President Biden on Tuesday defended his early reliance on executive actions as he signed three more orders focused on immigration.
“There’s a lot of talk, with good reason, about the number of executive orders I’ve signed. I’m not making new law. I’m eliminating bad policy,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office.
“What I’m doing is taking on the issues that, 99 percent of them, that the last president of the United States issued executive orders I thought were counterproductive to our national security, counterproductive to who we are as a country,” he added. “Particularly in the area of immigration.”
Biden signed off on three orders on immigration. One established a task force focused on the reunification of migrant families separated at the southern border under the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy.
The task force will be led by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who was confirmed by the Senate earlier Tuesday. The order also revokes a measure signed by former President Trump that halted certain separations and called on Congress to address the matter.
“We’re going to work to undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration that literally, not figuratively, ripped children from the arms of their families, their mothers and fathers, at the border,” Biden said. “And with no plan, none whatsoever, to reunify the children who are still in custody and their parents.”
Another order directs agencies to undertake their own sweeping review of asylum policy in the U.S.
The orders nix a number of Trump immigration executive orders while directing the Department of Homeland Security to review policies that require immigrants to wait in Mexico while filing asylum claims and limit the opportunity to apply for asylum to those who passed through other countries in trying to reach the U.S.
It also outlines two prongs for dealing with migration patterns: a “root causes” strategy that primarily focuses on aid to El Salv… (Read more)
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