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The immigration crackdown hit families with force in the opening week of the Trump administration. After a travel ban was announced, thousands of people headed to DFW International Airports Terminal D, where loved ones from Muslim-majority and African countries were being held by immigration agents a scene repeated at airports around the U.S.

Tell me what democracy looks like, yelled an 11-year-old boy back in January 2017. The crowd of protesters answered in rhythm at the sudden travel ban that they considered draconian: This is what democracy looks like.

For four years, President Donald Trumps administration moved at every turn against legal and illegal immigration. Now, President-elect Joe Biden has promised that one of his first actions will be to immediately end the travel bans that hit majority-Muslim countries hard.

In the first 100 days, he plans to take on other immigration measures too, including restoring Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, the program that allows about 600,000 undocumented Dreamers who came to the U.S. as children or young teens to remain in the U.S. legally. In the first year, Biden said this week, he will allow as many as 125,000 refugees into the country, up from the modern low of 15,000.

But many changes detailed on Bidens campaign website are couched with words such as review.

Under the Biden administration, were about to see the pace of immigration changes slow down significantly, predicts Andrew Selee, president of the D.C.-based Migration Policy Institute.

Some immigration experts are restrained about the scope of ultimate change especially while the nation is under the weight of the COVID-19 pandemic.

I dont have a lot of hope, said Alia Salem, a veteran Dallas organizer on immigration and Muslim issues. Immigration policy wasnt good under Obama either, she said, referring to the eight years when Biden was vice president to President Barack Obama. He deported a lot of people. [Obama] didnt preface it by saying we have to keep all the Muslims out. He was an equal opportunity deporter.

In El Paso, where many of Trumps most stringent measures were unreeled first, immigration advocate Marisa Limn gave a cold-eyed assessment. Limn applauds the possible repeal of the travel bans and full restoration of DACA. But her big fear is that other immigration measures may become a bargaining chip.

Her list includes ending the use of a public health law known as Title 42 to expel immigrants without immigration court hearings because of the pandemic and repairs to the immigration courts, which are backlogged with nearly 1.3 million cases.

I just want this administration to know that theres deep wisdom here, said Limn, who is deputy director of the Hope Border Institute. We know that the system is broken. We cannot just try to make detention camps, or a wall, more palatable.

Reconstruction of the immigration system for a nation whose origin story is all about immigration will be a difficult process. Among the barriers: Republicans who wont support legislation and Republican leaders who know how to go to court.

Not every change or reversal can be done by a stroke of the pen. Some will require going through a long regulatory process. The effort will be Herculean: The Trump administration made more than 400 changes to the immigration system.

Heres how those on the ground view key issues:

Refugee and asylum policies

Trump halted refugee admissions for four months in one of his opening executive orders. After inheriting an annual admissions cap of 110,000 from the Obama administration, he has allowed fewer people into the country each year, leading to the new low of about 15,000 even as the United Nations says there are a record 26 million refugees around the globe.

The issue is an important one in Texas, which over the last decade has led the nation in refugee resettlement. North Texas has been a top area to establish new roots. Before the Trump administration, about 1,025 refugees were resettled annually in Texas through the International Rescue Committee, for example. This past year, that number fell to about 300.

Rapid-fire changes to refugee and asylum policies have gummed up the system both in the U.S. and abroad, where refugees wait outside their countries.

Constantly being bombarded by continuous change has been the most challenging in the last four years, said Suzy Cop, Texas executive director of the IRC.

The global pipeline must be repaired, Cop said. A chain of expired security vettings and medical clearances must be rebuilt.

In the interim, Cop said, she worries most about those seeking refuge from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Syria, both racked by civil war.

Trumps initiatives included the controversial Remain in Mexico policy, more formally the Migrant Protection Protocols, which requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their U.S. cases to be heard. Nearly 68,000 asylum-seekers went through the program, and about 24,500 cases are pending.

Whereas asylum seekers in the past could await hearings or the outcome of their cases in the U.S. some detained, others out on their own Remain in Mexico led to the creation of a huge camp of desperate immigrants stuck in Matamoros, across the Rio Grande from Brownsville. Families were largely taken care of by nonprofits, which organized charity help including food, tents, latrines and medical care.

After the coronavirus pandemic hit in March, the charity care and visits by volunteers diminished. Summer flooding from storms brought in snakes, rats and mosquitoes. The camp became one of the most cinematic lessons on the perceived cruelty of Trumps policies, perhaps eclipsed only by the sight of children being separated en masse from their parents during an earlier, failed program.

Biden officials say the new administration will surge asylum officers to the border to handle Remain in Mexico cases. Migrants who do not qualify will have the opportunity to make their claim before an immigration judge, but if they are unable to satisfy the court, the government will help facilitate their successful reintegration into their home countries, reads a Biden statement.

At a journalists convention in August, Biden said the Remain in Mexico policy would get a careful and gradual exit. First, he would build an infrastructure that would include hiring enough lawyers and judges and bringing in grassroots organizations.

We have to make sure that we build up the infrastructure to be able to accommodate Trumps cruel and inhumane border policies ripping children from their mothers' arms and Trumps migrant Protection Protocols you know, Remain in Mexico program, Biden said. I mean, all of this is going to take time, not a long time, but its going to take, you have to be prepared, so we dont create another crisis.

Civil detention

Prison-like civil detention grew in the Trump years, even for people seeking asylum from persecution in their homelands. In 1995, about 7,500 people were in civil detention daily. At the peak last year, 55,000 were in a network of detention centers and county jails.

With the pandemic and calls for social distancing, the number of people detained fell to about 17,000 this month, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

That raises the question: Does the federal government need detention for so many who are accused only of the civil offense of being in the country without legal status?

Most of the detention network is run by private industry, from Florida-based Geo Group to Louisiana-based LaSalle Corrections, whose facilities include the Prairieland Detention Center about an hour southwest of Dallas.

Biden and his team said they would end the for-profit detention centers.

No business should profit from the suffering of desperate people fleeing violence, the Biden website says.

The Biden administration has also said it will end prolonged detention. It says proven alternatives to detention, along with nonprofit case management, can ensure that immigrants meet legal obligations.

For those seeking asylum, the Biden team has said it will ensure that facilities that temporarily house migrants seeking asylum are held to the highest standards of care and prioritize the safety and dignity of families above all.

But detention doesnt make sense to most asylum-seekers. One asylum-seeker from Cameroon was incarcerated as soon as he came into the Rio Grande Valley more than a year ago. He asked to be known by the initials C.A. because of his fear of retaliation by detention center guards and back home if he is deported.

Detention or prisons should be for people who have committed crimes, not for immigrants, C.A. said in a phone interview. We have not committed crimes. We have come into this country pleading for asylum.

Legal immigration

Many recent Central American asylum seekers say they come to the U.S. border for a mix of reasons, including violence and a lack of jobs in their homelands. In recent years, many of them havent qualified because of tight rules on the types of persecution that they must prove they have suffered.

Biden surprised many when he said he would send a comprehensive immigration bill to Congress within his first 100 days in office. The details are unclear especially about what would happen to the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. But many such initiatives have failed in a polarized Congress.

President George W. Bush, probably the most pro-immigrant Republican president in recent history, came to the office thinking that were going to get comprehensive immigration reform in six months, noted Muzaffar Chishti, a lawyer and senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. Then the 9/11 attacks happened, remaking the national conversation about immigration. Other comprehensive overhauls have failed since then.

The last big measure, in 2013, passed the Senate, clearing the way for millions of undocumented people to have a chance at a lengthy pathway to citizenship. In exchange, the proposal called for broad security measures at the border. It failed in the House.

The Trump administration has clamped down on the number of people who can come to the U.S. to work legally. Could more labor visas be given? That wouldnt be an easy move politically. The wobbly economy is likely to be hurt by a surge of COVID-19 cases in the months to come. That most likely means more struggling businesses and job losses. Offering work visas to foreigners while U.S. citizens are losing jobs would be a hard sell.

Nonetheless, some push for an increase in the number of labor and family-based visas. The Biden team has said it wants to reform the visa system for both lower and higher skilled jobs. Concerns Biden raised include how to pay fair and prevailing wages and how to ensure the right of all workers to join unions.

An easier path to visas would help some immigrants. But their advocates remain worried.

Tania Guerrero, a lawyer with the U.S.-based Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., known as CLINIC, provides legal service to immigrants in northern states of Mexico, including in the Ciudad Jurez area. Guerrero said the reality of what is ahead is sobering.

The fact is that it was such a tight election, Guerrero said. The United States remains a very divided country. Trump lost, but Trumpism is alive and well, and the message is, while Im happy Biden won, we have to hold them accountable and do what weve always done: Defend the most vulnerable. Give them a voice.

One of the migrants she has counseled is Octavio, a Mexican from the central state of Michoacn who is desperate for any way out of his homeland, possibly through asylum. He asked that he be known only by his first name because of drug cartel violence he witnessed in his home state. He is now in Jurez with his wife and two children, weighing his chances of a life across the Rio Grande.

Octavio is encouraged by the Biden election. It gives me and my family some hope," he said. "But at this point, were so depressed, down, that anything is a sliver of hope.

Excerpt from:
Will a Biden administration really reverse the Trump administration crackdown on immigrants? - The Dallas Morning News