The first immigration crisis of the Biden presidency has begun; in recent weeks, tens of thousands of families have flocked to the U.S.-Mexico border, and the surge of people with the expectation that the U.S. government will be kinder to immigrants, coupled with a change in Mexican policy, has made it more difficult to deport some immigrants. The ability and willingness of the United States to accept immigrants during the Epidemic is being tested.
In recent days, the Trump administration’s border policy of detaining people who crossed the border has taken a sharp turn for the worse, with thousands of people released into the U.S. To prevent the spread of the New Coronavirus, San Diego health authorities have placed hundreds of arriving migrants in downtown hotels, where they will be quarantined for 10 days before being allowed to join Family and friends in the U.S. The Texas Border Patrol is allowing those released to board buses directly to other destinations.
But more people are also gathering on the Mexican side, with lawyers and aid organizations working along the border saying that new families are gathering daily in Mexican border towns, sleeping in the streets, under bridges and in dry ditches; the city of Mexicali, which borders Calexico in southern California, can be seen trying to pull away from the border fence; and the Mexican camp of Matamoros, just a bridge away from Texas ( The Matamoros migrant camp, just across the bridge from Texas, has seen a cumulative total of 1,000 people in the past few weeks.
Kate Clark, senior director of immigration services at Jewish Family Service in San Diego, said, “The arrival of asylum seekers has increased dramatically, and we know the numbers are only going to increase dramatically.
Allowing a large number of illegal immigrants to come into the country during the epidemic will inevitably lead to a strong public outcry, and a renewed influx of illegal immigrants will also put more pressure on the immigration courts, which already have a large backlog of asylum cases; proponents of stricter immigration policies say that immigrants who fail to apply for asylum will inevitably go underground and choose to stay illegally in the United States, adding to the already estimated 10 million illegal immigrant population.
Former President Trump, dissatisfied with the past “catch and release” policy, in 2019 required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their applications were determined. Last March, the Trump Administration also invoked the Emergency Health Act to effectively seal the border during an epidemic, with the exception of U.S. citizens and legal residents, who were immediately deported back to Mexico if they tried to cross the border. After Biden took office, he signed three executive orders related to immigration on the 2nd, reversing the hard-line rules that limited immigration during former President Trump’s term.
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