Expert: Biden's Border Proclamation "A Political Statement"

Nicole Narea, Vox, June 4, 2024

"President Joe Biden issued a new proclamation on Tuesday that bars asylum seekers who cross the border without permission from applying for protections in the US when migrant crossings exceed a daily average of 2,500 in a week.  It is arguably the most restrictive measure Biden has taken yet on the US-Mexico border. ... Courts haven’t fully articulated the limits on the president’s powers to restrict immigration. This new executive action from Biden will likely pose a major test in that respect.   Whether the executive action survives legal challenges, however, is beside the point for Biden. It doesn’t take a scalpel to US asylum law, but a sledgehammer, and that suggests the political optics of the policy are more important to Biden than if it actually does anything. ... “Immigrant advocates will say the asylum provision explicitly allows people to apply for asylum even if they enter between ports of entry, and therefore to suspend entry because too many people are entering between ports of entry violates an express provision of the immigration law,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell Law School. “Courts will have to decide how much deference to give President Biden and whether his lawyers have crafted the executive order carefully enough.” ... “This is a political statement so that [Biden] can say I'm tough on the border and try to deflect all the criticism that Republicans are throwing at him,” Yale-Loehr said. “Biden can at least say, ‘I tried.’” "