Biden facing criticism from the left and right as his immigration promises flop
![Brownsville Texas border crossing.](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/Vvm8nr4uU5JmBmJmhfmmg3-415-80.jpg)
President Biden's scramble to undo former President Donald Trump's immigration promises isn't pleasing anyone.
Trump, of course, isn't happy that his successor has issued executive orders aimed at evaluating and dismantling the dozens of intricate actions his team took to curb immigration to the U.S. He sent allies to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to lobby against Biden's newly debuted immigration reform bill, and is expected to attack Biden's plans in his Conservative Political Action Conference speech this weekend, The Washington Post reports.
But Trump's team also orchestrated its immigration overhaul in such a way that Biden can't simply undo its actions piece by piece. A massive reduction in the number of immigrants crossing America's borders whittled away at the U.S.'s immigration infrastructure, and Trump also left behind a massive backlog of migrants seeking asylum and awaiting court hearings. Conservative-packed courts also stand in the way of Biden's plans; A Texas judge on Wednesday indefinitely blocked his 100-day moratorium on deportations, for example.
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Biden has had a few immigration successes so far. He allowed the first asylum seekers into the U.S. after they were forced to wait in Mexico, and on Wednesday allowed foreigners to once again seek green cards in the U.S. These measures have left Immigration and Customs Enforcement preparing for a surge at the border, a memo obtained by the Post revealed.
That increase, combined with Biden's end of a pandemic policy rapidly expelling migrants, has left the administration afraid of running out of shelter space for children. Biden already reopened a facility for migrant children, to the ire of the left, and is now authorizing shelters' purchases of plane tickets to quickly send children to relatives elsewhere in the U.S., the memo reveals. Read more at The Washington Post.
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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.
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