“Administration officials have urged patience as they review the dysfunctional system under which migrants are currently processed at the border, and as they seek to dismantle former President Donald Trump’s complex web of policies that put asylum and other humanitarian protections out of reach for most people. For now, that means that the vast majority of migrants are still being turned away.
Though the White House has declined so far to call it a “crisis,” the situation is increasingly dire: As of Wednesday, more than 3,700 children were reportedly being detained in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) temporary holding facilities designed for adults for longer than legally permitted — a record high. These are the same facilities that generated widespread outrage under the Trump administration, where children slept with nothing but mylar blankets to keep them warm at night on concrete floors.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Saturday that a CBP facility is “no place for a child,” but that border agents are “working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care.”
CBP officials are struggling to quickly transfer them to state-licensed shelters for migrant children, which have had to drastically slash their capacity amid the pandemic, and where beds are now full. That has forced the administration to reopen temporary tent facilities in Carrizo Springs, Texas, which are costly and not subject to the same level of oversight as permanent shelters.
On Saturday, the administration also announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would help “receive, shelter and transfer” unaccompanied children over the next 90 days. The agency is now working to expand the capacity of shelters designed to administer care to children.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same crisis has been playing out cyclically since at least 2014, when the US saw a dramatic shift in the kinds of migrants who were arriving at the southern border, from primarily single-adult Mexicans to families and children from Central America’s “Northern Triangle”: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
In the years since, the federal government has failed to adapt to ensure that children and families are treated humanely. That burden is now on Biden.”
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“While most migrants are still being turned away at the border, the Biden administration began accepting unaccompanied children in February in a reversal of Trump-era policy. Most of them have been stranded in Mexico for a year under that policy, despite their right to seek protection under federal law, and are now seeking to reunify with family in the US.
Since 2014, the number of unaccompanied children arriving at the southern border has remained above 40,000 annually, peaking at more than 72,000 in 2019 under Trump.”
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“The administration also announced Wednesday that, in an effort to reduce the pressure on resources at the border, it is restarting the Central American Minors program, which allows children in danger to apply to come to the US from their home countries instead of having to come to the US-Mexico border to do so. Trump had ended the program after taking office, leaving around 3,000 children stranded who had already been approved for travel.”
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“Biden has kept in place a Trump-era policy that has allowed the US to expel nearly all migrants arriving on the southern border with no due process on the grounds of curbing the spread of Covid-19.”
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“Biden has created narrow exceptions to the policy for unaccompanied children and asylum seekers who were sent back to Mexico to await their day in court in the US under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols. Last month, Mexico also stopped accepting some families with children under the age of 12 due to a change in its laws concerning the detention of children, so they have been released into the US instead.
But the vast majority of migrants still can’t enter the US under the policy.”
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“the Biden administration’s message to migrants is, “The border is not open,” and “Do not come in an irregular fashion.” But there is hope among migrant communities in Mexico that the new administration will eventually offer them protection given that Biden has sought to pursue more immigrant-friendly policies than his predecessor.”
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“Smugglers have also been spreading misinformation about the Biden administration’s plans to process asylum seekers in an effort to profit from it.”
“It appears likely, moreover, that the GOP-controlled judiciary will be a thorn in Biden’s side. Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch, for example, is already laying the groundwork to strip federal agencies of much of their power to regulate after Biden takes office, and Gorsuch almost certainly has the five votes he needs to make this happen.
The Republican Party dominates the federal judiciary in no small part due to six years of work by outgoing Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. When Justice Antonin Scalia died nearly a year before President Barack Obama left office, McConnell announced almost immediately that Obama’s Supreme Court nominee would get the cold shoulder from a Republican Senate. When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died shortly before the 2020 election, McConnell ensured that her conservative replacement, Amy Coney Barrett, would be confirmed just days before the nation voted to cast Trump out of office.
During the final two years of Obama’s presidency — the only two years of his presidency that Republicans controlled the Senate — McConnell imposed a near-total blockade on new appointments to the federal courts of appeals (often referred to as “circuit” judges). The result was that now-outgoing President Donald Trump got to fill nearly all of the judicial vacancies that came open during his presidency, plus nearly all of the appellate court seats Obama should have filled in his final two years.
Although Obama served for twice as long as Trump, there are currently 53 active circuit judges appointed by Trump and only 50 appointed by Obama. (Obama’s judicial confirmations also got off to a fairly slow start, though they picked up considerably once the Senate changed its rules in 2013 to make it easier to confirm judges.)”
“The Interior Department said on Monday it had completed its environmental review for a massive wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts, a key step toward final approval of the long-stalled project that will play a prominent role in President Joe Biden’s effort to expand renewable energy in the U.S.
The completion of the review is a breakthrough for the U.S. offshore wind industry, which has lagged behind its European counterparts and the U.S. onshore industry that has grown rapidly, even during the pandemic. It also marks a key acceleration for the Biden administration that has advocated renewables growth on public lands and waters.”
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“The project had suffered repeated delays under the Trump administration.”
“Trump reshaped virtually every part of the U.S. immigration system through executive action, policy guidance and regulatory change.
In total, he made more than 400 changes to immigration policy in the last four years, according to the Migration Policy Institute, a think tank. The Immigration Policy Tracking Project, run by former Obama Homeland Security official, Lucas Guttentag, puts that number closer to 1,000.
Biden has made fighting the coronavirus, which is still infecting tens of thousands and killing 2,000 Americans each day, his top priority. After he helps bring the pandemic under control, he plans to tackle several issues, including the economy, infrastructure, gun restrictions and immigration.
In addition to Trump’s changes, the circumstances surrounding immigration on the ground have changed, making it impossible for Biden to try to just return to pre-2016 policies.”
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” On his first day in office, Biden released a massive immigration package and signed several immigration-related executive orders to halt construction of the border wall, end a ban from some majority-Muslim nations and restart a program to protect so-called Dreamers.”
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“But Biden has yet to address a series of issues: He punted on whether high-skilled workers should be given preference if they are being hired at companies paying more money instead of through a random lottery. He hasn’t fulfilled a campaign promise to tackle the massive backlog at immigration courts that doubled under Trump. (Even with the backlog, many of those cases were denied.)
And last month, he called for a review of the so-called public charge rule that makes it harder for immigrants who rely on public benefits, such as Medicaid, to obtain permanent residency in the country.”
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“Biden will be forced to make decisions on some issues, including the closure of the southern border and granting visas to more than 100,000 foreign workers. But it’s not clear when — or if — he will act at all on others, including fighting court cases and changing the refugee caps.”
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“One of the most pressing issues Biden faces: to allow temporary migrants, such as students, easier access to visas, even though many consulates and embassies are closed. Only 43 of 233 processing centers for guests are processing routine cases, according to the State Department.”
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“Before Trump came into office, nearly 500,000 new foreign students came into the United States in a year, pumping billions of dollars into small and large schools across the country. That number slowly declined under the former president and plummeted last year.
Julie Stufft, acting deputy assistant secretary for visa services, acknowledged the problems in securing visas last week. She said her office is working to solve the problem, though those who plan to reside in the U.S. permanently take precedent. Some immigrants from select countries, including China and much of Europe, are still banned from traveling to the U.S. due to the pandemic.
Gregory Chen, senior director of government relations at the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the Biden administration deserves credit for pursuing many of the reforms he had pledged to do during the campaign. But, Chen said, “The jury is still out on whether they are going to be successful in implementing those policies.””
“Only a tiny portion of the spending in the bill goes toward vaccinations and other priories directly related to the pandemic.
Much of the rest of the spending is not well-suited, or even designed, to respond to current economic conditions, which are increasingly favorable.”
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“Take public education, where Democratic-allied teacher unions dominate. It’s not clear why any additional spending is necessary, given that tens of billions of education funding from prior Covid relief bills are still unspent, even as many districts have already begun to reopen for in-person instruction.
Nonetheless, the bill spends roughly another $130 billion on K-12 education. According to a CBO estimate, by the time most of the money is spent we will have long exited the pandemic that supposedly justifies it.”
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” The $350 billion in aid to states and localities comes despite state and local tax revenue being down only a tick through much of 2020 compared with the year before. According to widely cited Moody’s economist Mark Zandi, the state and local funding gap will be roughly $60 billion through fiscal 2022. Still, states and localities will be showered with money, after more than $500 billion in aid to states and localities last year.”
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“The bill spends $86 billion bailing out union-negotiated multi-employer pension plans.
Transportation gets tens of billions of new spending, which by its nature doesn’t happen quickly, and more than $30 billion goes to expanding Obamacare, a long-term Democratic policy goal.”
“The starting point of any conversation about U.S. policy toward Cuba needs to be a piece of unfinished business from the previous administration: the still-unfolding mystery of how 26 American diplomats were injured in Havana in 2016 and 2017.
The exact origins of the injuries remain uncertain, but the known and emerging evidence suggests the Cuban regime is guilty, if not by commission then at least by omission, of injuring U.S. personnel. This episode represents a likely direct attack on one country’s citizens by another, and there has yet to be a full accounting of who is responsible and how it all happened, or a resolution. If the Biden administration is tempted to engage anew with Havana, it must first hold the Cuban government to account for what these American diplomats endured.”
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“Cuba consistently denied involvement. Instead, the regime has peddled the theory that the cause was mass psychogenic illness—aka. mass hysteria—among America’s diplomatic personnel. Conveniently, this theory absolves Cuba of blame, shifting it instead to the victims. Yet the theory doesn’t hold up to scrutiny now, and never did.”
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“Accountability for the injuries of these 26 Americans must begin where the attacks started, in Havana.”
“Many young Saudis support MBS’ Vision 2030 for its promises of employment, prosperity, and less stringent gender regulations, which are especially welcome to the generation of Saudi millennials who spent their college years abroad and are eager for their country to be “normal.” Americans should remember that the people of Saudi Arabia are not responsible for MBS’ crimes, so the economic and social transitions that MBS has accelerated should be encouraged, however offensive they consider the crown prince’s other actions.
Oil and the U.S. military are what keep Arab dictators in power. The global economy is slowly scaling back its addiction to the fossil fuels that are killing the planet. The U.S. can and should stop propping up Arab dictators with weapons sales and instead help wean their economies off of oil. While many rightly consider engagement with MBS distasteful, for the sake of Saudi and American citizens as well as the global climate, Biden should help MBS achieve his more admirable goals while constraining his malignant inclinations.”
“As the Democratic candidate, Biden promised a swift return to the Iran nuclear deal. He then aimed to leverage that negotiation to curb other aspects of Tehran’s aggressive behavior — like its growing ballistic missile program — in follow-on chats.
But in the Oval Office, the president has found the Islamic Republic resistant to diplomacy — but willing to have proxies launch rockets at Americans in the Middle East. That led Biden to authorize a retaliatory strike in Syria against those militants, hoping that would deter future attacks while keeping the door open for talks.
And on the campaign trail, Biden called Saudi Arabia a “pariah” state, vowing to make it “pay the price” for human rights violations, including the grisly 2018 murder of dissident, US resident, and columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Though he released an unclassified intelligence report on Friday directly blaming Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing, Biden declined to punish the nation’s de facto ruler outright. Instead of authorizing sanctions, a travel ban, or an asset freeze, the president created the “Khashoggi ban,” which imposes visa restrictions on people who try to silence dissidents abroad. It’s unclear if that includes heads of state, however.
That action — combined with the end of US support for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen and a freeze on weapons sales — was meant to “recalibrate,” not “rupture” US-Saudi relations, Biden administration officials say. A major consideration was that MBS, as the crown prince is known, may soon officially run the country, so targeting him personally could doom future relations between Washington and Riyadh.”
“Without making Israel earn U.S. favors with any concessions of its own, the Trump administration orchestrated a campaign of maximum pressure on Iran; declared Jerusalem Israel’s capital and opened an embassy there; turned a blind eye to Israel’s settlement expansion; recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights; promulgated a peace plan that all but conceded 30 percent of the West Bank to Israel before negotiations with Palestinians had even begun; downgraded U.S. diplomatic relations with the Palestinian Authority; drastically curtailed U.S. assistance to the Palestinian people; and perhaps most significantly, made a major effort to facilitate normalization between Israel, the Gulf states and other Arab countries.
The Saudis also got in on the action. The Trump administration gave a blank check to Riyadh to pursue its disastrous military campaign in Yemen and aided and abetted it with U.S. military assistance for Saudi operations; acquiesced in MBS’s repression at home and covered up his role in the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi; and lavished arms sales on the Saudis over Congress’ objections.
If Trump made Israel and Saudi Arabia top foreign policy priorities, Biden seems intent on downgrading their importance. Much has been made of the nearly one month delay in Biden calling Netanyahu; Trump’s third call was to Netanyahu, and former President Obama reached out to then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on day one. One delayed call does not a relationship make or break. But Biden was sending a message nonetheless: I’m busy with domestic recovery and the Middle East is not a top priority, he was saying. I’m pro-Israeli, but not necessarily a pro-Netanyahu president.
Biden has also set out to put some distance between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Candidate Biden issued some very strong words about the Kingdom on the campaign trail, describing it as a pariah nation on human rights and promising to end U.S. support for its catastrophic campaign in Yemen. Days after Biden’s inauguration, the administration declared an end to American support for Saudi operations in Yemen and pledged to review current arms sales to Riyadh. And in an unmistakable sign of displeasure with the reckless and ruthless Crown Prince, White House press spokesperson Jen Psaki spoke of “recalibrating” U.S. relations with Saudi Arabia and indicated Biden will be speaking with his counterpart King Salman not MBS.
Biden is sending an unmistakable message: We can still be friends but it has to be with more benefits for the United States. Given my focus on domestic and other foreign policy priorities, I may not have a great deal of time to focus on your problems; don’t make it harder for the United States in the region or things between us will get complicated.
Biden’s early warning signals to Israel and Saudi Arabia don’t necessarily mean he is seriously prepared to make significant changes in either of these relationships.”
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“Joe Biden is no revolutionary—at home or abroad. As a cautious moderate Democrat, he’s more interested in remodeling the house than in tearing it down. And that applies to Saudi Arabia and Israel, too. Saudi Arabia isn’t a U.S. ally; but it is an important partner—at least until the rest of the world weans itself off Arab hydrocarbons and America benefits from U.S.-Saudi cooperation on counter-terrorism. And Israel, the region’s only democracy—however imperfect—is the one state in the region that shares any real coincidence of both interests and values with the U.S., and is a subject fraught with domestic political risks for any U.S. president.
After four years of one-way street relationships, Biden is right to want to inject real reciprocity and a measure of conditionality into the U.S. relationships with Israel and Saudi Arabia. He may well succeed if he simply recognizes that these two countries need America a hell of a lot more than we need them—and if he is prepared to use U.S. leverage to advance our national interests if they force his hand.”