WASHINGTON (AP) — Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, refugees from the threatened nation began showing up at Mexico’s border with the United States. About 1,000 Ukrainians a day flew into Tijuana on tourist visas, desperate to reach American soil.
The volume overwhelmed the nation’s busiest border crossing in San Diego. In Tijuana, thousands of Ukrainians slept in a municipal gym waiting for a chance to cross into the US
In response, the administration announced it would admit up to 100,000 Ukrainians over two years, if they applied online, had a financial sponsor and entered through an airport. At the same time, border officials turned back Ukrainians arriving on foot at the US border.
The Biden administration has found these policies so effective that a similar model has become the centerpiece of a broader border policy that kicked off in earnest Thursday as restrictions end related to the pandemic that had allowed US officials to quickly turn away migrants who cross illegally.
The results are sure to be a test for President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election as the border returns to the political spotlight and Republicans seek to portray him as soft on security.
“Our model is to build legal avenues and then impose the consequences that the law provides on those who do not take advantage of those legal avenues,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters last month.
It’s a shift from the more open immigration policies that characterized Biden’s first year as president in favor of an approach that combines beefed-up enforcement with expanded legal avenues and diplomacy.
The policies have been criticized by the left as too similar to those of former President Donald Trump. Others question whether anything Biden does will stop the flow of migrants along the southern border and whether the new policies can survive expected legal challenges and a lack of resources.
But some immigration experts think it can be a balanced approach that results in fewer illegal crossings while also providing a haven for those fleeing persecution.
“I think they have a fighting chance, over time, to make this a real system that’s fairer and more controllable,” said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a group of reflection on non-partisan immigration.
This account is based in part on interviews with more than a dozen current and former administration officials who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.
During his first month in office, Biden signed a series of executive actions to undo Trump-era policies. He supported legislation to provide a path to citizenship for millions of people in the country illegally. He stacked his administration with immigrant advocates eager to roll back what they saw as Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.
But alarms went off almost immediately when nearly 19,000 children traveling alone were stopped at the border in March 2021. Senior officials met twice a week to strategize, moving children from Patrol facilities Overcrowded border emergency shelters, including convention centers in California and military bases in California. Texas.
Although the number of unaccompanied children fell, a “daily dashboard” monitored by senior officials showed that overall arrivals continued to rise, particularly for families.
Most people who come to the US border illegally are fleeing persecution or poverty in their home countries. They seek asylum and have generally been allowed into the United States to await their cases. That process can take years under a highly strained immigration court system, and has led to a growing number of people arriving at the border in hopes of entering the United States.
Although many seek asylum, the legal path is narrow and most do not comply.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, many officials with close ties to immigration advocacy groups had left the administration, some exasperated that their views were not gaining traction and felt that Biden was not as focused in the US Mexican border as he did in other matters. This left officials with more centrist views in charge.
Mayorkas and others were concerned that Ukrainians could be unsafe in their travels and that their tortuous route to the US was further straining border resources. This led to the “United for Ukraine” policy, under which 128,000 people have been allowed into the US, with tens of thousands more approved to come. And the number of Ukrainians coming on foot essentially stopped.
“We built at an incredible speed and it was successful,” Mayorkas said.
The administration focused on others who arrived at the border illegally and could not be easily returned to their countries of origin. Venezuelans had become the second largest nationality at the border after Mexicans, and in October 2022 they became the second group the policy would apply to. If they crossed illegally on foot, 24,000 would be turned back at the border with Mexico. If they came by air, with sponsors, the US would take 24,000.
Meanwhile, Cubans and Nicaraguans had pushed illegal crossings to the highest levels on record in December, as Fox News broadcast live reports of hundreds of migrants waiting under the banner: “Biden’s border crisis.”
Republican-led states had sued to keep the COVID-19 restrictions in place. And Biden officials were waiting to see if a bipartisan immigration bill in Congress could pass. It wasn’t like that.
So in January, Biden announced that the policy would be extended again to people from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua, and they increased the number of people: 30,000 of each of the four nationalities would be allowed entry whenever they wanted to. , comply with background checks. and had sponsors. Mexico agreed to take back the same number from the four countries that cross the border illegally.
“We can’t stop people from making the trip, but we can require them to come here in an orderly manner under American law,” Biden said in announcing the policy.
The administration soon reported that Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans made up just 3 percent of illegal crossings in March, down from 40 percent in December.
The United States has now declared the COVID-19 emergency over, and restrictions will end this week that have allowed US officials to turn away migrants more than 2.8 million times since March 2020.
The Biden administration has bolstered its core policy with other moves aimed at cracking down on the border and opening other routes for migrants.
Last week, the administration said it would admit 100,000 people from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to join their families in the US. New immigration centers in Guatemala, Colombia and perhaps elsewhere will be filing applications to come to the United States.
But border officials are also speeding up the process asylum seekers go through to more quickly deport those who fail. And he is finalizing a new rule — similar to a Trump policy that was blocked in court — to make it extremely difficult for anyone who passes through another country, such as Mexico, to get to the U.S. border .
Meanwhile, the number of Venezuelans crossing the border illegally is increasing again. Administration officials are waiting to see if this is a temporary glitch related to the end of COVID-19 restrictions.
Mayorkas acknowledged the concerns during a tour of Texas’ Rio Grande Valley last week. In the end, he said, there is no substitute for congressional action.
“We have a plan, we’re executing that plan,” Mayorkas said. “However, fundamentally, we are working within a broken immigration system that has been in dire need of reform for decades.”
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Spagat reported from San Diego.
