How Advocates Pushed The Biden Administration To Take Immediate Action On Immigration

Speaker 1: 00:00 Shortly after taking office on Wednesday, president Joe Biden issued a stack of executive orders regarding immigration enforcement. He also unveiled legislation to reform the county's immigration system. KPBS reporter max Revlon Nadler tells us the Biden administration is moving quickly to address the thousands of asylum seekers stuck in Tijuana. Speaker 2: 00:21 President Biden signed several executive orders regarding immigration on day one, including a call for Congress to grant permanent status and a path to citizenship for dreamers and changes to arrest priorities for immigration and customs enforcement. Other day one promises are still unfulfilled, including a 100 day moratorium on deportations. UCLA law professor Hiroshi motor Mura thinks the Biden administration has shown a real interest in solving the humanitarian crisis along the border. Speaker 3: 00:51 The first step that probably the deepest commitment of the Vita ministration is to restore senses some sense of the rule of law. Speaker 2: 00:58 Comprehensive immigration reform will take months to work through Congress, but immediate action for those in immigration detention and asylum seekers along the border could take just a few short weeks. As the Biden administration looks to quickly amend a Trump administration rule that stopped asylum processing. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Erica Pinero is a lawyer who works with asylum seekers stuck in Tijuana. Speaker 4: 01:21 I think we've seen the administration backtrack from some of the day one promises to sort of, uh, we need to do some work before we fulfill said promise Speaker 2: 01:34 How much of that work has been done in coordination with a group of local officials and immigrant advocacy groups known as the California welcoming task force, working with the president's transition team, they began to outline ways the Biden administration can begin to quickly process thousands of asylum seekers along the Southern border and allow them to safely enter the United States. Attorney Margaret early was part of that group. Speaker 4: 01:57 We understand that the Biden administration is facing serious challenges due to the extreme measures that the Trump administration took to undermine asylum law and dismantle immigration law. It's a moment of reckoning for immigration law. Speaker 2: 02:16 Tuesday asylum seekers in Tijuana held a press conference, asking the Biden administration to take quick action Speaker 3: 02:28 [inaudible] [inaudible] [inaudible]. Speaker 2: 02:34 But first the administration needs to work with customs and border protection, which manages the countries. Ports of entry leadership of the agency has been hostile to many of the Biden administration's priorities per Julie thinks they could find more help elsewhere in the government. Speaker 4: 02:48 The Biden administration should look into other facets of the government that can take away any legal, humanitarian type away from basically a police enforcement agent. Speaker 2: 03:03 The Biden administration has already floated a stepped up role for asylum officers and the state department. There's an estimated 15,000 asylum seekers in Baja, California. We either were denied the chance to apply for asylum or were sent back there under the remain in Mexico program. The first step for many of these asylum seekers in San Diego will be a shelter run by Jewish family service of San Diego in conjunction with the County. Kate Clark is their senior director of immigration services. She says the shelter is up to the task of housing, asylum seekers during a public health emergency. Speaker 4: 03:36 We've seen historically asylum seekers coming and arriving to our care in very stressful situations like in, in need of medical assistance with communicable conditions. But really we've been able to develop a coordinated response with public health and other medical infrastructure to be able to, to tend to the unique needs that our guests have when they arrive to us. Speaker 2: 03:58 After a few days at the shelter, they'll then continue their immigration case from inside the U S as the Biden administration reopened safe pathways into the country for those seeking safety and opportunity. San Diego looks to become once again, a front door into the United States. Speaker 1: 04:15 Joining me is KPBS reporter max Revlin Nadler, and max, welcome. Good to be here. It's obvious from your reporting that there's a whole array of immigration policy challenges ahead for the Biden administration, but let's break this down. What has the president done already with that stroke of the pen to change Trump's immigration policy? Speaker 2: 04:36 It was a fairly robust, robust first day on immigration policy. He signed an executive order regarding DACA and protecting DACA recipients in the United States. He rescinded the Muslim travel ban. He changed immigration and customs enforcement priorities. So that would include people who are in the U S whether they could be arrested by HIAs and, uh, charge for possible deportation. He paused a pending the next couple of days, construction on the border wall. And, um, this was not an executive order, but this came down from the department of Homeland security itself. Late last night. This had been a long time, uh, asked by immigration advocates. There's a 100 day moratorium on deportations in the United States right now for most deportations, which is truly a unprecedented step. Speaker 1: 05:27 President Biden has spoken a great deal about his determination to reunite children, separated from their families at the border. Has he moved on that? Speaker 2: 05:36 Not yet right now, where things stand with that is he's promised that there would be more money. There would be action taken to track down. Uh, those people, uh, who had been separated. Then I spoke with one advocate this week who said, listen, we're already talking about three years ago. In some cases for these separations, people have gone, um, either might be in the interior of the U S they might be elsewhere in central America. They might be in hiding. This is going to be a really tough, um, ask for the Biden administration to make sure that everyone is reunited, especially because so much time has passed. Speaker 1: 06:11 How do Biden's new executive orders help DACA recipients Speaker 2: 06:15 Right off the bat? It just gives them some level of safety and assurance their lives to the kind of been a, uh, a political football for the past few years, especially under the Trump administration. So they're, they're looking forward to, um, not having to worry about being on ICE's radar for possible deportation and, you know, hopefully in their minds, uh, a resolution to their, their status, which would come in the form of comprehensive immigration reform, which the Biden administration to the surprise of many has really prioritized in the first, uh, couple of days of its presidency. Speaker 1: 06:52 Yeah. Tell us more about the legislation that was unveiled by this new administration on immigration reform. It's Speaker 2: 06:59 Really robust. It would kind of change the entire immigration system as it was, and include a pathway to citizenship for both DACA recipients and people in the program called TPS temporary protected status, where basically people who have come to the United States because of humanitarian or ecological disasters, uh, have been in the United States now for, in some cases, decades. Uh, so this would be a mass legalization program on par with that undertaken by president Reagan back in the 1980s. Um, and it would settle kind of the, the legal limbo that many people have been stuck in. Uh, that being said there, there's going to be resistance to this. This is something that can't really be passed through reconciliation. There's going to need to be 60 votes in the Senate, which means there needs to be bipartisan support. So the bill that we're seeing out today, which is in many cases, a wishlist for immigrant advocates, um, will be whittled down if it passes it all. Speaker 1: 07:55 We know that many members of the customs and border protection agency, we're big fans of former president Trump. And the quote about CBP included in your report is not exactly welcoming of president Biden's changes. So what kind of challenge does that present to the new administration? Speaker 2: 08:15 The new administration has taken quick action. One of the first things it did was the new head of CBP. Uh, at least the acting head right now is from the Northern border. So, you know, basically politics really do travel in different areas. Uh, so people who are working on the Northern border are now going to come to the Southern border. That's going to change some of the priorities down here. Um, and there's talk of basically sidestepping, customs and border protection as much as possible in terms of elevating the role of asylum officers right now, border patrol agents have been doing credible fear interviews, things that border patrol agents had never done before they were asked to do during the Trump on top of that, you could see a ramped up role of the state department offering people visas, who have been stuck in the remain in Mexico program in Tiquana and other pandemic stricken border towns Speaker 1: 09:08 Is the plan that you mentioned in your report. That's being floated by the new administration to shelter, asylum seekers in shelters like Jewish family services instead of in border detention centers. Is that a new idea or is that a return to what used to happen? Speaker 2: 09:24 Well, it used to happen was there was no need for even these shelters for the most part, because ice would even coordinate for the travel for asylum seekers into the interior of the U S that was stopped by the Trump administration. So you had a situation where asylum seekers were being dropped right in the middle of downtown, uh, American cities. They had nowhere to go. They had no way to contact, uh, their sponsors or family members inside the U S. So this ad hoc shelter system, which in San Diego County was spearheaded by Jewish family service. And then ultimately got a support from the County, uh, was created. Now we're in a different situation because of the pandemic where people are going to need to be quarantined. People are going to need to be tested. So a shelter like the one created by Jewish family service, which has been sitting mostly dormant for the past couple of months, will be crucial in making sure that people can safely enter the United States and get the medical attention that they need. Uh, and, and it looks more likely than not that asylum processing in one form or another is going to begin again in the next couple of weeks. Speaker 1: 10:29 And I've been speaking with KPBS reporter max Revlin Nadler, max. Thank you. Speaker 2: 10:33 Thank you.