On Monday, a report stated that President Biden is considering bringing back the practice of detaining migrant families who cross the border illegally, which would significantly reverse his immigration policy.
Biden shut down the practice of family detention in 2021 after campaigning against the Trump administration’s use of the policy.
However, the consideration of reimplementing family detentions comes as the Biden administration faces the end of Title 42, a Trump-era program that allowed authorities to quickly deport migrants apprehended crossing the border.
Officials fear a surge of illegal immigrants at the border after May 11, when the Title 42 public health measure officially expires.
Senior White House and Department of Homeland Security officials have held several meetings over the past few days to discuss options for deterring migrants, including detaining families caught crossing the border illegally for up to 20 days.
Continuing with the current practice of releasing families into the country with monitoring devices and requiring them to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office is also being considered.
DHS has indicated that no final decisions have been made on how border policing will change, if at all, after the end of Title 42.
Leecia Welch, the lead lawyer in Reno v. Flores, the Supreme Court case that limited the time children can spend in detention and established minimum standards for holding facilities, stated that the possibility of family detention coming back is “heartbreaking.”
Family detention has been used by former Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump.
The Trump administration sought to detain families indefinitely to discourage illegal immigration, but the courts blocked attempts to end limits on how long minors could be detained.
Biden campaigned against Trump’s use of family detention and was urged by fellow Democrats to adopt more humane immigration policies after he took office.
“Children should be released from ICE detention with their parents immediately,” he wrote in a Twitter post in June 2020.
“This is pretty simple, and I can’t believe I have to say it: Families belong together.” Last month, the Biden administration published a new immigration rule to disqualify migrants illegally entering the US from asylum applications.
The new rule would require asylum-seekers to apply for protection in any country they travel through before they arrive in the US.
»Is Biden reversing his immigration policy?«
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