U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday will order a major review of asylum processing at the U.S.-Mexico border and the legal immigration system as he seeks to undo some of former President Donald Trump’s hardline policies, Reuters quotes two senior administration officials as saying.
Biden on Tuesday will also create a task force to reunite migrant families who were separated at the U.S.-Mexico border by Trump’s 2018 “zero-tolerance” border strategy, the officials said on a call with reporters.
Overall, Biden will issue three executive orders dealing with regional migration, legal immigration, and reunifying families, the officials said.
As part of the actions, he will call for a review of a Trump-era rule that made it harder for poorer immigrants to obtain permanent residency in the United States, they said.
He will also mandate a review of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a controversial program that pushed 65,000 asylum seekers back to Mexico to wait for U.S. court hearings. Most returned to their home countries but some remained in a makeshift camp near the Mexican border.