Biden’s administration is looking at reviving the policy of detaining illegal immigrants from their families.
As President Joe Biden ran for the White House in 2016, he pledged to end many of the existing immigration policies, while claiming compassion. Family detention is one of the policies that Biden ended. The policy would have allowed migrant families to be held if they entered illegally. However, Biden has freed them from detention and allows them to be tracked.
The New York Times reported that Biden is being forced by the border crisis to reconsider more restrictive policies like family detention.
This policy is currently being reexamined because Title 42 allows the government to expedite expulsions of migrant workers. It expires in two months.
The Department of Homeland Security stated in a statement that “No decisions have yet been made” as it prepares for Title 42 Public Health Orders to be lifted. “The administration will prioritize safe, humane, and orderly processing of migrants.”
According to one official, the administration is considering multiple options for handling migrant families crossing the southern border. Not all options involve family detention.
A source who was familiar with the discussions said that there are options that don’t involve families being held in ICE facilities. The source stated that family detentions would only be for a limited number of days, in an effort to distinguish the Trump administration’s treatment of family detentions.
Although the policy change may be portrayed as a return to Trump-era policies and NBC News stated that family detention was a policy of Barack Obama,
Biden last month announced a new policy that would exclude migrants from asylum if they illegally enter the U.S.
According to the New York Times, the policy would allow for the rapid deportation “of anyone who failed to request protection from another nation while on route to the United States, or who didn’t notify border officials via a mobile app about their plans to seek asylum.” After the expiration of Title 42, the policy will take effect in May.
After more than 150,000 migrants arrived in the U.S. in January 2018, this is a marked decrease in the number of people who arrived in the country in December 2022.
