Biden’s border plan is attacked by Republican rivals

US President Joe Biden’s Republican rivals and some of his Democratic allies are criticizing his new executive order aimed at curbing record numbers of migrant arrivals at the US-Mexico border.

The order, which took effect at midnight, allows authorities to quickly deport migrants who enter the United States illegally without processing their asylum claims.

Left-wing Democrats, activists and the UN expressed concerns, while Republicans criticized the plan as an election-year ploy and called for tougher measures.

But Biden says his Republican opponents have stood in the way of a bipartisan agreement on border security that failed in Congress earlier this year.

The president was attacked on Tuesday, the day of his executive order, by Donald Trump, his rival in the November election.

Mr Biden has “abandoned our southern border” and is now “pretending to finally do something about it,” Trump wrote on social media. Others, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz, joined him.

The president hit back, accusing the Trump camp of making an “extremely cynical political move” by pressuring Republican lawmakers earlier this year to block the proposed border plan in Congress.

In his speech on Tuesday, the president vowed that his order would “help us regain control of our border.”

He asked left-wing critics for patience. “We are at the end of our rope,” he said. “Doing nothing is not an option.”

About a dozen supporters and Democratic lawmakers held their own press conference outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to criticize Biden’s decision.

Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said she was “deeply disappointed” and called the order a “step in the wrong direction.”

During Biden’s term in office, more than 6.4 million migrants were prevented from entering the United States illegally. The number of arrivals has fallen sharply this year, but experts say that trend is unlikely to continue.

The White House said the new order “will take effect when the number of clashes at the southern border exceeds our ability to take timely action, as is the case today.”

The restrictions will come into force when the number of border crossings reaches a seven-day average of 2,500 per day – when the border is “overwhelmed,” as the White House describes it.

“They will make it easier for immigration officials to quickly deport people without permits,” the officials said.

The border will only be reopened to asylum seekers when the average number of asylum seekers over a seven-day period reaches 1,500. Two weeks later, it will be reopened to migrants.

Other measures aim to quickly resolve immigration cases in court and speed up the deportation of those found to have no legal basis to remain in the United States.

The processing of asylum applications at ports of entry will continue in accordance with the order.

About 1,500 asylum seekers go through this process at official border crossings every day, most of them having previously made appointments through a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) app known as CBP One.

Among the measures announced was the application of a 1952 law that allows for restrictions on access to the asylum system.

The law, known as 212(f), allows the president to prohibit foreign nationals from entering the country if their arrival would be contrary to the interests of the country.

The same rule was used by the Trump administration to ban immigration and travel from several predominantly Muslim countries and to deny migrants access to asylum if they were caught entering the United States illegally, provoking accusations of racism.

“It is unfortunate that politicians are pushing the immigration debate in an increasingly restrictive direction,” commented Jennie Murray, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum.

Guerline Jozef, executive director of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which works with Haitian migrants at the border, called the announcement a “direct attack on the basic human right to seek asylum.”

A spokeswoman for the UN Refugee Agency stressed that people who fear persecution must have access to safe areas.

The issue of migration has become a problem for Biden in an election year. Trump has announced that if he is re-elected, he will carry out the “largest deportation operation” in American history to deport illegal immigrants.

Biden administration officials pushed back against comparisons with policies from Trump’s presidency, saying the new rules announced on Tuesday would only apply during times of increased entry restrictions.

They said there would be exceptions for unaccompanied children and victims of human trafficking.

The Biden administration plans to defend the new measures in court against possible legal challenges – a risk that Ms. Jayapal pointed out.

Mexican media portrayed the move as one of Biden’s toughest measures, although President Andrés Manuel López Obrador tried to downplay the problem, arguing that economic and cultural exchanges made closing the border “impossible.”

Authorities in Tijuana asked what would happen to asylum seekers who were denied entry to the United States.

The emergency shelters in the Mexican city could quickly become overcrowded, a local official warned. “We would see people on the streets sleeping in tents.”