The
White House
is moving behind the scenes to churn out legislation that would overhaul America’s
asylum
process for
immigrants
who arrive at the nation’s
borders
, according to a new report.
The Biden administration hopes to appeal to Congress with a bill that reimagines the entire asylum system and is a starting place for Democrats and Republicans to work on major immigration reforms,
according to
Reuters.
“It’s a total rethink of the approach and is not constrained by current laws,” a Department of Homeland Security official told the outlet.
U.S. government officials traveled to Europe in January and visited at least one country to see firsthand how other nations had handled an influx of noncitizens arriving at its borders in recent years. The Biden administration officials stopped in the Netherlands to learn what its immigration system entailed.
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The bill could change how immigrants are detained and processed depending on their nationality. Immigrants who come from countries that have historically had higher approval rates among asylum-seekers could be given more freedom to travel about the United States while awaiting court hearings instead of being monitored by ankle devices or being detained in jail-like settings.
Officials are considering changing if and how immigrants are detained or kept in a certain area through proceedings. One option mentioned by officials was apartments or similar types of housing where asylum-seekers could live in far less restrictive conditions than U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention centers.
On the flip side, immigrants who are viewed as less likely to have a valid asylum claim would be deported swiftly.
For example, 61% of Russian asylum-seekers whose cases were decided in fiscal 2022, which ended last September, were granted refuge compared to the Philippines, whose citizens were approved in only 2% of cases, according to
data
from the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review.
Holding immigrants in custody through immigration proceedings has become extremely difficult. The U.S. government is prohibited by federal court from detaining families more than 20 days. The Biden administration also opposes detention of immigrants.
But the
more than 2 million cases
pending before roughly
600 immigration judges
nationwide mean asylum cases will not be decided for six to eight years down the road, leaving the government at an impasse over how to track millions of people in the country and how to find and deport those whose claims are denied.
“We are still in the very early phases of this, and it could be something that people look at and say, ‘No, we’re not going to do that,’” one official told Reuters about the chances of President Joe Biden or Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas rejecting the proposal.
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DHS spokeswoman Marsha Espinosa said that although the department was “always exploring ways to improve our asylum system,” it did not have a proposal under “serious consideration.”
