Texas judge suspends Biden policy for immigrant spouses
A federal judge in Texas on Monday suspended the Biden administration’s policy to grant legal status to spouses of U.S. citizens without having to leave the country. Immigration law expert Elizabeth Rich joins LiveNOW from FOX’s Josh Breslow to explain what the moratorium means.
Immigration continues to be one of the top concerns for voters heading into the November election.
According to Gallup, Americans cited immigration as the biggest issue facing the country earlier this year, even more Americans than cited the economy, even as prices continue to rise.
Both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump tackled the issue in different ways during their campaigns, hoping the issue would lead to votes in the White House race.
Current position of immigrants
The number of apprehensions of migrants who illegally crossed the border from Mexico into the United States plummeted by about 30% in July, hitting the lowest level since President Joe Biden took office after he introduced new asylum policies. Asylum will no longer be granted if the number of border encounters between ports of entry reaches 2,500 per day.
Immigration numbers rose and fell during both presidents’ eras. Border Patrol apprehensions at the southern border declined during Trump’s first year in office, but skyrocketed over the next two years, rising to more than 850,000 in 2019. That number plummeted in 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, but rose further during the Biden presidency, reaching its highest level. Encounters peaked at more than 250,000 in December 2023, but fell below 84,000 in June 2024, according to federal statistics.
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More than 22 million people live in U.S. households with at least one resident in the country without authorization, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of 2022 Census data. That’s nearly 5% of households nationwide, and 5.5% in Arizona, a battleground state where the Latino vote is key.
Harris talks about border security
Harris has not provided many details about how she plans to deal with the border crisis.
She previously pushed for a border security bill negotiated by a bipartisan group of senators earlier this year, but ultimately opposed en masse by Republicans at the behest of Republican candidate Donald Trump.
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During the Democratic National Convention, Harris said she would push for the bill again.
Biden suspends asylum claims for immigrants
President Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday halting asylum applications as the immigration crisis continues. John Torres, FMR. Acting ICE Director.
“As president, I will reinstate the bipartisan border security bill he rejected and sign it into law,” she said. “I know we can uphold our proud heritage as a nation of immigrants and reform our broken immigration system. We can earn a path to citizenship and secure our borders. can.”
Harris also wants faster immigration enforcement for young immigrants who came to the country illegally as children.
The border bill was one of the most conservative and comprehensive proposals in decades to emerge from bipartisan negotiations in Congress. By making asylum procedures stricter and faster, it would seek to curb historic numbers of illegal border crossings.
RELATED: Border arrests plummet by 40% following Biden executive order on asylum procedures
The presidential administration would also have the power to deny asylum applications at the border if the number of migrants applying for asylum becomes unmanageable by authorities.
Trump speaks about border security
Meanwhile, Trump is working closely with former aide Stephen Miller, who is expected to take a senior White House role if Trump wins. Miller described the Trump administration as working “resolutely and resolutely” to achieve the twin goals of “closing the border and deporting all illegal aliens.”
President Trump comments on Biden’s new immigration policy
Donald Trump commented on President Joe Biden’s new immigration policies at a campaign rally in Wisconsin, calling them an “invasion of our country.”
To accomplish that, President Trump will reinstate travel bans from countries deemed undesirable, including Muslim-majority countries. He planned to launch a sweep with the National Guard to round up migrants, hold them in large detention centers and put them on deportation flights before filing legal complaints.
He also plans to reinstate policies he introduced in his first term, including the Remain in Mexico program and Title 42, which imposed immigration restrictions on public health grounds. It will also reinstate and expand a travel ban that initially targeted citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries.
After the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas, he promised new “ideological screening” of immigrants to ban “dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots and lunatics” from entering the country. He will also seek to deport people who are legally in the United States but harbor “jihadist sympathies.” He seeks to abolish birthright citizenship for people born in the United States whose parents are both in the country illegally.
How does Harris view the border crisis?
Harris took several progressive positions on immigration during her bid for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. She wanted to make immigrants who entered the country illegally eligible for government health care and to decriminalize border crossings.
When Harris became Biden’s vice president, the administration dismantled some of Trump’s toughest immigration policies, and Harris worked to improve conditions in Central American countries to reduce the flow of immigrants into the United States. But illegal crossings have reached historic levels, creating a political crisis for the White House. Republicans have accused Harris of failing to secure the border.
Kamala Harris’ border visit: Wants to stop immigration based on ‘root causes’
Vice President Kamala Harris said while answering questions from reporters in Mexico City that she would visit the southern border amid the migrant crisis. Harris also said during her visits to Guatemala and Mexico that she wants to stop immigration from its root causes.
How does President Trump view the border crisis?
Meanwhile, immigration has been central to Trump’s political identity since he first announced his campaign in 2015. Mr. Trump paints a picture of a border spiraling out of control, threatening national security and the economy. If elected to a second term, he has promised to deport millions of people living in the country illegally.
Republicans attack Harris over border handling
House Republicans are moving quickly to highlight Vice President Kamala Harris’ role in the Biden administration’s U.S.-Mexico border issues, passing a resolution in July criticizing her performance in office. .
But Harris was never a “border czar,” as Trump, the Republican Party, and even the occasional media outlet have claimed, and was not appointed to lead border security or stop illegal border crossings. I had never done it before. Instead, she was tasked in March 2021 with addressing the “root causes” of migration from the Northern Triangle and working with Mexico to urge its leaders to enforce immigration laws, administration officials said.
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Harris has defended her work, and her campaign has begun running television ads saying that as president, Harris would “hire thousands more Border Patrol agents and crack down on fentanyl and human trafficking.”
Most House Democrats sought to defend how Harris handled her duties.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Harris was “on a narrow mission to develop a deal that can bring government and private sector investment to countries that send immigrants to the United States.” “I am indebted to him,” he said.
Democrats also repeatedly pointed to Republicans’ rejection of the border and immigration deal the White House negotiated with Senate Republican leadership earlier this year.
