77 Democrats send a letter to Biden criticizing his border and immigration policies
Seventy-seven Democrats sent a letter to Biden Wednesday criticizing his administration’s policies restricting asylum access for migrants at the southern border.
A group of 77 Democratic lawmakers sent a letter to President Joe Biden on Wednesday criticizing his administration’s policies restricting asylum access for migrants crossing the southern border.
The letter, signed by New Jersey Sens. Bob Menendez and Cory Booker, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and 74 others, said the new policies announced Jan. 5 to open more legal options for migrants from Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba while also eliminating pathways for those nationalities to claim asylum at the border are “disappointing.”
While 30,000 migrants from those four countries will be eligible to apply for humanitarian parole protections from their home countries, Mexico has also agreed to take back 30,000 migrants per month from those same countries as the Biden administration expands the Trump-era Covid protections known as Title 42.
At a press conference Thursday, Menendez said, “We recognize that the United States is experiencing a difficult migration challenge at the southern border. But as elected officials, we are duty-bound to propose legal solutions, one that protects asylum-seekers while also securing the safe removal of migrants who have no legal claim to stay in the United States.”
How four U.S. mayors are responding to migrants and asylum-seekers amid humanitarian crisis at borderJan. 20, 202310:50Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has also said the administration is preparing to propose a new federal rulemaking that would allow his department to deny the right to claim asylum at the southern border for migrants who do not first seek asylum in a country they pass through.
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