As the executive completes its first year marred by a historic crisis at the southern border, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas proclaimed his agency has “fundamentally changed” interior immigration enforcement and promised similar sweeping changes in 2022.
“We have fundamentally changed immigration enforcement in the interior,” Mayorkas declared in an interview with CBS News Thursday. “For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states that a non-citizen’s unlawful presence in the United States will not, by itself, be a basis for the initiation of an enforcement action.
“This is a profound shift away from the prior administration’s indiscriminate enforcement.”
Mayorkas was referring to a radical overhaul of guidance for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents under his leadership. After unsuccessfully trying to impose a 100-day moratorium on deportations, the Biden administration released new rules that prioritized three categories of illegal immigrants: recent border crossers, aggravated felons and national security threats. The administration has claimed it allows agents to focus limited resources on top priority threats.
Additionally, in the following months, ICE was restricted from carrying out worksite enforcement operations and operations near certain areas. In September, a memo instructed agents that someone’s illegal status should not alone be the basis for arrest and deportation.
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testifies during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Nov. 16, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington.
(AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
The Biden administration has faced intense criticism from Republicans for its sweeping immigration moves since taking office and a massive border crisis that critics say was caused by its combination of lax interior enforcement and deconstruction of key Trump-era border security policies. On Thursday, more than 100 congressional Republicans called on the DHS Inspector General to review the administration’s actions.
The administration has claimed that the surge, which saw over 212,000 migrants encountered at the border in July at 2021’s peak — and then a Haitian migrant surge just weeks later — was triggered by “root causes” such as poverty, corruption, gang violence and even climate change. Vice President Kamala Harris was dispatched to the region to lead talks with those countries to help resolve those issues, but the migrant numbers kept rising.
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The numbers dropped in the fall, but at the end of 2021, the numbers were still well over the 150,000 mark. Republican critics have pointed to the dramatic rollback of policies, not just on interior enforcement, but also on the border itself.
The Biden administration has limited the use of Title 42 public health expulsions, terminated the Trump-era Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Northern Triangle countries and initially ended the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) that saw migrants returned to Mexico rather than being released into the U.S. Due to a court order, the administration has re-established the MPP policy.
The administration has also been criticized by politicians from the left who have been unhappy that policies like Title 42 are still in place and believe that the administration has not sufficiently distanced itself from the actions of the prior administration.
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In the CBS interview, Mayorkas said the administration’s priorities for 2022 include reforming immigration detention, reducing backlogs, reshaping the asylum process and expanding naturalization outreach.
“We accomplished a lot in this past year,” Mayorkas said. “We certainly have plans to do a lot more — and we will do it.”
