Published 07:15 IST, February 16th 2021
'He's going to help': Biden faces mounting pressure as asylum seekers eye immigration laws
Waiting to claim asylum, hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants are waiting to enter the US as they look up to Joe Biden’s “more humane” approach.
With the new Immigration Bill dispatched to Congress last month to reverse former President Trump’s harshest border policies, the American President Joe Biden is now facing mounting pressure as those stranded South of the border are eying his policies, hoping, he “wants to help migrants.” Waiting to claim asylum, hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants, thrown out by 45th President Donald Trump under his 'Remain in Mexico' policy, are waiting to enter the United States as they look up to Biden’s “more humane” approach.
While his ‘asylum processing’ is under review following three immigration-related executive orders that he signed on Feb.2, there’s increased confusion at the US-Mexico border with asylum seekers, believing, that there’s now an “opportunity” to come to the US. This, according to several on-ground reporters, prompted US Customs and Border Protection to instruct a wave of migrants to contact immigration courts.
“It is a moral failing and a national shame when a father and his baby daughter drown seeking our shores. When children are locked away in overcrowded detention centers and the government seeks to keep them there indefinitely,” Joe Biden, the then contender of Trump, told Americans during his election campaign.
[Central American migrants run on the Mexican side of the bank of the Suchiate River after crossing from Guatemala, near Ciudad Hidalgo, Mexico. Credit: AP]
[A Mexican National Guard detains a Central American migrant after he crossed the Suchiate River with a group of migrants from Guatemala last month. Credit: AP]
Biden yet to give a 'clear instructions'
With a focus to undo Trump’s alleged ‘draconian’ immigration policies and the controversial practice of child separation at the border, Biden said: ‘It’s wrong, and it stops when I am elected president.’ Less than a month since he assumed Presidency, Biden reversed many of the former President’s policies, including entering the US back to UNHRC, WHO, and Paris Agreement, and removing the ban on Muslim-majority countries, but his administration is yet to give clear instructions on the entry of immigrants to provide them immediate relief.
“Biden hasn’t said how or when it will act and is trying to discourage people from coming in the meantime,” The Associated Press reported.
Earlier, at a presser, Biden’s White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that the “vast majority” of migrants were turned away at the US southern border, adding that Joe Biden’s reversal of Donald Trump’s immigration policies would take time in full implementation. Her remarks came after Mexican President made remarks about US immigration policy to regularize the situation of migrants, warning his own citizens not to try to cross the border, and remain vigilant about traffickers.
“People think that now the doors are open, that President Biden is going to immediately regularize all migrants, that is not true,” Mexican President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, told a press briefing hurling cautions. Some Homeland Security officials, familiar with Biden administration functioning told broadcasters that the sitting US president will eventually snub former President’s disputed ‘zero tolerance’ policy. In the meantime, the Biden administration is yet to lift barriers to asylum-seekers and continues to discourage migrants from coming to the country.
Updated 07:15 IST, February 16th 2021