Biden Urges Migration Reform Amid Democratic Pressure To Ease Tensions at Southern Border

(Photo : Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
United States President Joe Biden called for migration reform to expand migration pathways as Democrats pressure him into putting an end to the expansion of immigration detention. The situation comes as tensions at the southern border rise as Ukrainian refugees are the latest to join the crowds.

United States President Joe Biden has called for a migration reform that will utilize a regional framework to "dramatically expand" pathways amid Democratic pressure regarding the situation in the southern border of the country.

Lawmakers are also increasingly urging the president to remove a public health order that prevents migrants from entering the country. They cited the nationwide easing of pandemic-era restrictions and the presence of refugees from Ukraine fleeing Russia's aggression as some of the reasons to end the program.

Migration Reform

The calls are the latest discussions in what has since become a significant point of contention between the White House and top Democrats and immigrations groups over Title 42. Former United States President Donald Trump was the one that put the policy in place that Biden has maintained despite his original commitment to overhauling the country's immigration system.

In a call with interviewers on Thursday, Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Menendez said that as the United States recovers from the coronavirus pandemic lawmakers should already be restoring access to legal and lifesaving asylum at the borders, as per Miami Herald.

Biden's plan of a regional framework is set to be signed along with several other countries and includes provisions that will help expand migration pathways. The U.S. president said that the challenges in hemisphere migration cannot be solved by any one nation or any one border.

The Democrat's administration has fallen back into a "root causes" approach in its attempt to tackle the issues at the southern border. The process places the responsibility of surging migrants on factors such as poverty, violence, and climate change in Central America.

According to Fox News, despite Biden's unusual approach, the number of migrants coming into the country continues to remain high. In January, the border numbers significantly outstripped any data from the prior year, which suggests a similar rise could be seen in summer.

The situation also comes after more than 100 House Democrats sent a letter to the Biden administration on Thursday. The document detailed their calls on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to suspend detention expansion, phase out private for-profit facilities, and conduct a review of all ICE detention facilities.

End to Detention Expansion

Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Raul Grijalva, and Jason Crow lead the movement and wrote in the letter that after the White House Executive Order that ended privately operated prisons, several members of Congress urged Biden to expand the order to include ICE detention.

However, the lawmakers argued that the ICE was moving in the opposite direction from the order. The letter cites a Sept. 29, 2021 contract to detain up to 1,875 immigrants. The lawmakers also expressed their concerns that the private prison company, CoreCivic, is potentially looking to ICE to take over an expiring U.S. Marshals Services contract with the West Tennessee Detention Facility.

The Democrats said in the letter that the facilities all have a long-documented history of "substandard conditions and abuse." They argued that such actions were being taken at the expense of American taxpayers and without justification for the resulting increase, Newsweek reported.