Immigration

Restricting Asylum Will Cause More Border Chaos

Joe Biden and Congress are considering a plan that will create a crueler, deadlier situation on the U.S.-Mexico border.

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A group of asylum seekers walk along the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego, California | Qian Weizhong/VCG/Newscom
(Qian Weizhong/VCG/Newscom)

The White House is rushing to get Ukraine aid passed, and congressional Republicans are demanding a slate of harsh border restrictions in return. Some Democratic lawmakers—and President Joe Biden—are growing more willing to make that deal. But there's ample evidence to suggest that it'll lead to more illegal crossings, more migrant deaths, and more government spending, all while gutting key humanitarian protections in exchange for temporary foreign aid.

In recent bipartisan talks, congressional Republicans have pitched "measures to detain all migrant families, keep migrants in Mexico until their day in immigration court, and expand the president's authority to expel migrants swiftly, before they can make asylum claims," reported The New York Times. Other GOP proposals include mandating E-Verify, a burdensome government system that checks workers' citizenship status; gutting humanitarian parole, a policy that has allowed Ukrainians, Afghans, and people fleeing certain authoritarian countries in the Western Hemisphere to come to the U.S. legally; and building the border wall.

The White House has made an offer that "includes creating a new expulsion power at the border that would allow the government to turn away asylum seekers without letting them claim asylum"—similar to the pandemic-era Title 42 policy—and "a requirement that some asylum seekers be held in immigration detention for the duration of their hearings," The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. It would also let the government carry out quick deportations around the country, not just at the border.

Limiting legal immigration pathways is a surefire way to create more illegal immigration (and increase the costs of immigration enforcement). There will always be people who are desperate to migrate, whether on economic or humanitarian grounds. If those people can't access the legal system, they'll turn to illegal methods. These are inevitably more dangerous, as they tend to involve crossing in less-easily-policed corridors and rougher terrain, and they often involve smugglers, who may extort their clients. Legal pathways bring the system above ground; the more incentives migrants have to immigrate legally, the lower illegal crossings will be.

The GOP's proposals neglect that reality. And it is reality: "Examining 100 years of Border Patrol apprehensions data finds none of the three U.S. periods with a significant decline in illegal immigration were due to enforcement policy," found a May National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) report. Most recently, after the Biden administration introduced targeted sponsorship programs to benefit Venezuelans and nationals of three other countries, encounters with those groups fell by 95 percent between December 2022 and March 2023, according to NFAP. The Cato Institute, parsing data from Customs and Border Protection and other sources, found that ending the pandemic-era Title 42 order—which allowed federal immigration agents to immediately expel migrants—halved "successful covert illegal immigration."

The White House has signaled its openness to a level of mass detentions that could prove impossible under current migration levels. In fact, as CBS News' Camilo Montoya-Galvez reported this week, "the U.S. government has never had the detention space to detain all migrants who cross into the country illegally."

If none of that is convincing, take it from federal immigration officials. "It would break the border," one Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official told NBC News. A former DHS official warned that by mandating the detention of all border crossers, facilities might run out of space, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement might hypothetically "have to detain families instead of detaining a single adult male accused of rape."

When Biden took office in early 2021, he promised to deliver a more efficient, more humane immigration system that would be "consistent with our character as a Nation of opportunity and of welcome." He's done some of that, but he's also continued border wall construction, implemented severe restrictions on asylum, and adopted or dragged his feet on repealing Trump-era border policies. One of the most explicit betrayals of Biden's campaign trail promises came during Vice President Kamala Harris' June 2021 remarks in Guatemala, when she issued a direct warning to would-be migrants: "Do not come. Do not come."

It's hardline measures and a lack of workable legal pathways—not the president's "open border policies," as many critics charge—that have made the border unmanageable. If lawmakers are serious about reducing pressures at the border, they should look to proven methods, such as expanding guest worker programs and private sponsorship schemes.

As the border discussions stand, these ideas aren't on the table. Instead, decision makers in Washington have proven all too willing to embrace what could be long-lasting—and what would certainly be costly, inhumane, and ineffective—changes to the immigration system.