Joe Biden will unveil significant restrictive measures in order to reduce the number of illegal migrants crossing the border with Mexico to enter the United States, several American media reported Monday as the issue has become a pivotal theme of the presidential campaign.
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The US president is expected to sign an executive order authorizing certain government officials to expel migrants who cross the border illegally without their asylum application first being examined.
Joe Biden is expected to reveal these measures during a White House ceremony with border city mayors. They will apply to each jump in the number of migrant arrivals.
Contacted by AFP, the American executive refused to confirm this information.
“From day one,” the Biden government “considered what steps could be taken,” a White House official told AFP. “There have been no final decisions about what executive actions could be taken, or whether they would be taken.”
Immigration has emerged as a key subject in the campaign between Democrat Joe Biden and his Republican predecessor Donald Trump, who uses incendiary rhetoric towards migrants, accusing them in particular of “poisoning the blood” of the country.
In the 12 months leading up to October 2023, 2.4 million people were intercepted at the border with Mexico, a record. By December, some 10,000 people, driven by poverty and violence in Latin America, were crossing the border illegally every day.
Faced with these figures and attacks from the right on the subject, Joe Biden had already said he was considering using his regulatory powers to tackle the problem, even if this earned him criticism from his left wing.
The measures envisaged would be among the most restrictive ever put in place by a Democrat and would rely on the same mechanism as that used by the Trump government to ban immigration from certain Muslim-majority countries.
They would most likely be challenged in court.
