After previously saying he needed help from Congress to stem the flow of record-breaking illegal immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border, Joe Biden’s administration is expected to enact an immigration-related executive order this week.
As illegal immigration is top of mind of voters across the country and millions of migrants have illegally crossed into the U.S. in the last 3.5 years, Biden and his team are planning on doing something about it as soon as Tuesday.
Previously they have asked Congress to pass new laws to expand Biden’s presidential authority over the border, but a bipartisan border deal failed to take off earlier this year.
Again in May the Senate voted against the border measure, with both Democrats and Republicans teaming up against it.
The plan now, according to several officials familiar with the matter interviewed by the Associated Press, is to enact parts of the Senate deal unilaterally, including denying entrance to migrants after certain thresholds are hit.
The sources said that, specifically, the White House is weighing a policy that would cap the number of migrant encounters at 4,000 per day over a week – 28,000 in total.
Though what would happen when that threshold is hit is unclear.
A similar policy was at the heart of the failed Senate deal, but Republicans slammed the measure for not doing enough to crack down on illegal immigration, which Biden’s own Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas claimed was a ‘crisis’ in April.
According to the report, the authority the White House expected to use comes from Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
That law provides presidents leeway in blocking entry of certain immigrants if it would be ‘detrimental’ to national interests.
Former President Trump repeatedly leaned on that section of the law to shut-out certain immigrants crossing illegally and seeking asylum at the southern border.
Presidents using section 212(f) to restrict migration does not require congressional approval.
But Biden has repeatedly said he wants new laws from Congress to fix the border.
Pushing for the passage of the twice-defeated Senate bill, Biden said in January ‘It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed.’
‘And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law,’ his January statement continued.
But it appears that the White House has since decided that they can go it alone, as Republicans have charged, and will enact reform this week, though the timing of the reported executive action is opaque.
The administration has reportedly looking to use this power for months – and now sources say that this week an executive order could come down the pipeline.
The White House ‘continues to explore a series of policy options and we remain committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system,’ spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández recently.
‘While congressional Republicans chose to stand in the way of additional border enforcement, President Biden will not stop fighting to deliver the resources that border and immigration personnel need to secure our border,’ he added.
But when asked about Biden’s election year border policy reversal on Sunday, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson slammed the administration’s mulled move, saying it’s ‘too little too late.’
‘He’s trying to desperately show the American people that he wants to address the issue that he himself created,’ Johnson said.
‘We documented 64 specific actions that President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas at DHS took over … the course of three and a half years, beginning on the first day that President Biden [took office], to open the border.’
‘They did it intentionally, it’s had catastrophic effects upon our country that we’ll be living with for decades to come.’
Johnson has spent his few months in power lobbying the White House to take an executive action on the border.
And now that they are, he claimed that it’s only coming because it’s an election year.
‘He wants to issue some sort of executive order, I guess to show that, oh he really does care about the issue,’ Johnson said. ‘The only reason he’s doing that is because the polls say that it’s the biggest issue in America.’
‘And the first question that comes up in almost every public forum, is what about that open border and why in the world would President Biden allow it? He did more than allow it, he engineered it and everybody knows that.’