There’s a hushed sense of urgency in the Biden administration as they scramble to impose new policies in a bid to soften the stance on unauthorized migrants arriving in the US—a clear last-ditch effort aimed at derailing the impending immigration revamps and large-scale evacuations planned by incoming President Donald Trump. Surprisingly, New York City is poised to experience these tweaks firsthand.
The current administration, in its twilight hours, is making moves to allow immigrants sidestep the procedure of checking in at local offices. Insider sources from the Department of Homeland Security allege that this overhaul is a covert strategy to simplify evasion from authorities for these migrants.
Even so, the proposed system, even at its highest operational efficiency, turns a blind eye to past felonies or undischarged warrants—a critical safety measure factored into the existing process tied to in-person appearances. It’s startling that in the initial phase of this program, up to 100,000 migrants will be enlisted.
But this initiative is just the tip of the iceberg of several drastic changes being steamrolled before the inauguration day arrives. One among these is granting migrants the liberty to contest government directives to submit to electronic surveillance whilst they wait for their immigration meetings.
Contrary to popular belief, experts suggest that dismantling these policies may not be as straightforward as Trump signing an order; it may face the twin hurdles of procedural impediments and legal disputes. Even a pile-up of perhaps unnecessary lawsuits can put a spanner in the works of what the incoming administration seeks to implement.
A former officer from Customs and Border Protection added his voice to growing criticism of the last-minute policy shifts by the Biden administration, terming this move as a conspicuous deviation from the tradition of a serene handover of power. He further dubbed it as a transition marked more by obstruction than cooperation.
As the clocks tick down to Trump’s inauguration, illegal migrants keep breaching US borders with impunity. Attempting to do away with these new policies might be slowed down by ongoing court challenges.
Perhaps, as an illustration of the problem’s magnitude, the city’s ICE office is swamped by the sheer bulk of unauthorized migrants. Astonishingly, by the start of the last year, the office’s calendar was packed until 2032 with scheduled appointments to process immigrants released in the US.
The city has seen a staggering figure of over 223,000 migrants since the crisis began and a whopping 58,000 are still housed in city-funded shelters and maintained on the taxpayer’s dime. The seemingly spiralling migrant influx over the recent years starkly highlights the city’s struggle with this issue.
Moreover, the current database rigorously scans for arrest records of migrants across the country—even those who play truant for their scheduled check-ins—and notifies officials. This system gives ICE the chance to take a forward foot against undocumented migrants who have a brush with the law.
Unfortunately, the incoming system doesn’t integrate with the existing tracking database for migrants, obstructing the ICE’s efficiency to keep tabs on criminal migrants. Clearly, this data is pivotal to kick-start targeted searches for individuals.
Added to this, there are plans to relax regulatory oversight on electronic supervision of migrants who are let off, using methods like ankle bracelets. This suggests that the new system might give many migrants an undeserved free pass.
Alongside other proposed changes, migrants will be bestowed with new allowances to challenge monitoring and tracking. If this system comes into play, migrants could demand a review at their convenience and call for their monitoring status to be either eased or nullified.
This essentially arms migrants with the power to opt out of the program completely. Migrants who are complaint while being tracked can request to have their monitoring system downgraded. And should this appeal meet with rejection, they have the option to drag officials through a long-winded appeals process.
Resultantly, this spawns a horde of unnecessary administrative paperwork which attempts justifying the current actions. This tedious bureaucracy might push many to just remove individuals from tracking, sparing themselves the ordeal of an appeals process.
What’s clear from these moves is how the Biden administration is uncannily trying to flip the script on immigration policy as they exit the stage, generating an uphill battle for the incoming administration trying to clamp down harder on illegal immigration.