In First Two Years, Biden Administration Is Outpacing Trump on Immigration Executive Actions
WASHINGTON — Midway through his four-year term, President Joe Biden has been unable to achieve the sweeping legislative changes to the U.S. immigration system that he promised upon taking office. Instead, the Biden administration has embraced executive action more fully than its predecessors, quietly transforming immigration enforcement in the U.S. interior, launching innovative humanitarian protection initiatives and helping restore legal immigration to pre-pandemic levels.
In all, the Biden administration has undertaken 403 immigration-related executive actions in its first two years, according to a Migration Policy Institute (MPI) analysis released today. That puts it on pace to far surpass the 472 executive actions on immigration advanced over four years by the Trump administration, which was widely perceived as having the most activist presidency yet on immigration.
Biden’s executive actions have touched many facets of the immigration system, analysts Muzaffar Chishti and Kathleen Bush-Joseph write in a new article for MPI’s online journal, the Migration Information Source. While most public and political attention has focused on the U.S.-Mexico border, which is experiencing record levels of migrant encounters, immigration enforcement within the United States has been overhauled. Although new immigration enforcement priorities have been held up by legal challenges, deportations are just a fraction of the numbers seen during the Trump and Obama years. Instead, the Biden administration has pursued a more targeted approach, focusing on criminal and national security threats as well as recent border crossers. It also has greatly expanded the use of alternatives to detention.
And while the administration has fallen far short of its goal to significantly expand refugee resettlement, which was slashed to its lowest levels during the Trump years, it has created new protection programs for Afghans, Ukrainians and other humanitarian migrants. It also has made more than 712,000 immigrants already resident in the United States newly eligible for Temporary Protected Status (TPS).
“While some executive actions have been stalled by the courts, Biden’s measures have nonetheless affected the lives of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, including many seeking protection,” the article notes.
“Yet the daunting challenges at the U.S. southern border, which is seeing record levels of migrant encounters by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), have overshadowed actions elsewhere in the immigration realm,” the authors added.
The article offers analysis of policy shifts during Biden’s first two years. It also provides data on arrests and removals by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE); detention and alternatives to removal programs; immigration court backlogs; legal immigration, naturalization levels and visa backlogs; TPS, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and parole programs; CBP encounters by type, including Title 42 expulsions; and more.
Read the article here: www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-two-years-immigration-record.
To sign up for the Migration Information Source’s monthly U.S. immigration policy updates, click here.
And for more on the Migration Information Source, which offers data snapshots of particular immigrant populations in the United States, country profiles, and features that analyze immigration developments around the world, check out: www.migrationinformation.org.