Immigration security

 Biden’s Foolish Immigration Priorities

Joe Biden shouldn’t want to begin his administration with a renewed migrant crisis at the border, but that’s what his priorities risk creating.

After many false starts — including the zero-tolerance policy that drove family separations — the Trump administration got a handle on the border thanks to its “remain in Mexico” policy and “safe third country” agreements with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.

These initiatives closed an enormous loophole in the U.S. asylum system — undeserving asylum-seekers were able to gain access to our country, stay here for years while their claims worked their way through overwhelmed immigration courts, and remain even after their claims were denied because we lack the capacity (or will) to track and deport them. This running, de facto amnesty served as a powerful magnet for migrants from Central America.

But the Trump administration managed to get Mexico to agree to the so-called Migration Protection Protocols. This meant that asylum-seekers from countries other than Mexico could be made to remain in Mexico while their claims were adjudicated in the U.S. Also, under the safe-third-country agreements, asylum-seekers could be sent to Guatemala, El Salvador, or Honduras (whichever wasn’t their home country) to apply for asylum there. The theory was that if they were genuinely persecuted in their own country rather than simply seeking to come to the United States, they’d be satisfied to apply for asylum in some other nearby country; as it turned out, not surprisingly, most simply chose to go home when they realized an asylum claim wasn’t a ticket into the United States.

On top of all of this, the Trump administration began to tighten up on the lax way that asylum rules have been interpreted. Under the law, someone is supposed to be eligible for asylum only if he is targeted for persecution because of his race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion — a definition that shouldn’t apply to economic migrants or people who fear domestic or gang violence.