WaPo: Biden says he'll reverse Trump immigration policies but wants 'guardrails' first [View all]

[Celerity]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/biden-immigration-policy-changes/2020/12/22/2eb9ef92-4400-11eb-8deb-b948d0931c16_story.html

President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday he will keep his pledge to roll back the Trump administration’s restrictive asylum policies but at a slower pace than he initially promised, to avoid winding up with “2 million people on our border.” Biden said immigration is one of the urgent matters he will tackle starting next month as the nation emerges from “one of the toughest years we’ve ever faced,” ticking off a list that included the coronavirus, the economy, racial-justice issues and “historic and punishing wildfires and storms.”

Biden had promised to end on “Day 1” a program that requires tens of thousands of asylum seekers, mainly from Central America, to await their U.S. immigration hearings in Mexico. But the president-elect said creating a system to process thousands of asylum seekers will take months, because the government needs funding to put staffers such as “asylum judges” in place. “The timeline is to do it so that we, in fact, make it better not worse,” Biden said, speaking from his home state of Delaware, delivering remarks ahead of the holiday. “I will do what I said. It’s going to take — not Day 1 — it’s going to take probably the next six months to put that in place.”

Advocates for immigrants hope Biden will terminate the “return to Mexico” policy, known as Migrant Protection Protocols, before the Supreme Court is expected to take it up next year. Biden said he is already working with authorities in Mexico and other Latin American nations, as well as with U.S.-based nonprofit groups, to carve a path on immigration policy. “Trust me,” he said. Biden said he was not dragging his feet but “setting up the guardrails” to find a solution to the immigration issue, instead of creating a crisis “that complicates what we’re trying to do.” Biden echoed what top advisers said this week to manage expectations about the pace of the new administration as they prepare to take office.

Speaking to reporters on a conference call earlier Tuesday, several members of the Biden transition team said the incoming administration would “need time” to undo “damage” to the U.S. immigration system and border enforcement policies that have severely limited the ability of asylum seekers to qualify for humanitarian protection. The transition officials echoed statements made by Susan E. Rice, Biden’s incoming domestic policy adviser, and Jake Sullivan, his pick for national security adviser, in an interview published Monday with the Spanish wire service EFE urging patience with their immigration agenda.

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