Biden Proposes Immigration Overhaul in Shadow of Obama Era
Joe Biden said Wednesday he would reverse Donald Trump’s immigration policies during his first 100 days in office
(Bloomberg) -- Joe Biden said Wednesday he would reverse Donald Trump’s immigration policies during his first 100 days in office while renewing a push for Congress to pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul and boosting aid to three key Central American countries to $4 billion over four years.
Biden issued his immigration plan months after most of his Democratic rivals, a sign of how tricky the issue is for the former vice president. He has faced criticism by activists and opponents for his fierce defense of Obama administration immigration policies, which included deporting 3 million people.
“The reason we’re the most incredible nation in the world is because we are a nation of immigrants,” Biden said at a Las Vegas town hall hosted by Culinary Workers Local 226.
Biden was asked about the Obama deportation record and ducked the comparison to focus on Trump. “It should be all about family unification,” he said. “It’s going to be a fundamentally different focus.”
Biden sounded a sympathetic tone about the factors that lead migrants to leave their home countries and the challenges they face in bringing other relatives to the U.S. once they’re settled. “It’s all about family,” he repeated during a lengthy response, which also touched on his support for granting citizenship to members of the U.S. military and on refugees fleeing from Venezuela.
Biden’s immigration plan, along with his Central America policy, were released just before his appearance before the Culinary Union, Nevada’s largest, which is a key political organizing force in the state. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both made appearances before the group earlier this week.
Biden has led Nevada polls by an average of 9 points, according to Real Clear Politics, with Sanders and Warren battling for second place. Nevada’s population is about 28% Hispanic.
Biden has said he would take immediate action to protect Dreamers -- young adults who were brought illegally to the U.S. as children -- and their families by reinstating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that includes a path to citizenship. The Trump administration stopped accepting applications for the program in 2017 and the Supreme Court will hear a challenge to that move, which could moot Biden’s plan -- or make it more complicated.
He would reverse the Trump administration’s asylum policies aimed at dramatically restricting migrants seeking humanitarian protection in the U.S. He would also undo the Trump administration’s national emergency that directs Defense Department money to border wall construction and its preference for lengthy detention periods over what Trump calls “catch and release.” Biden would also raise the annual refugee admission cap to 125,000 and aim to raise it over time.
Biden plans to eliminate for-profit immigration detention centers and assure that the conditions at any facilities holding asylum seekers are held to high standards. The centers have come under scrutiny for providing poor conditions, including inadequate health care and nutritional options.
Biden intends to spend $4 billion over four years to help Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador improve their economic and security situations, which push their residents to emigrate. Earlier this year, the Trump administration suspended aid to those countries amid the president’s frustration over continued border crossings, only to restart it in October. The money for the plan would come from reprioritizing Department of Homeland Security detention funding, Biden’s campaign said.
Much of the criticism Biden has faced on immigration has centered on the Obama administration’s deportations. Biden’s plan would, like Obama’s policy, prioritize the removal of national security threats and serious criminals, while blocking mass raids at workplaces, schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
Just as Biden skipped over an explanation of how his deportation policy would differ from Obama’s, previewing his proposal on the condition of anonymity did not explain how his approach would be different from Obama’s. “Joe Biden understands the pain felt by every family across the US that has had a loved one removed from the country, including under the Obama-Biden Administration,” his campaign’s written plan says.
At two debates, in July and September, Biden was pressed by moderators and by rivals to concede that the Obama administration’s policy was a mistake or that he advised Obama against the policy. He refused.
Biden told Telemundo’s José Díaz-Balart, under repeated pressure to apologize for the deportations, that he had “nothing” to be sorry for. He argued that he and Obama did the best they could under the existing laws and deflected, as he has at other times, to a more favorable comparison to Trump’s aggressive push to crack down on migration from Central America.
“I think what we should be doing is acknowledging that comparing what President Obama did and what Trump did is night and day,” Biden said in a nod to Trump’s attempt last year to implement a “zero tolerance” policy on what it deemed to be illegal border crossings, a policy that led to the separation of thousands of children in just a few months.
During September’s debate, Biden made the false blanket claim that the Obama administration “didn’t lock people up in cages, we didn’t separate families.” The Department of Homeland Security used cage-like enclosures made of metal fencing to hold migrants as far back as 2014. The Obama administration, like George W. Bush’s administration before it, separated adults and children when it suspected human trafficking or other dangerous conditions.
Approached by pro-immigration protesters at a South Carolina town hall last month, Biden was similarly argumentative, telling them “you should vote for Trump.” They’d asked him to commit to stopping all deportations if elected, but Biden said he would not do so. “No. I will not stop all deportations. I will prioritize deportations, only people who have committed a felony or serious crime,” he said. “No matter what happens, somebody who commits murder should be deported.”
(Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)
To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Epstein in Las Vegas at jepstein32@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Wendy Benjaminson at wbenjaminson@bloomberg.net, Max Berley
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