Facing pressure over border crossings, US President Joe Biden steps up migrant expulsions

The United States will expand Trump-era restrictions to rapidly expel Cuban, Nicaraguan and Haitian migrants caught illegally crossing the US-Mexico border, President Joe Biden said on Thursday in his first major speech on border security.

At the same time, the United States will allow up to 30,000 people from those three countries plus Venezuela to enter the country by air each month, Biden said.

The two-pronged approach is designed to blunt criticism from Republicans who have attacked Biden as record numbers of migrants cross the US-Mexico border while also placating Democrats and immigration advocates who say “Title 42” restrictions adopted under former President Donald Trump block migrants from exercising their right to apply for asylum.

“This new process is orderly, it’s safe and it’s humane,” Biden said in a speech at the White House. He said his message to those would-be migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua or Haiti without a US sponsor is: “Do not just show up at the border.”

In November, US border officials encountered 82,000 migrants from those countries and Venezuela who were attempting to enter without permission at the border with Mexico, according to US government data.

The plan is part of a broader effort to deter record numbers of border crossers and address the political and humanitarian challenge of mass migration that has dogged the Democratic president since he took office in 2021, as well as his predecessors from both parties.

“These actions alone are not going to fix our entire immigration system,” Biden said, but they could “help a good deal.”

National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons welcomed Biden’s actions, but said congressional reforms were still needed, especially “with 779,000 open jobs and not enough Americans to fill these vacancies.”

Democratic lawmakers including Senator Bob Menendez have criticized the expansion of these policies, which on Thursday he called “a disastrous and inhumane relic of the Trump administration’s racist immigration agenda.”

Republicans have criticized Biden for what they describe as lax border enforcement and have rejected the president’s proposals for immigration reform and related funding in Congress.