Is Joe Biden planning to close the US-Mexico border?

Joe Biden is signing an executive order that would temporarily close the US-Mexico border due to the high numbers of migrants coming into the United States.

According to The New York Times, the scheme proposed by the Biden Administration is that requests for asylum would no longer be accepted once illegal crossings hit the 2,500 mark.

Anonymous White House sources that spoke to AP News explained that the border would be reopened once the number of asylum seekers was kept under 1,500 for a certain amount of time.

NBC News cites numbers from the Department of Homeland Security, revealing that daily border encounters currently surpass over 4,000 people on average.

AP News highlights that the last time the daily average on the southern border went under the 1,500 threshold was in July 2020, amid the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This suggests that the closure of the US-Mexico border could go into effect almost immediately.

However, NBC claims that the White House has ensured that the policy wouldn’t affect trade or travel, only would limit access to those seeking asylum.

The Biden Administration would also try to avoid some legal pitfalls faced during the Trump years, making exceptions for unaccompanied children and victims of trafficking.

However, the shadow of Donald Trump, who won the 2016 Presidential Election with promises such as building a wall between the United States and Mexico, still looms over Joe Biden.

British newspaper The Guardian describes Joe Biden’s political U-turn as an attempt to win support over a key issue in the middle of an electoral year.

Biden, The Guardian points out, denounced Donald Trump’s hostility to migrants when the New York mogul was in the White House, making his change of mind all too jarring.

It’s possible that, like Trump before him, Biden will face legal challenges with his new approach to the US-Mexico border. Maybe a middle of the road approach will only gain dislikes from both sides of the road.

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