Biden considering executive action to turn away migrants, strengthen asylum standards: report 

President Biden is considering using his executive powers to beef up asylum standards and turn away migrants seeking to enter the US between ports of entry, according to a report.  

The proposals being discussed by the White House include raising the threshold needed for asylum seekers to meet the “credible fear standard” and swiftly deporting those who don’t meet the new criteria, according to Politico. 

The president is also mulling executive action that would ban migrants from seeking asylum if they enter the US unlawfully through areas along the porous southern border not designated as official entry points, the outlet reported.  

That action would reportedly be tied to a trigger and would only kick in after a certain number of illegal crossings are made over an unknown period. 

The Senate’s bipartisan border deal included a similar mechanism that would have let Biden, 81, shut down the border when crossings exceeded a 5,000-per-day average over one week. The bill, strongly opposed by several Republicans, never made it onto the Senate floor for a vote. 

Biden could announce the policy changes as soon as next week, according to Politico, ahead of his March 7 State of the Union address. 

However, a final decision has not yet been made on whether to go forward with the executive actions. 

A White House official argued that congressional action on the border crisis would be preferable to any potential executive action, which would be devoid of funding and resources to implement.

“The Administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system,” White House spokesperson Angelo Fernandez Hernandez told the outlet. 

“No executive action, no matter how aggressive, can deliver the significant policy reforms and additional resources Congress can provide and that Republicans rejected,” he added. 

More than 7 million migrants have been encountered by US Customs and Border Protection agents along the southern border since Biden took office in 2021, CBP data shows, including 961,537 in the current fiscal year. 

A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that just 18% of people surveyed said the government is doing a good job dealing with migrants seeking to enter the US at the southern border, while 80% said it is doing a bad job amid the historic surge.