Biden’s executive orders to undo more of Trump’s immigration policies

In the first, seven orders issued on his first day in office, Biden had rescinded former president Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban”, stopped work on the border wall and reinstated protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children.

US President Joe Biden will sign three executive orders on Tuesday that will reunite families separated by the Trump administration’s hardline policies, improve access to the asylum system and make it more humane and remove barriers from legal immigration.

Then Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden talks with a protester objecting to his stance on deportations during a town hall at Lander University on November 21, 2019. (AP file)

This will be the second lot of executive orders issued by Biden. In the first, seven orders issued on his first day in office, he had rescinded former president Donald Trump’s “Muslim ban”, stopped work on the border wall and reinstated protection from deportation to undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. The president had also sent to Congress an immigration reforms legislation, which among other things, provided a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

A memo issued by the White House on Tuesday said the president’s new orders are based on a strategy that is “centered on the basic premise that our country is safer, stronger, and more prosperous with a fair, safe and orderly immigration system that welcomes immigrants, keeps families together, and allow people — both newly arrived immigrants and people who have lived here for generations — to more fully contribute to our country”.

The first executive order will create a task force to reunite parents and children separated by the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy. The exact number of affected children is not clear, but Associated Press has reported that 5,500 such children have been identified in court documents. The task force will be headed by Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s nominee to head the department of homeland security.

The second order will seek to address the root of irregular migration” in the region the US in a three-step plan, to be coordinated with countries in the region. It will also review the asylum protocol — essentially the “Remain in Mexico” policy — that forced applicants to stay in Mexico as they awaited months for court hearings.

The third order will seek to remove barriers from legal immigration. It will instruct government agencies dealing with immigration to conduct a “top-to-bottom review of recent regulations”.

Under the scanner will be the “public charge” rule, under which the US could turn down immigration applicants who, it deemed, would need government assistance to survive. Though the order will not end that rule yet, it will rescind a Trump-era memorandum that required Americans to reimburse the government for any public benefits extended to relatives they were sponsoring.