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Under Biden border move, fewer migrants are released into the U.S. or screened for asylum
President Biden’s move to partially suspend asylum processing at the southern border has led to a dramatic drop in the number of migrants released into the U.S. interior or screened for humanitarian protection, official government statistics show.
In early June, Mr. Biden, citing the record levels of illegal border crossings over the past years, invoked a sweeping executive authority to disqualify most migrants from U.S. asylum, making it easier for immigration officials to deport those entering the country illegally.
A months-long downward trend in unauthorized border crossings accelerated after Mr. Biden’s order took effect. In July, the number of migrants illegally crossing the southern border between official entry points plummeted to 56,400, the lowest level in nearly 4 years, according to federal statistics. U.S. officials have also attributed the marked decrease to rising summer temperatures and a crackdown by Mexican officials on migrants trekking north.
Newly-released government figures show Mr. Biden’s asylum crackdown, the most restrictive by a Democratic president, has ushered in a seismic shift in how migrants are processed at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Migrant releases plunge
One main change has been a steep decline in the number of migrants being released by Border Patrol, a practice that U.S. officials have perceived as a “pull factor” for migration, as those who are released can usually stay in the U.S. for years, regardless of the validity of their asylum claims, because the immigration courts face a backlog of millions of cases.
In July, Border Patrol released 12,000 migrants with notices to appear in immigration court, down from 28,000 in June and 62,000 in May, before Mr. Biden’s asylum changes, according to Customs and Border Protection data. In December 2023, during a record-breaking spike in migration, Border Patrol released 192,000 migrants with court notices.
The sharp decrease in releases has coincided with a significant jump in the percentage of migrants placed in “expedited removal” proceedings. Those proceedings allow officials to quickly deport recent border crossers who don’t claim asylum or who fail asylum interviews.
In the months before Mr. Biden’s move to severely restrict asylum, only a quarter or less of all migrants apprehended by Border Patrol were placed in expedited removal proceedings, mainly because the government did not have the resources and manpower to detain and screen everyone crossing into the U.S. illegally.
In July, nearly 28,000, or roughly 50%, of the 56,000 migrants apprehended by Border Patrol that month were processed for expedited removal, agency figures show. That’s up from 43% in June and 25% in May, according to the data.
More than 100,000 migrants have been deported or returned to Mexico or their home countries since Mr. Biden’s partial ban on asylum claims took effect, according to Department of Homeland Security data.
Access to asylum is sharply limited
Under U.S. and international law, asylum is designed to offer legal protection to foreigners who are fleeing persecution based on certain grounds, such as their political views, religion or membership in a social group. Poverty is not a ground for asylum.
If migrants placed in expedited removal proceedings say they fear being persecuted if deported, they must be referred to undergo a so-called “credible fear” screening with an asylum officer. If they pass these interviews, migrants are allowed to seek asylum in front of an immigration judge, and if they fail, they can be generally deported.
Since Mr. Biden’s partial ban on asylum, much fewer migrants are being screened by U.S. asylum officers. That’s because in addition to making most migrants ineligible for asylum, the rules that implemented Mr. Biden’s order in June enacted another major change.
Jose Luis Gonzalez / REUTERS
Those rules instructed immigration officials to stop asking migrants whether they fear being harmed before deporting them, a question they were supposed to ask before Mr. Biden’s order. Under the new process, only migrants who affirmatively express fear of being harmed are referred to the asylum screenings.
Following the change, the percentage of migrants processed under expedited removal who were recorded manifesting fear of being persecuted has plunged to 24%, down from the 55% average before Mr. Biden’s asylum crackdown, according to a federal court declaration on Friday by Assistant Homeland Security Secretary for Border and Immigration Policy Royce Murray.
In the four months before Mr. Biden’s order, U.S. asylum officers received between 17,000 and 20,000 referrals to screen migrants per month. That number dropped to 7,100 in June and 1,900 in July, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services figures show.
Even if migrants received an asylum officer interview, the new rules make the screenings harder to pass, as migrants are generally only screened for more limited forms of humanitarian protection that, unlike asylum, do not offer beneficiaries a path to permanent legal status.
Officials warn of influx if order is lifted
Mr. Biden’s asylum order contains some exemptions. For example, it does not apply to unaccompanied children, who have to be sent to government-run shelters under U.S. law, or migrants who get an appointment, via a phone app, to be processed at an official port of entry.
In July, the U.S. processed more than 38,000 of migrants who received appointments through that app, known as CBP One, federal data shows. After security vetting, these migrants are generally allowed into the U.S. to apply for work permits, while courts review their cases.
The Biden administration’s asylum crackdown, by its own terms, would stop if the seven-day average of daily illegal crossings dips to 1,500. While the average has gotten close to that threshold, border crossings appeared to have plateaued in August, internal federal figures show.
Mr. Biden’s executive action is also at risk of being struck down in federal court. The American Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant rights groups have said in a lawsuit that the rule violates U.S. asylum law, arguing it mirrors a Trump-era policy that courts declared illegal.
In a legal memo Friday opposing the ACLU’s lawsuit, the Justice Department warned that internal projections point to daily illegal border crossings spiking to between 3,400 and 6,900 in the coming months if the asylum crackdown is blocked, compared to the 1,800 average in July.
Remarkably, Texas, which has filed lawsuits against virtually every major Biden administration immigration policy, is trying to intervene in the ACLU case in defense of Mr. Biden’s asylum crackdown, calling his action “reasonable” in a legal memo on Friday.
On Friday, White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez credited the president’s “decisive actions” for the marked drop in migrant crossings.
But migrant rights advocates say Mr. Biden’s policy has had dire consequences for migrants. Christina Asencio, director of research at the advocacy group Human Rights First, said she has documented cases of asylum-seekers being deported from the U.S. without a chance to plead their cases.
“I would ask, what does working mean? Does working mean summarily removing someone without access to due process, without the access to the statutorily required fear screening? Does working mean trapping them in Mexico?” Asencio asked.
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Renad Atallah is an unlikely internet sensation: a 10-year-old chef, with a repertoire of simple recipes, cooking in war-torn Gaza. She has nearly a million followers on Instagram, who’ve witnessed her delight as she unpacks parcels of food aid.
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We interviewed Renad via satellite, though we were just 50 miles away, in Tel Aviv. [Israel doesn’t allow outside journalists into Gaza, except on brief trips with the country’s military.]
“There are a lot of dishes I’d like to cook, but the ingredients aren’t available in the market,” Renad told us. “Milk used to be easy to buy, but now it’s become very expensive.”
I asked, “How does it feel when so many people like your internet videos?”
“All the comments were positive,” she said. “When I’m feeling tired or sad and I want something to cheer me up, I read the comments.”
We sent a local camera crew to Renad’s home as she made Ful, a traditional Middle Eastern bean stew. Her older sister Noorhan says they never expected the videos to go viral. “Amazing food,” Noorhan said, who added that her sibling made her “very surprised!”
After more than a year of war, the Gaza Strip lies in ruins. Nearly everyone has been displaced from their homes. The United Nations says close to two million people are experiencing critical levels of hunger.
Hamada Shaqoura is another chef showing the outside world how Gazans are getting by, relying on food from aid packages, and cooking with a single gas burner in a tent.
Shaqoura also volunteers with the charity Watermelon Relief, which makes sweet treats for Gaza’s children.
In his videos online, Shaqoura always appears very serious. Asked why, he replied, “The situation does not call for smiling. What you see on screen will never show you how hard life is here.”
Before dawn one recent morning in Israel, we watched the UN’s World Food Program load nearly two dozen trucks with flour, headed across the border. The problem is not a lack of food; the problem is getting the food into the Gaza Strip, and into the hands of those who desperately need it.
The UN has repeatedly accused Israel of obstructing aid deliveries to Gaza. Israel’s government denies that, and claims that Hamas is hijacking aid.
“For all the actors that are on the ground, let the humanitarians do their work,” said Antoine Renard, the World Food Program’s director in the Palestinian territories.
I asked, “Some people might see these two chefs and think, well, they’re cooking, they have food.”
“They have food, but they don’t have the right food; they’re trying to accommodate with anything that they can find,” Renard said.
Even in our darkest hour, food can bring comfort. But for many in Gaza, there’s only the anxiety of not knowing where they’ll find their next meal.
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Story produced by Mikaela Bufano. Editor: Carol Ross.
See also:
“Sunday Morning” 2024 “Food Issue” recipe index
Delicious menu suggestions from top chefs, cookbook authors, food writers, restaurateurs, and the editors of Food & Wine magazine.
It’s been said the best meals come from the heart, not from a recipe book. But at this USDA kitchen, there’s no pinch of this, dash of that, no dollops or smidgens of anything. Here, nutritionists in white coats painstakingly measure every single ingredient, down to the tenth of a gram.
Sheryn Stover is expected to eat every crumb of her pizza; any tiny morsels she does miss go back to the kitchen, where they’re scrutinized like evidence of some dietary crime.
Stover (or participant #8180, as she’s known) is one of some 10,000 volunteers enrolled in a $170 million nutrition study run by the National Institutes of Health. “At 78, not many people get to do studies that are going to affect a great amount of people, and I thought this was a great opportunity to do that,” she said.
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It’s called the Nutrition for Precision Health Study. “When I tell people about the study, the reaction usually is, ‘Oh, that’s so cool, can I do it?'” said coordinator Holly Nicastro.
She explained just what “precise” precisely means: “Precision nutrition means tailoring nutrition or dietary guidance to the individual.”
The government has long offered guidelines to help us eat better. In the 1940s we had the “Basic 7.” In the ’50s, the “Basic 4.” We’ve had the “Food Wheel,” the “Food Pyramid,” and currently, “My Plate.”
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They’re all well-intentioned, except they’re all based on averages – what works best for most people, most of the time. But according to Nicastro, there is no one best way to eat. “We know from virtually every nutrition study ever conducted, we have inner individual variability,” she said. “That means we have some people that are going to respond, and some people that aren’t. There’s no one-size-fits-all.”
The study’s participants, like Stover, are all being drawn from another NIH study program called All Of Us, a massive undertaking to create a database of at least a million people who are volunteering everything from their electronic health records to their DNA. It was from that All of Us research that Stover discovered she has the gene that makes some foods taste bitter, which could explain why she ate more of one kind of food than another.
Professor Sai Das, who oversees the study at Tufts University, says the goal of precision nutrition is to drill down even deeper into those individual differences. “We’re moving away from just saying everybody go do this, to being able to say, ‘Okay, if you have X, Y and Z characteristics, then you’re more likely to respond to a diet, and somebody else that has A, B and C characteristics will be responding to the diet differently,'” Das said.
It’s a big commitment for Stover, who is one of 150 people being paid to live at a handful of test sites around the country for six weeks – two weeks at a time. It’s so precise she can’t even go for a walk without a dietary chaperone. “Well, you could stop and buy candy … God forbid, you can’t do that!” she laughed.
While she’s here, everything from her resting metabolic rate, her body fat percentage, her bone mineral content, even the microbes in her gut (digested by a machine that essentially is a smart toilet paper reading device) are being analyzed for how hers may differ from someone else’s.
Nicastro said, “We really think that what’s going on in your poop is going to tell us a lot of information about your health and how you respond to food.”
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Stover says she doesn’t mind, except for the odd sounds the machine makes. While she is a live-in participant, thousands of others are participating from their homes, where electronic wearables track all kinds of health data, including special glasses that record everything they eat, activated when someone starts chewing. Artificial intelligence can then be used to determine not only which foods the person is eating, but how many calories are consumed.
This study is expected to be wrapped up by 2027, and because of it, we may indeed know not only to eat more fruits and vegetables, but what combination of foods is really best for us. The question that even Holly Nicastro can’t answer is, will we listen? “You can lead a horse to water; you can’t make them drink,” she said. “We can tailor the interventions all day. But one hypothesis I have is that if the guidance is tailored to the individual, it’s going to make that individual more likely to follow it, because this is for me, this was designed for me.”
For more info:
Story produced by Mark Hudspeth. Editor: Ed Givnish.
“Sunday Morning” 2024 “Food Issue” recipe index
Delicious menu suggestions from top chefs, cookbook authors, food writers, restaurateurs, and the editors of Food & Wine magazine.
