Secretary of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas denied on Sunday that President Biden’s immigration policy is equivalent to former President Trump’s amid criticism of the White House for weighing policies some see as detrimental to migrants.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl on “This Week” said the ACLU is “effectively” saying that Biden’s current immigration policy is no different than the asylum bans under Trump amid a new lawsuit the organization filed last week. Mayorkas denied this assessment, saying that their current policy is not a ban.
“Absolutely incorrect. Disagree with every aspect of that statement. This is not an asylum ban,” Mayorkas told Karl. “We have a humanitarian obligation as well as a matter of security to cut the ruthless smugglers out. That is a responsibility of government and we are doing that.”
“In one critical sense. It is the same as the Trump policy,” Karl responded.
“Well the Trump policy was you had to first apply for asylum in a third, in another country, if you were coming from from south of Mexico. That’s exactly what you’re doing,” Karl added.
Mayorkas denied that’s what the Biden administration was doing, saying that people who have not tried to seek relief in other countries would need a “higher threshold of proof” to qualify for asylum.
“What the our rule provides is that an individual must access those lawful pathways that we have made available to them. If they have not, then they must have sought relief in one of the countries through which they have traveled and been denied,” he said.
“And if they haven’t done either, it’s not a ban on asylum, but they have a higher threshold of proof that they have to meet. That is a presumption of ineligibility that can be overcome. It is not a ban. And so I disagree with that in every regard,” he continued.
The immigration policy in question is a rule that limits asylum by barring people who do not first apply and get denied in another country along their route to the U.S. from seeking asylum. The ACLU filed a lawsuit last week reminiscent of a lawsuit it filed and won against Trump, arguing that the rule violated U.S. asylum laws.
Title 42, a policy that allows the expulsion of asylum seekers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, expired last week. Lawmakers and officials were expecting a surge of migrants to attempt to cross the border, but Mayorkas said that the number of migrant encounters at the border actually dropped by 50 percent in the days after the policy ended.
–Updated at 12:47 p.m.