While Biden won most of the Texas border in 2020, some cities there saw a shift to the political right. The region has been particularly hard hit by the influx of migrants being released into local communities. Nonprofits along the southwestern border provide a significant amount of help, but the peak was also overwhelming for them at times.
Immigration and human rights advocates have said the order turned out to be former President Donald J. Trump’s most successful measure to limit the number of people granted asylum in the United States. Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr Trump’s restrictive immigration policy, tweeted on Wednesday that lifting the public health order would be “one of the most spectacular travesties in history” and would “open the floodgates on a biblical scale.”
Mr Biden’s decision to enforce the injunction for more than a year after campaigning to restore compassion to the immigration system has cast doubts among immigration attorneys about his commitment to do so.
Even with the order in effect, the Biden administration has allowed hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants to undergo deportation procedures, many of whom entered the country with young children. The reasons ranged from humanitarian exemptions to operational restrictions such as limited detention space. The United States cannot expel migrants from certain countries, including Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, due to diplomatic tensions, and those migrants make up a burgeoning number of new arrivals.
Border officials have detained 900,000 undocumented migrants at the southwestern border since October, according to the Homeland Security Department. In the previous 12 months, undocumented migrants were caught no less than 1.7 million times. Among the reasons the ministry has cited for the increase are natural disasters, “severe economic decline causing food and housing insecurity”, crime, corruption, lack of education and health care, and the pandemic.
Some argue that inconsistent enforcement of the public health rule and lack of punishment of those caught illegally crossing are partly to blame for the high numbers. Homeland Security officials estimate that 30 percent of illegal crossings during the pandemic are repeat offenders.
The spike in illegal migration has at times overwhelmed border officials. To speed up the time it takes to bring people into the country and to avoid overcrowding in the gathering environments, border officials have let some migrants into the country with incomplete paperwork and no court date, leaving migrants in the dark and new ones. backed up in the already backward immigration court system. Immigrants wait an average of five years for their first trial.