proposed legislation to give legal status and a path to citizenship to all of the estimated 11 million people in the country who don't have it, Biden quickly has taken aim at many of former President Donald Trump's sweeping changes to deter immigration, both legal and illegal, and established a vision that is likely to far outlast his tenure if he is able to muster enough support in a deeply divided Congress.

The latest batch of orders are light on immediate changes, though White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Biden will have more to share, and shifts will take time.

Alejandro Mayorkas, whose nomination as Homeland Security secretary was confirmed Tuesday by the Senate, will lead a task force on family separation, focused largely on reuniting parents and children who remain apart. It is unclear exactly how many, but about 5,500 children have been identified in court documents as having been separated during Trump's presidency, including about 600 whose parents have yet to be found by a court-appointed committee.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to reunite families, has asked the administration for legal status in the United States for families that have been separated, as well as financial compensation for those families and attorneys at government expense. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said he would be "extremely disappointed" if the task force limits its scope to helping find parents of the remaining 600 children.

A review of border security will include a policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexican border cities for hearings in U.S. immigration court. It is a step toward fulfilling a campaign pledge to end the "Remain in Mexico" policy, known officially as Migrant Protection Protocols, which enrolled nearly 70,000 asylum- seekers since it began in January 2019.

The White House said it also will conducta "top-tobottom review of recent regulations, policies, and guidance that have set up barriers to our legal immigration system." It will include a review of Trump's "public charge rule," which makes it more difficult for people who use government benefits to obtain green cards.

The impact of executive orders that Trump issued his first week in office didn't start to become apparent until a month later, when the Homeland Security Department issued detailed enforcement priorities. His orders laid a foundation for many other of his administration's hundreds of immigration edicts that followed.

Many changes will have to come from agencies like Homeland Security, not the White House, such as rescinding the public-charge rule, said Greg Chen, director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.

The announcements come as Biden aides warn that Trump's border policies that put asylum increasingly out of reach might take months to unwind- a position that has caused grumbling among some pro-immigration advocates.