US President Joe Biden signs order to undo Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policies

By Team Newsable | First Published Feb 3, 2021, 11:03 AM IST

President Joe Biden signed a second spate of orders to undo his predecessor's immigration policies, demonstrating the powers of the White House and its limitations without support from Congress.

Washington DC: US President Joe Biden on Tuesday ordered a review of asylum processing at the US-Mexico border and the immigration system as he seeks to undo some of former President Donald Trump's hardline policies.

President Biden said, "Today I'm going to sign a few executive orders to strengthen the immigration system, building on the executive actions I took on day one to protect Dreamers and the Muslim ban and to better manage our borders. I'm not making new law. I'm eliminating bad policy. What I'm doing is taking on the issues that 99% of them, that the president, the last president of the United States issued executive orders I thought were very counterproductive to our security, counterproductive to who we are as a country, particularly in in in the area of immigration. This is about how America is safer, stronger, more prosperous when we have a fair, orderly and humane legal immigration system.”

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Biden has prioritized creating a special task force to reunify the families as part of his sweeping redo of Trump's immigration policies, which focused on deterring migration from Central America.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which sued to reunite families, has asked the administration for legal status in the United States for all of the thousands of families that have been separated, as well as financial compensation for those families and attorneys at government expense.

Trump came to power in 2017 promising to halt the mass movement of undocumented migrants over the southern border.

But an initial crackdown only slowed the flow, with tens of thousands of individuals and families -- especially from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador -- crossing each month, and little mechanism in place to send them back.

A year later he announced the zero tolerance program, declaring that any undocumented border crossers would be arrested and charged with a crime.

As part of the new regime children were separated from their parents, on a promise that families would be reunited within weeks. But this did not happen in thousands of cases.

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