The Biden administration is moving forward with a proposal to allow the Department of Homeland Security to quickly deport any asylum-seeker who came over the border illegally and is determined to be a threat to public safety.
DHS agency U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services filed a notice in the Public Register on Thursday of plans to more quickly remove from the United States illegal immigrants who seek asylum and are determined to pose a risk to national security or public safety.
Until now, federal authorities have not been permitted to consider the risks early on in asylum screenings, allowing them to get released.
“The proposed rule we have published today is yet another step in our ongoing efforts to ensure the safety of the American public by more quickly identifying and removing those individuals who present a security risk and have no legal basis to remain here,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. “We will continue to take action, but fundamentally it is only Congress that can fix what everyone agrees is a broken immigration system.”
The attempt to prevent a small pool of illegal immigrants who seek asylum from being released into the country comes in the wake of high-profile crimes committed by immigrants who were let go at the border and allowed to be in the country, including the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
Under the rule, asylum-seekers will still largely be released into the country and given documents to show up in immigration court, likely not for years due to millions of cases waiting to be heard.
“What this rule will do is allow them, when we have clear information that obviously disqualifies someone from asylum or withholding of removal because they are a threat to national security or public safety, to consider that information as early in the process as possible,” a senior DHS official who spoke with reporters Thursday said.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The DHS official said the Biden administration does not anticipate this proposed change to increase the length of time it takes to interview immigrants in custody at the border and could not estimate how many immigrants would be affected.
“This really only applies to individuals who have a serious criminal history or who are, you know, linked to terrorist activity. And that’s inherently a small fraction of the individuals that we encounter or interview on a given day,” the DHS official said. “It will apply to the people that we are most concerned about in terms of the risks to our national security or public safety. And so it is a critical security measure that we think is prudent.”
