President Joe Biden claims he is prepared to shut down the southern border if Congress passes a new border security bill.
Biden spoke about the deal over the weekend and stated that the “bipartisan bill would be good for America and help fix our broken immigration system and allow speedy access for those who deserve to be here,” adding that he believes “Congress needs to get it done.”
“It’ll also give me as president, the emergency authority to shut down the border until it could get back under control. If that bill were the law today, I’d shut down the border right now and fix it quickly,” said the president, per the Associated Press.
Biden said in a statement on Friday that the bill would “seriously, and finally, address the border crisis,” claiming that it would be the “toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.”
The president added that the bill would provide an additional 1,300 border patrol agents, 375 immigration judges, 1,600 asylum officers, and over 100 “cutting-edge inspection machines to help detect and stop fentanyl at [the] southwest border.”
While Biden claims that he would shut down the border if the bill is enacted, the details of the proposal reveal that a large number of unlawful migrants would still be allowed to cross into the United States each day.
Bill Melugin, a national correspondent for Fox News, stated that the potential law would prompt a shutdown only if 5,000 migrants crossed into the United States in a single day or if U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported 8,500 encounters in a single day.
This number also includes the 1,400 people who enter from a port of entry using the CBP One App, meaning that roughly 3,600 people would be allowed to cross the border unlawfully before a shutdown occurs.
While these numbers may seem to be a major reduction from the current numbers at the border, it is only a slight improvement. Roughly 150,000 migrants would be eligible to cross into the United States each month, with more than 1.8 million people being eligible to enter the country each year from the southern border.
Similarly, the high number of encounters required to trigger a shutdown would not improve the situation much either. The 8,500 encounters mark would signify roughly 255,000 encounters at the border each month, spanning out to more than 3.1 million encounters each year.
For comparison, there were just under 2.5 million encounters at the border during fiscal year 2023, with just under 2.4 million encounters reported during fiscal year 2022, according to CBP.
Once the outlined threshold is reached in a single day, a new law will require Border Patrol to “immediately remove illegal immigrants they catch without processing.”
“They would not get to request asylum, they would immediately be removed. This includes removals back to Mexico, and deportations to home countries. This would be a *massive* change from current policy, which is that once an illegal immigrant reaches US soil, they must be processed via Title 8 and allowed to claim asylum,” claimed Melugin in the post.
Although this bill would allow the United States to deport unlawful migrants, it would also require Mexico to agree to accept non-Mexican unlawful migrants back into the country.
Melugin added that the bill has stipulations that must be met before CBP could end the shutdown at the border in the days following.
“It wouldn’t lift until daily encounters are reduced to under 75% of the 5,000 threshold for at least two weeks. This means the ‘shut down’ authority would not lift until two weeks of an average of less than 3,750 migrant encounters per day,” he explained in the post.
It is currently unclear whether the bill will be passed in Congress. However, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has already expressed his dislike for the bill.
Johnson released a statement on social media detailing a letter he sent to Biden, claiming that the president “can and must take executive action immediately to reverse the catastrophe he has created.”
“As my letter stated, President Biden can begin to secure the border by ending catch-and-release, ceasing exploitation of parole authority, reinstating the Remain in Mexico program, expanding the use of expedited removal authority, and renewing construction of the border wall,” stated Johnson. “The President must start by using the broad legal authority he already possesses to reclaim our nation’s sovereignty and end the mass release of illegal aliens into our country.”