Under the pressure of record levels of migrant crossings reported in December, the Biden administration is weighing whether to restrict a key presidential authority on immigration to convince Republican lawmakers to approve more aid to Ukraine And border financing.
A small bipartisan group of senators was negotiate with the White House since December to see if they can reach an agreement on tougher asylum and migration laws, which Republicans have demanded in exchange for supporting President Biden’s demand for billions of dollars to fund border operations and military assistance to Israel, Taiwan and Ukraine.
As senators and the White House reached high-level agreements on strengthening asylum interviews, expanding expedited expulsions and creating an authority to expel migrants without humanitarian oversight when agents border workers are overwhelmed, negotiators have not resolved their differences on certain key issues. Among those issues is immigration parole, a legal tool used by the Biden administration to resettle hundreds of thousands of migrants that Republicans want to severely limit.
Senior White House officials have already told congressional Democrats that they will not entertain Republican demands to restrict parole. But at a White House meeting on Friday, Mr. Biden’s advisers acknowledged that a border deal with Republicans would not be possible without the administration agreeing to limit parole, CBS told CBS News. News from people briefed on these talks. Agreeing to restrictions on parole would be a significant concession for Republicans, since Biden has leaned heavily on the policy.
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Although it has so far not spoken much publicly about the negotiations, the White House has been aggressively trying internally to reach an agreement on border policy in the Senate due to its desire for more military aid to Ukraine and the political pressure it faces to reduce military aid. unprecedented number of migrants entering the United States illegally, people familiar with the internal deliberations said.
In December, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) processed more than 300,000 migrants at and between ports of entry along the U.S.-Mexico border, an unprecedented number matching roughly the size of Pittsburgh’s population. About 256,000 of those migrants entered the United States illegally between ports of entry, including a record 104,000 parents and children traveling as families, according to internal federal data obtained by CBS News.
A CBS News Poll released Sunday found that more than two-thirds — or 68% — of Americans disapprove of Mr. Biden’s approach to the U.S.-Mexico border, a record high. Sixty-three percent of respondents indicated support for stricter border policies.
White House, senators report progress in negotiations
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Natalie Quillian and Legislative Affairs Director Shuwanza Goff represented the administration in meetings in Congress or via Zoom with Senate negotiators, alongside the Secretary of Homeland Security , Alejandro Mayorkas. They were joined primarily by Republican Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.
A senior Biden administration official told CBS News on Saturday that significant progress has been made in border negotiations, noting that the White House hopes senators can share the framework of a deal with their colleagues this week. Senate negotiators share the same sense of optimism.
“Nothing’s done until it’s done, but I’m optimistic,” a source close to the negotiations told CBS News, speaking anonymously to discuss the negotiations.
Another person involved in the negotiations said lawmakers had made “good progress” but noted it was unclear whether the group would be able to finalize a deal this week.
The Biden administration has rejected Republican criticism that its policy decisions have attracted an influx of migrants, instead emphasizing the hemisphere-wide nature of the migration crisis. However, the president himself acknowledged that the U.S. asylum process was broken and empowered his team to work with lawmakers to reform it and reduce illegal crossings, the senior administration official said.
But the official warned that asylum restrictions won’t be enough to fix the system, saying the administration needs the $14 billion in border funding it has requested to impose more consequences – such as expulsions – to migrants who enter the country illegally.
The president has not hesitated to use his executive power to deter illegal crossings, the official said, citing an asylum restriction challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union and the decision to begin direct expulsions to the Venezuela at the end of last year. The administration also recently under pressure Mexico will stem migration to the United States further south, including by temporarily suspending legal travel and commerce at some official border crossings, another senior administration official noted.
The Biden administration has also made diplomatic efforts to slow the flow of migration, including lifting some sanctions on economically struggling Venezuela — a top source of U.S.-bound migrants — and seeking help from Mexico to stop buses and trains carrying migrants. Senior Mexican officials are expected to visit Washington this month to continue negotiations.
But an administration official said a long-term solution would require Congress to change a set of immigration laws that have not been updated since the 1990s.
A key Biden policy could be sacrificed
However, to get Congress to pass this long-elusive reform, Mr. Biden may have to sacrifice a key immigration power that Republicans believe he has abused: parole authority.
Parole allows federal officials to cite humanitarian grounds for allowing entry to aliens who would not otherwise have permission to be in the United States. Although it allows recipients to live and work legally in the United States on a temporary basis, parole does not give them permanent legal permission. Status.
Dating to the early 1950s, immigration parole authority has been used by Democratic and Republican presidents to quickly welcome migrants and refugees on humanitarian grounds, such as Hungarians fleeing Soviet rule, exiles Cubans and Southeast Asians fleeing communism.
But over the past three years, the Biden administration has used parole on a record scale, invoking it to resettle hundreds of thousands of Afghans evacuated from Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and Ukrainians displaced by the Russian invasion of their country.
Authorities have also used parole to try to divert immigration away from the U.S. border, offering migrants from four crisis-hit Latin American and Caribbean countries up to 30,000 spots each month to come legally to the country if they have sponsors. In another program, the administration has granted parole to migrants in Mexico who use a phone app to get appointments to enter the United States.
While the administration says its use of parole reduces pressure at the border, Republicans accuse it of violating that authority by admitting large groups of migrants who otherwise would not be admissible to the United States.
Beyond parole, other issues still need to be resolved by negotiators, including the trigger for the authority to deport migrants without asylum checks, according to people briefed on the negotiations. They debated how many illegal border crossings per day would trigger the policy and whether migrants processed at ports of entry should be counted.
The prospects for a possible agreement are darker in the House
If the White House and Senate reach a compromise, it is unclear whether such a proposal would gain the necessary support in the Republican-led House, where many conservative members want more asylum laws. strict, are completely opposed to aid to Ukraine and believe that the priority should be to remove Mayorkas. House Speaker Mike Johnson has made aid to Ukraine conditional on respecting the US border.
During tour of the Texas border town of Eagle Pass Last week, Johnson said Mayorkas was “not a good-faith negotiating partner,” blaming his policies for the migrant crisis. He called on senators to pass H.R. 2, a sweeping immigration bill that the House passed last year without Democratic support and that would revive most of the Trump-era border policies.
“If you don’t end the catch and release policy, if you don’t restore stay in Mexico. If you only address asylum or parole and not these other things, then you don’t address the problem. You’re not solving the problem. stemming the flow here,” Johnson said in an interview with Face the Nation. “That’s the number one goal for us to get this crisis under control.”
If the administration agrees to restrict parole, the move could alienate some Democrats who see it as a key policy to facilitate legal migration. Progressive and Latino lawmakers in Congress and migrant advocates have already sounded the alarm over asylum restrictions discussed by Senate negotiators, accusing the White House of harboring Trump-style policies .
