President Joe Biden’s “failed” immigration policy has been criticized by former White House adviser Stephen Miller. Miller said in an interview with Fox News that Biden had “rubbished and trashed” the US immigration system, calling Biden’s handling of immigration “completely impeachable.” “What this president has done is reduced Congress to a suggestion box,” Miller remarked.
[fvplayer id=”458″]
Miller stated that the immigration system of our country had been trashed and rubbished by this president almost as if he was an emperor. He also stated that his organization had been involved with several lawsuits against Biden’s policies and that in each one of them, the layout was that they were in violation of the clear command of the Congress and the Constitution.
Miller concluded that one of the cases that they litigated was in collaboration with Texas and that they won on Title 42. “And so yes, these are impeachable crimes, absolutely, especially because he has not complied with the court injunctions when he loses these lawsuits.”
Biden’s Immigration Policies (Title 42 and others)
Expulsions under Title 42 are removals by the United States government of those who have recently visited a nation where a contagious illness was prevalent. During the COVID-19 outbreak, the Trump administration invoked this clause to prevent numerous migrants from entering the country. The Biden administration has continued the initiative. Following two court defeats in March and increased pressure from key Democrats in Congress, the Biden administration announced on April 1 that Title 42 will be phased out by late May.
Several human rights organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International USA, Human Rights Watch, Human Rights First, and the American Immigration Council, have condemned Title 42. These organizations claim that the policy permits the US to deport asylum applicants without going through a judicial procedure.
More than 60 members of Congress, including Congresswoman Frederica S. Wilson, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Gregory W. Meeks, Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, and Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie G. Thompson, wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, urging him to stop the practice. They suggested in the letter that for the duration of the pandemic, Mayorkas should use alternate means of humanitarian support for detainees facing deportation.
Joe Biden’s immigration strategy is mostly predicated on undoing several of the Trump administration’s immigration measures. Biden overturned several of Trump’s immigration measures on his first day in office, including suspending construction of the Mexican border wall, cancelling Trump’s travel ban banning entry from 14 countries, and issuing an executive order to reaffirm DACA protections.
Under the direction of Alejandro Mayorkas, the Biden administration and the Department of Homeland Security substantially curtailed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation tactics, prioritizing national security and serious crime concerns above minor and nonviolent infractions.
Deportations under Biden Admin
Deportations from the Department of Homeland Security were also put on hold during the first 100 days of Biden’s presidency. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued the Biden administration on January 22, 2021, alleging that it had broken Biden’s written promise to cooperate collaboratively with the state of Texas.
On January 26, 2021, federal judge Drew B. Tipton delayed the Biden administration’s 100-day deportation memo, stating that the state of Texas would “suffer imminent and irreparable harm” and that the restraining order sought by Paxton would not hurt the administration or the public.
After entering the United States via Mexico in January 2022, the Biden administration returned Venezuelan migrants to Colombia without giving them the opportunity to claim asylum. The US Department of Homeland Security said that Venezuelans will be deported to Colombia “on a regular basis,” with the exception of migrants who have previously stayed in Colombia.
On the same day, Biden talked with Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on immigration. He emphasized the need of addressing the core causes of migration from Mexico to the United States, including allocating $4 billion to promote development in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. In the fiscal year 2021, the US Border Patrol made more than 1.7 million arrests of migrants unlawfully crossing the US-Mexico border, the greatest amount ever recorded.
US Citizenship Act Of 2021
The United States Citizenship Act of 2021 is a measure that President Joe Biden submitted on his first day in office. Representative Linda Sánchez formally presented it in the House.
The bill would make significant changes to the United States’ immigration, visa, and border control systems, including the reversal and prohibition by Congress of several of former President Donald Trump’s immigration-related executive acts. The act’s mission is to provide an earned road to citizenship, address the core causes of migration, handle the southern border responsibly, and reform the immigrant visa system, among other things.
Refugee Admissions
Biden signed an executive order on February 4, 2021, reversing some of Trump’s immigration restrictions. It also asked for an investigation to see if Afghan and Iraqi Special Immigrant Visa applications had been unnecessarily delayed.
A study on the impact of man-made climate change on environmental immigration to the United States was also required by the directive. It overturned a 2019 executive order that barred federal financing for refugee resettlement unless state and local governments agreed. However, in January 2020, a federal court overturned the injunction.
Biden stated that he intended to increase yearly refugee admissions to 125,000 in the fiscal year 2022, but on April 16, 2021, he signed an executive order keeping the Trump administration’s historically low refugee cap (15,000 per year). As a result of the backlash, the government reversed course and announced intentions to raise the refugee limit by May 15.
Biden was on course to accept the fewest refugees of any contemporary president as of April 2021, resettling just 2,050 refugees halfway through the fiscal year 2021. The Biden administration issued an executive order restoring an Obama-era program that gives asylum to captured migrants escaping domestic or gang violence, enabling them to remain in the US while their case is being assessed, which was revoked by Trump.
Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president of the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, praised Biden’s eight-fold increase in the refugee limit, saying it will save the lives of “hundreds of thousands fleeing violence and persecution.”
However, 160 criminal justice and immigration advocacy organizations wrote and signed a letter arguing that simply reversing Trump’s immigration policies would not be sufficient to achieve comprehensive immigration reform and racial justice, citing equally harmful immigration policies enacted during the Bush and Obama administrations, such as Operation Streamline.
More about Stephen Miller
On August 23, 1985, Stephen Miller was born. He is an American political counsellor who worked for President Donald Trump as a senior policy adviser and White House director of speechwriting. His views have been characterized as far-right and anti-immigration. Previously, he worked as the communications director for Senator Jeff Sessions. He also worked as a press secretary for Michele Bachmann and John Shadegg, two US Representatives.
Miller contributed to Trump’s inauguration address as a speechwriter. He has been a crucial adviser to Trump from the beginning of his presidency. Miller, an immigration hardliner, was a driving force behind Trump’s travel ban, the administration’s reduction in the number of refugees allowed, and Trump’s policy of separating children from their parents. Internal administration studies showing that refugees had a net beneficial effect on government income were suppressed by him.
Miller is said to have played a key part in Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen’s resignation in April 2019, which he attributed to her being too hardline on immigration.
Miller made incorrect and baseless assertions about massive electoral fraud on many occasions as a White House spokeswoman. Miller preached conspiracy theories and pushed articles from white supremacist magazines VDARE and American Renaissance, according to emails published in November 2019. Miller is on the list of radicals maintained by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Following a connection made by David Horowitz, Miller began working as a press secretary for Tea Party Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann after graduating from college. In early 2009, Horowitz assisted Miller in landing a job with John Shadegg. Miller began working for Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, who eventually became the US Attorney General, in 2009. He worked his way up to Sessions’ communications director.
Miller was a key figure in the failure of the Gang of Eight’s proposed immigration reform measure in the 113th Congress. Miller, as communications director, was in charge of scripting many of Sessions’ remarks on the measure. Miller and Sessions devised “nation-state populism”, a reaction to globalization and immigration that impacted Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to Miller. Miller also worked on Dave Brat’s victorious 2014 House campaign, in which he defeated Republican majority leader Eric Cantor for the first time.
Miller in The Trump Administration
Miller joined Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign as a senior policy consultant in January 2016. He had already contacted the campaign several times. He began speaking on behalf of the campaign in March 2016, acting as a “warm-up act” for Trump. Trump’s address at the 2016 Republican National Convention was written by Miller. Miller was designated the chairman of Trump’s economic policy team in August 2016.
Former White House top strategist and Breitbart News co-founder Steve Bannon was considered as having an “ideological kinship” with Miller, with whom he had a “long collaboration”. Miller, on the other hand, distanced himself from Bannon in 2017, when Bannon fell out of favour with other White House officials. Miller established the America First Legal Foundation, a conservative legal group, on April 7, 2021. This is the same legal organization he mentioned earlier.
Miller worked with Senator Jeff Sessions, Trump’s choice for Attorney General, and Steve Bannon, Trump’s senior strategist, in the early days of Trump’s presidency to establish measures restricting immigration and cracking down on sanctuary cities through executive orders. Executive orders were favoured by Miller and Bannon over legislation. Immigration organizations such as the Federation for American Immigration Reform, NumbersUSA, and the Center for Immigration Studies impacted Miller’s and Sessions’ immigration views.
Miller and Bannon were involved in the creation of Executive Order 13769, which sought to restrict travel and immigration to the United States by citizens of seven Muslim countries, suspend the United States Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) for 120 days, and ban Syrians from entering the country indefinitely. Miller is acknowledged as being the driving force behind the Trump administration’s decision to restrict the number of refugees admitted to the country.
In May 2017, Miller had a key influence on Trump’s decision to remove FBI Director James Comey. After an internal review and objections from White House counsel Don McGahn, Miller and Trump crafted a letter to Comey, which was not delivered, but Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was given a copy, after which he created his own letter to Comey, which was stated as the cause for Comey’s removal.
Miller was questioned by special counsel Robert Mueller in November 2017 about his participation in Comey’s firing. Miller prevented the Trump administration from releasing an internal analysis by the Department of Health and Human Services that indicated that refugees had a net positive effect on government revenues, according to The New York Times. Miller requested that only the expenses of migrants, not the money they bring in, be made public.
In October 2017, Trump presented Congress with a list of immigration reform demands, including the construction of a new wall along the Mexico–US border, the hiring of 10,000 additional US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, tightened asylum policies, and the elimination of federal funds for sanctuary cities in exchange for action on undocumented immigrants who arrived as minors. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy had shielded those immigrants from deportation until it was revoked a month earlier, in September 2017. The requests were prepared by Trump Administration officials including Miller and Sessions, according to the New York Times.
Add Comment