WASHINGTON – WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration is preparing more changes to the nation’s asylum system aimed at speeding up the processing and potential removal of migrants who continue to arrive at the southern border, a stopgap measure as President Joe Biden continues to mull an executive order broader effort to crack down on border crossings that could occur later this year.
The change under consideration would allow certain migrants now arriving at the border to be processed first through the asylum system rather than going to the back of the line, according to four people familiar with the proposal. People were granted anonymity to speak about a government policy before it was finalized.
The announcement, expected to come from the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice, could come as early as Thursday, although people have warned it could be delayed. The administration’s broader goal with this change is to quickly process recent arrivals within six months, rather than the numerous years it would take under the current backlog in the country’s asylum system.
The new rules would apply to people crossing ports of entry and turning themselves in to immigration authorities.
The Biden administration is taking increasingly restrictive measures to dissuade people from reaching the US-Mexico border. Right now, when a migrant arrives, especially a family, they are almost always released to the country where they await their asylum court date, a process that takes years. By quickly processing newly arrived migrants, you can prevent others from trying to make the journey.
A record 3 million cases are currently clogging up the country’s immigration court. The average caseload for a judge is 5,000 and these changes will not help ease their workload. There are around 600 judges.
The administration has tried for years to put more newcomers at the front of the line for asylum decisions, hoping to deport those whose claims are denied within months rather than years. The administrations of Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump have also tried to speed up the process, since 2014. In 2022, the Biden administration introduced a plan to have asylum officers, not immigration judges, decide a limited number of family claims in nine cities.
Michael Knowles, a spokesman for the National Council of Citizenship and Immigration Services, a union that represents asylum officers, said in a February interview that the 2022 plan was “a very important program that has received very little support.”
Last year, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began a 45-city effort to speed up initial asylum exams for families and deport those who failed within a month. ICE has not released data on how many families underwent expedited screenings and how many were deported.
A bipartisan border agreement drafted by three senators and endorsed by Biden earlier this year offered funding for 100 new judges and immigration advisors. But that legislation never advanced after Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, urged his Republican colleagues to nullify the deal.
Meanwhile, immigrant advocates have generally expressed concern about the changes that would speed up already complicated processes for migrants, who arrive at the U.S. border after an often harrowing journey north.
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Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat contributed to this report from San Diego.
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