(April 14, 2021, Washington, D.C.) – The Biden administration is attempting to secure the nation's southern border by negotiating border security agreements with Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras—moves that closely mirror Trump administration immigration initiatives that were terminated by the current administration.
As apprehension totals continue to soar to historic levels with no end in sight, the Biden administration has chosen to steal a page from the Trump administration's immigration playbook—including the 2019 border security agreements with the Northern Triangle countries—to effectively regain control of the border. "In many respects, the agreements closely resemble the ones President Biden scrapped during his first days in office," commented Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
The agreements reportedly require the countries to deploy thousands of military and police personnel to their borders, although Guatemalan and Honduran officials deny that these agreements have been made. "Nevertheless, the Biden administration's efforts to restore the pre-inauguration status quo is an acknowledgement that conditions at our southern border are in a state of crisis, that their policies have failed, and that more deterrent policies are necessary," Stein said.
The Biden administration does not need to reinvent the wheel. It still has many proven policy options that can be implemented immediately to help better secure the southern border.
Among the policy options available to the Biden administration to reduce the number of fraudulent asylum seekers and unlawful border crossings is the reinstatement of the Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs) with the Northern Triangle countries that have already been negotiated. The administration should also reimplement the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), another effective program that helped the southern border become more secured than ever and adhered to its humanitarian obligations.
"The sad irony is that the humanitarian, national security and public health disaster President Biden is now seeking to address could have been avoided in the first place if he had not taken a wrecking ball to existing policies and agreements that were in place when he took office. Restoring agreements with the Northern Triangle would be an important step in the right direction, but the Biden administration still has much more to do if it's serious about ending the migration crisis it created," concluded Stein.
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