Liberals are unhappy, Republicans are weaponizing the issue and a dispute over a Trump-era border policy has caused some Democrats to split with the president.
President Joe Biden won the White House while chastising his predecessor’s border policies as inhumane and out of step with American values. But now the issue of immigration has devolved into a political headache for him that is undercutting a centerpiece of his agenda and causing vulnerable Democrats to split from him. The president faces a two-track challenge: The Democratic base is unhappy with the lack of progress on pro-immigration goals, and the Republican electorate is fired up over the issue as the party’s lawmakers and media figures stoke fears of migration. Surveys indicate most Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration, including one conducted by a firm affiliated with the president, commissioned by an immigrant rights group. A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 68 percent of Republicans rated immigration as “very important” to their vote in the 2022 elections, compared to just 34 percent of Democrats. The National Republican Campaign Committee has tested attacks and “contrast” messages about the border. In March, its poll of battleground districts found that 78 percent of voters were more likely to back a Republican candidate who works to “stop dangerous cartels from bringing drugs into America.” And 86 percent back “securing our border to stop drug smuggling and human trafficking,” according to a findings shared with NBC News by a source familiar with the poll. Asked how immigration affects his plans in the 2022 election, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the chair of the Senate GOP campaign arm that seeks to capture control of the chamber, said that “the border is going to be a bigger issue” because “the perception is this administration doesn’t care about having a secure border.”
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The effort could significantly reduce a backlog of asylum and deportation cases as the Biden administration anticipates a huge surge of migrants crossing the border.
The Biden administration is seeking to clear potentially hundreds of thousands of deportation and asylum cases pending before immigration courts, an unprecedented move that could significantly reduce the current backlog of 1.7 million cases. In a memo dated Sunday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement directed its lawyers to review cases and try to clear those considered low priority under enforcement guidelines that the administration established last year. The American Immigration Lawyers Association estimates that there are at least 700,000 such cases — about 40 percent of the court backlog. The agency would not provide an estimate of how many cases would be cleared under the directive or how long it would take. Previous administrations have moved cases off the court docket but not on such a broad scale. During the eight years of the Obama administration, more than 166,000 immigration cases were administratively closed, according to court data. The court backlog has ballooned to the largest ever, causing yearslong delays for immigrants seeking asylum and other forms of relief. One reason is that the coronavirus pandemic has delayed proceedings. A significant number of cases were added during the Trump administration, especially after a surge in undocumented migrants crossing the border in 2019. That administration also reopened tens of thousands of cases that had been removed from the court docket. |
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May 2022
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