The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) announced on June 4 that it would be filing a lawsuit against President Joe Biden’s executive order limiting the number of people applying for asylum at the southern border. The order, which was announced amid rising border numbers and disapproval over the administration’s handling of the ongoing crisis, blocks the entry of non-citizens if the Secretary of Homeland Security determines “there has been a 7-consecutive-calendar-day average of 2,500 encounters or more.” This means that it should immediately take effect given the high number of encounters already taking place at the border.
In his announcement of the order, President Joe Biden accused Congress of failing to provide necessary resources and not moving forward on a bipartisan immigration proposal. A poll conducted by AP-NORC in April found that 56 percent of Americans believe the administration has hurt the country on the issue of immigration and border security, much higher than the 37 percent who felt the same way about President Trump’s time in office. Even among Democrats, only about three in ten say that Joe Biden has done more to help the country on this issue.
The Trump campaign released a statement saying that the order would not be effective and that if “Biden truly wanted to shut down the border, he could do so with a swipe of the same pen.” The ACLU also accused President Joe Biden of taking “the same approach as the Trump administration’s asylum ban.
Both President Joe Biden’s order and some of President Trump’s immigration restrictions cited Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA. This section allows presidents to block the entry of “any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States” when he finds that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.
Lee Gerlent, who serves as deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, compared the policy with President Trump’s policies in a statement. We intend to challenge this order in court,” he said. It was illegal when Trump did it, and it is no less illegal now.
The ACLU challenged President Trump’s asylum restrictions, which encountered several roadblocks in federal courts. The policy introduced in 2019 prohibited most migrants from applying for asylum in the United States if they passed through another country on their way to America but did not apply for asylum there.
After President Joe Biden entered office, he revoked President Trump’s travel policies, describing them as “a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all.” In his June 4 remarks, President Joe Biden attempted to distance himself from President Trump by saying: “I will never demonize immigrants. I will never refer to immigrants as ‘poisoning the blood’ of a country.
Before the June 4 order, the Biden administration’s handling of the southern border had already encountered challenges in multiple courts. In the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the administration has been challenging a Texas law that seeks to deter illegal immigration at the state level.