By Daniel Gonzalez, Rafael Carranza| Arizona Republic
President Joe Biden has wasted no time making changes to the nation’s immigration and border policies, many of them a 180-degree reversal of former President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies.
On Feb. 2, Biden signed three executive orders. The first creates a task force to help reunite the remaining parents the Trump administration forcibly separated from their children at the border. With the other two, Biden directs his Cabinet to review all immigration policies with the intent of eliminating some of the most restrictive ones, such as the public charge rule and the Migrant Protection Protocols.
“I’m not making new law; I’m eliminating bad policy,” Biden told reporters in the Oval Office. “What I’m doing is taking on the issues … that the president — the last president of the United States — issued executive orders I felt were very counterproductive to our security, counterproductive to who we are as a country, particularly in the area of immigration.”
“As this article correctly points out, the Biden administration is not legislating with these executive orders, but rather rectifying problematic and downright senseless immigration policy, also enacted through executive order, by the prior administration. As of today, over 600 children remain separated from their parents, countless asylum applicants are being forced to remain in camps on the other side of the US-Mexico border while they await their court hearings, and many otherwise law abiding and productive members of our communities are facing removal from the United States for often trivial or low level offenses.’
“We applaud the Biden administration for taking sensible steps to enact a just but fair immigration policy that more accurately reflects the values that the majority of Americans align with.”
Darius Amiri, Rose Law Group Immigration Dept. Chair
