President-elect Joe Biden said Tuesday that it will take months to reverse some of President Donald Trump’s actions on immigration and offered a slower timeline than he promised during his campaign, which could upset activists seeking to act with greater speed in this regard.
His comments are similar to those made by two of his top foreign policy advisers in an interview with the Spanish news agency EFE on Monday, in which they indicated that they were going to reverse the restrictive asylum policies implemented by Trump. Susan Rice, who will serve as domestic policy adviser, and Jake Sullivan, her pick for national security adviser, as well as Biden himself, warned that acting too quickly could create a new crisis on the border.
During a press conference in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden said that he has already begun to discuss the issue with the Mexican president and with “our friends in Latin America” and noted that the “timeline is to do it so that we can actually improve it and not let’s make it worse ”.
“The last thing we need to say is that we are going to immediately suspend the way access to asylum is operated right now and then end up with 2 million people on our border,” Biden said.
He noted that more funds are needed to have more asylum judges to process applications and promised that while he will work to relax Trump’s asylum restrictions, “it will probably take the next six months to get that in place.”
His comments come as arrests along the border have increased in recent months. According to data from Customs and Border Protection, arrests in October increased 30% compared to those made in September, and remained at that level in November.
Some experts predicted that the amount could increase in the first months of the Biden presidency, in response to the damage caused by the two hurricanes that hit Central America and the economic havoc that the coronavirus pandemic has caused, as well as the expectation of a focus more humane to immigration by the Biden government.
Both Sullivan and Rice said during their interview with EFE that Biden will take executive action where possible to address problems with the immigration system, highlighting plans to provide humanitarian aid and help boost Latin American economies to address the cause. source of the flow of immigrants seeking to reach the United States.
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