Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns joined over 150 faith-based organizations in a letter to President Biden asking him to reconsider some of the reported changes in policy his administration is weighing that would negatively impact asylum seekers. Read the letter as a PDF.
February 23, 2024
Dear President Biden:
We, the undersigned 150+ international, national, state, local, and faith-based organizations, are deeply alarmed at reports that you may wield your executive power to further endanger asylum seekers and immigrant communities. After you declared your intent to “shut down” the southern border, members of the U.S. Senate voted on a supplemental funding bill this month that attempted to codify the most anti-asylum and anti-immigrant provisions seen in decades. The extremist immigration provisions in this bill failed to pass.
Nevertheless, your administration has not relented in its embrace of policies mirroring the prior administration. We urge you to heed our warning: this tired approach failed under the past administration, will fail and cause great harm again, and will tarnish your administration irreparably.
Many of the changes you are reportedly contemplating would not only stain your legacy; they would undo your own efforts to adhere to U.S. and international asylum law, return refugees to harm, and create widespread chaos and suffering at the border. We implore you not to emulate your predecessor and extremist legislators.
On your first day in office, you rightly rescinded a number of abhorrent signature policies of your predecessor. These include the Muslim and African bans and a proclamation that sought to bar asylum access based on manner of entry. Yet, your office is reportedly considering using the same law underpinning these policies you rescinded to attempt to shut down access to asylum at the southern border. Other reports suggest you may try to unlawfully raise the standard for preliminary asylum screenings, which was similarly attempted by the prior administration, before facing litigation and your rightful return to the threshold required by Congress. These policies, as well as others that forced people seeking asylum to remain in Mexico, have damaged the United States’ reputation worldwide, had a devastating humanitarian impact and incurred significant costs and risks, without yielding any of their desired outcomes. You cannot outdo your predecessor in engineering extreme policies, either by legislation or executive action.
Your first year in office restored much needed hope that U.S. border policies need not be defined by cruelty and punishment. Your recent comments and actions have marked a radical shift away from such hope—leaving little daylight between your administration and others who demonize Black, Indigenous, and Brown people, including particularly vulnerable groups like women, children, and LGBTQ+ people. Instead, we urge you to consider the many humane steps your administration can take via executive action to restore faith in our immigration system while bringing order and fairness to the border. These include, but are not limited to: the critical resourcing of ports of entry, so that people seeking asylum can be processed humanely and without delays; ensuring support through coordination and resources for the many communities and organizations at the border and in the interior of the United States who welcome people seeking asylum and offer shelter, case management support, legal services, Indigenous language interpretation, and more; and increasing support for more pathways for migration, without restricting asylum.
These steps have been outlined and presented repeatedly to the White House and federal agencies by many of the undersigned organizations; we stand ready to meet with you to discuss and cooperate with you on implementation.
Sincerely,
See the full list of signatories here.
Photo by Greg Bulla via Unsplash