A Mexican migration official checks the papers of asylum seekers at the before they attend their appointment with U.S. authorities at the U.S.-Mexico border in Tijuana, Mexico, on June 5. President Joe Biden has ordered sweeping new migrant curbs, making a dramatic bid to neutralize one of his political weak spots in his reelection battle against Donald Trump.GUILLERMO ARIAS/Getty Images
On a scorching Tuesday afternoon in southern Arizona, U.S. Border Patrol agents sat in idling trucks and SUVs stationed every few hundred metres along the border wall Donald Trump ordered into existence.
Three thousand kilometres away, President Joe Biden had just announced an executive order promising strict new action to curb illegal migration into the United States. But here, where Arizona abuts the Mexican state of Sonora, one person had just crossed the wall, scaling its tall metal slats and leaping over the triple rolls of concertina wire strung on its U.S. side, one of the agents said.
Jose Grijalva listened to the agent recount the story and shook his head. Mr. Grijalva is the only man on the ballot for mayor of Douglas, a border city of 16,000 whose leaders have warned they don’t have the capacity to handle the thousands of migrants who have arrived here in the past few months.
He called the executive order an act of politics over governance.
“I just feel like both parties don’t look for a solution,” seeking instead partisan gain, he said. Once a registered Democrat, Mr. Grijalva is now an independent who voted for Mr. Trump in the past two elections. Any move to shut down the border would devastate communities on both sides, he said. But he also believes the U.S. needs a rapid and robust process capable of screening all arrivals.
Mr. Biden’s new approach will do neither.
This week’s executive order nonetheless represents a landmark shift for the Democratic leader. The new order authorizes the U.S. to impose at least a 14-day halt to the processing of asylum seekers who cross illegally if their weekly numbers reach an average of 2,500 a day – an average that, since January of 2021, has been consistently exceeded (the current number is around 4,000). Processing will resume only when the weekly average falls below 1,500. Those who enter during the asylum ban period will face deportation and be barred from any form of entry for five years. (Other measures already strictly curtail the number of migrants who can seek asylum through legal ports of entry.)
The prospect of Mr. Biden ordering the closing of the border to unlawful crossings, even if temporarily, positions him as the inheritor of a strict approach that Democrats had decried as inhumane when similar measures were proposed under Mr. Trump.
Immigration is one of the most pressing U.S. electoral priorities ahead of this year’s presidential vote, and, in Douglas, it looks to some as if Mr. Biden is seeking electoral gains by adopting the tactics of his predecessor.
“It sounds like to me they’re going to start expelling folks, just like happened here during the Trump administration,” said Mark Adams, the U.S. co-ordinator for Frontera de Cristo, a Presbyterian-backed migrant service organization.
It was a path Mr. Biden entered office determined not to take.
In 2021, he spent his first day in office rescinding a series of executive orders – including harsh detention measures and construction of the border wall – used by Mr. Trump to enforce the border.
That same year, the number of people crossing illegally into the U.S. rose sharply. Although other factors have played a role, such as pandemic damage to many economies, Mr. Biden’s promises of a more humane approach raised hopes among the dispossessed around the globe. The number of illegal crossings touched a record 2.2 million in 2022. This year, it is on pace to reach even higher.
In Douglas, a former copper smelting centre, the biggest influx of migrants began last September. At first, volunteers took care of migrants at a local church.
“Basically it was citizens saying we’re going to bail the federal government out with humanitarianism and care,” Mr. Grijalva said.
Mr. Adams was left in awe of people who would endure such great personal risk in hopes of finding a better future.
At least some of the risk, he said, comes from a dysfunctional U.S. immigration system. He noted a grim statistic: More people have died crossing the southern border under Mr. Biden than under Mr. Trump. The number reached 895 in 2022, according to Border Patrol statistics. Anything short of immigration reform, Mr. Adams said, “continues a deadly policy.”
But with the executive order, “they just doubled down on more enforcement.”
Mr. Biden came into office promising a more humane approach. While the U.S. under his leadership has deported record numbers, the number of pending cases at immigration courts now exceeds 2.4 million, with many asylum claimants living in the country while they wait years for the backlogged justice system to give them a hearing.
“Every day that Republicans can have the messaging on border security and the economy or inflation, they’re winning,” said Mike Noble, founder of Noble Predictive Insights, a Phoenix-based polling company.
Democratic leaders once criticized Republicans such as Texas Governor Greg Abbott for busing migrants elsewhere in the country. But Democratic mayors and governors in New York State and Colorado have since adopted similar tactics. In Arizona, far more asylum-seekers have been bused from the border under Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs than under her Republican predecessor. Late last year, Ms. Hobbs sent her state’s National Guard to southern Arizona, in an echo of similar moves made by Texas.
Democrats have limited their own room to manoeuvre, said Constantin Querard, a conservative political consultant in the state. “For years any Republican who talked about border security was a racist,” he said.
Democrats have recently placed border problems at the feet of Republicans, pointing to the failure of a major bipartisan border bill earlier this year, which Republicans abandoned at the urging of Mr. Trump.
“For them it’s a turnout tool,” said Rodd McLeod, a Democratic strategist in Phoenix.
The political chasm has only continued to widen. On the same day Mr. Biden issued his executive order, Arizona Republicans passed a bill to let voters decide, via a ballot measure, on whether to empower local law enforcement to arrest migrants who enter the state illegally.
Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has vowed not only to restart construction of the border wall but to deport many millions of people already in the country.
The political stakes are particularly high in Arizona, where Mr. Noble’s polling company has found that border security ranks second only to inflation as an issue of concern for independent voters, whose ballots may swing the November election.
The prospect of a new crackdown on illegal crossings stands alongside the immense difficulty of entering through legal means. Migrants without documentation cannot physically set foot on U.S. soil to request asylum; in Douglas, they are blocked by a steel turnstile. Some wait months, living in tents, as they wait for the U.S. to grant them permission to make their claims.
“I talked to a man today who said that last week they accepted only three families,” said Sam Pendergrast, a retired Presbyterian pastor from Utica, N.Y., who volunteers at a migrant centre on the Mexican side.
“It’s just crazy,” Mr. Pendergrast said. But, he added of Mr. Biden, “I understand why he’s doing it. Because he wants to get as many votes as he can.”