Thread: Three Things Biden Can Do Tomorrow to Stop Illegal Border Crossings

Three Things Biden Can Do Tomorrow to Stop Illegal Border Crossings



Published 14 hr ago|Updated 7 hr ago

May 15, 2023



Nolan Rappaport








John Moore/Getty Images




Illegal border crossings reached unprecedented levels the past two years and are breaking new records now that COVID-related Title 42 limitations have been lifted. President Biden can significantly decrease the flow of migrants across the southern border by making three simple changes to his administration’s response to the immigration crisis:

First, the president should suspend the admission of migrants who try to enter the United States without a valid entry document until the post-Title 42 surge in illegal crossings has ended.

Biden can do this with an executive order based on his authority under the Immigration and Nationality Act’s (INA) Section 1182(f), the pertinent part of which reads as follows:

“Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens.”

The Supreme Court has held that the sole prerequisite to exercising this power is that the president must find that the entry of the covered migrants “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

This wouldn’t have to result in the abandonment of our moral obligation to provide refuge to people who are fleeing from persecution.

The migrants who claim to fear persecution could be transported to one of the regional processing centers in Central and South America that the administration is establishing, where they can be given an opportunity to apply for refugee status.

Biden can increase the cap on refugee admissions to accommodate the expelled asylum seekers who establish eligibility for refugee status at a processing center; INA Section 1157(b) gives the president authority to raise the refugee number on an emergency basis whenever he thinks an increase is warranted by humanitarian concerns.

Second, he should establish a special task force of Department of Labor (DOL) investigators to sanction employers who are exploiting employees in industries known to hire large numbers of undocumented migrants.

Congress tried to eliminate the job magnet that draws undocumented migrants to the United States by establishing employer sanctions in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The theory was that if employers were sanctioned for hiring migrants who do not have work authorization, they would stop hiring them.

But this approach is complicated by the fact that it can be difficult for employers to confirm that a prospective foreign employee is who he says he is and that he has work authorization.

It would be better to shift attention to the reasons why employers hire unauthorized foreign employees, one of which is that undocumented immigrant workers can be exploited easily and they are not in a position to complain about the way they are treated.

The Labor Department sanctions employers for exploiting employees without regard to their immigration status; consequently, DOL enforcement officers do not have to determine whether an exploited employee is an alien, or if so, whether he has work authorization.

DOL enforces federal labor laws that were enacted to curb unfair treatment or exploitation of employees, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, which establishes a minimum wage, overtime pay, youth employment, and other standards.

The creation of a highly publicized DOL task force to stop the exploitation of employees in industries known to hire large numbers of undocumented immigrants should significantly weaken the job magnet.

Third, President Biden should eliminate the enforcement guidelines that make illegal crossers safe from deportation once they have reached the interior of the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas established enforcement priority categories with a Sept. 30, 2021, memorandum that restricts immigration enforcement to migrants who are a threat to national security, to public safety, or to border security. Exceptions are permitted with preapproval from senior supervisors.

According to Mayorkas, the fact that an individual is removable by law should not alone be the basis for taking an enforcement action against him or her.

The result is that there is little — if any — danger that a deportable migrant in the interior of the country will be put into removal proceedings unless the person is convicted of a crime that makes him a threat to national security or public safety.
This motivates migrants coming here to keep trying until they succeed in reaching the interior, which makes it very difficult to secure the border.

Litigation to stop Mayorkas from restricting enforcement on the basis of those guidelines is before the Supreme Court, so he may have to abandon them regardless.

Biden could — and should — do other things as well to secure the border. But the advantage to the measures I am suggesting is that they can all be started quickly, and they don’t require congressional support.

They would make getting into the country and staying in more difficult, which should discourage migrants from coming here without valid entry documents, something Biden himself has publicly urged.

These measures would simply put action behind the president’s words.


Nolan Rappaport was an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert to the House Judiciary Committee and subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims. Prior to working for the House, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.


https://themessenger.com/opinion/thr...rder-crossings

No processing centers! We do not want them here...period!