Will a Harris presidency be four more years of Biden’s immigration policies? 

The Democratic Platform Committee approved its 2024 party platform on July 16, before President Biden had exited the race. Kamala Harris did not formally become the party’s candidate for the presidency until Aug. 2. Consequently, the platform reflects Biden’s policies on immigration — not necessarily hers.  

Unfortunately, Harris has refused to hold news conferences or give interviews which would have given the media a chance to question her on whether she has reservations about any of the immigration policies in the platform.

I am sure, however, that the platform committee wouldn’t have approved the immigration section of the platform if the Democratic Party didn’t still support Biden’s immigration policies. The fact that Harris has not declared opposition to any of its provisions indicates that she does too.

Therefore, if Democrats prevail in the upcoming elections, we can expect to see a continuation of immigration policies that caused the crisis at the border and overwhelmed our asylum system.

The Democratic platform’s preamble praises Biden for reducing illegal border crossings and reuniting nearly 800 children who were separated from their parents during Trump’s presidency. 

The reduction in illegal border crossings, however, is due primarily to assistance from the Mexican government, and the current administration is having trouble with missing children too. According to the DHS inspector general, the administration has not been able to meet its responsibility to monitor the location of all unaccompanied migrant children who are released from HHS custody pending immigration hearings. From fiscal 2019 to fiscal 2023, approximately 32,000 of these children have failed to appear for their hearings. 

Democrats claim that the Senate Border Act of 2024 has the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border in decades, and that it failed because the Republicans would rather play politics than secure the border. In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, Harris pledged to bring that bill back and sign it into law. 

I call this bill the “big lie.” It would not secure the border. It doesn’t eliminate the things the administration did that caused illegal border crossings to soar to record levels — averaging 2 million per year.  

Among other shortcomings, it wouldn’t end catch-and-release at the border. The administration has released more than 5.4 million illegal crossers into the U.S.; in addition, there were 1.9 million reported “gotaways” (a statutory term that refers to migrants who were directly or indirectly observed making an unlawful entry but were not apprehended or turned back).  

The bill would not stop the administration from creating questionable “legal pathways” for admitting migrants into the country who don’t have visas or other valid entry documents.  

And it wouldn’t end the CBP One mobile application program that permits undocumented migrants to schedule interviews at a port of entry. Nearly 250,000 migrants have been paroled into the U.S. through this program as of August 2023. Parole was granted in 99.7 percent of the interviews.

Democrats state in their platform that they want asylum processing to be efficient and fair, and they want the migrants who fail to establish a legal basis for remaining to be removed quickly.   

But it is not possible to adjudicate asylum applications or to remove deportable migrants quickly unless they are put at the head of a very long line of immigrants who have been waiting up to 10 years for an immigration hearing.

As of the end of July, the immigration court had a backlog of 3,707,430 cases.  

The National Association of Immigration Judges estimates that it would take twice the current number of judges (going from 700 to 1,400) to eliminate the backlog by 2032.  

Moreover, progress isn’t being made on reducing it. So far in fiscal 2024, the court has only closed 756,815 cases. That’s an average of 75,681 cases per month. At that rate, it would take four years to eliminate the backlog even if the court doesn’t receive any new cases.  

The Senate bill provides that when the system is overwhelmed, the president would have emergency authority to expel migrants who are crossing unlawfully between ports of entry without processing their asylum claims.  

But the president has had this authority all along. Biden even exercised it in June with an executive order imposing limitations on the entry of illegal border crossers and consideration of persecution claims if the daily average of illegal crossing exceeds 2,500 over a consecutive seven-day period.

Moreover, the shut-down provision in the border bill would permit the president to release up to 5,000 illegal border crossers a day into the country without having to close the border, which would be up to 1.8 million per year. How can the border be considered secure if almost 2 million illegal crossers a year are released into the country?   

The current administration has established a humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans. It allows 360,000 immigrants per year from these countries to live and work lawfully in the U.S. for a period of two years. But it is important to conduct thorough background investigations on such parolees — especially Cuban nationals. Cuba is on the State Department’s list of State Sponsors of Terrorism. 

It is apparent from the language of the parole provision that Congress did not intend it to be used by large groups of migrants to bypass the statutory visa system. Moreover, the program has experienced a serious problem with fraud that caused DHS to suspend it temporarily. 

Finally, the Democratic platform calls on Congress to pass legislation providing a pathway to citizenship for those brought to the U.S. illegally as children (known as “Dreamers”), farmworkers, care workers and other long-term undocumented individuals who contribute to this country. 

But let’s get real here: We haven’t had such a comprehensive legalization program since the enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. The Democrats need to be more realistic.

In sum, I don’t expect much change in immigration policies if the Democrats prevail in the upcoming elections.

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.