Timeline of Biden Immigration Policies

in Immigration Politics on by Adam Townsend
1 cover immigration adam townsend logans run a country
  • I wrote this post for me, but it is also for you. If you want it.

This post is a timeline of the Biden regime policies to move people on an immigration conveyer belt into the United States.

Let’s begin with the end and work our way backwards. Starting February 2021 and ending January 2025, under Biden 

8% of Nicaragua entered the US in 4 years, that’s 8% of the entire country. 7% of the population of Cuba entered, 6% of the population of Haiti and 5% of the population of Honduras. 

This is about how that happened.

Image

January, 2021:

  • President Biden terminated the National Emergency at the Southwest border (Proclamation 9844), thereby halting emergency construction of a border wall.
  • President Biden issued an Executive Order (EO) further entrenching the unlawful Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. With his action, President Biden directed the Secretary of Homeland Security, in consultation with the Attorney General, “to preserve and fortify DACA”, signaling to illegal aliens that his Administration supports amnesty and that illegal aliens need not fear coming to the U.S. or worry about immigration enforcement.
  • President Biden unveiled the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would provide amnesty to millions of illegal aliens in the U.S., demonstrating intent to reward illegal border crossers with a path to citizenship.
  • President Biden revoked Trump-era Executive Order that was designed to ensure there was meaningful enforcement of U.S. immigration laws.
  • The Administration issued an Executive action ending limitations and restrictions against immigration from certain countries associated with terrorism.
  • The Biden Administration announced a 100-day moratorium on deportations and immigration enforcement, effectively providing amnesty to criminal and other removable aliens and sending the signal the Biden Administration would not enforce the law. The Administration also announced interim immigration enforcement guidelines that signaled to illegal aliens that they do not have to worry about the possibility of deportation.

February, 2021:

March, 2021:

  • Biden Administration announced reinstatement of the Central American Minors (CAM) program, an Obama-era parole program that allowed citizens and aliens—including illegal aliens—to bypass the family-based immigration laws adopted by Congress and sponsor family members El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to come to the United States.
  • DHS Secretary Mayorkas delivered remarks effectively explaining the border is open for illegal immigration by stating DHS’s focus would be on “processing” illegal aliens—in other words catch-and-release and the creation of new “lawful pathways.”
  • DHS began issuing illegal alien border crossers a Notice to Report to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as opposed to the standard Notice to Appear (NTA) in U.S. immigration court. The NTR policy allows illegal aliens to simply be released into the U.S. and relies on them to self-report to ICE at a later date.
  • The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) issued guidance rolling back requirements for background checks on adults in the household of a UAC sponsor.
  • March 21, 2021 Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas speaks to Martha Raddatz: Mayorkas states “Because the entire system under United States law that has been in place throughout administrations of both parties was dismantled in its entirety by the Trump administration.” “when I say it takes time, I mean it because we’re dealing with a dismantled system and we did not have the ordinary safe and just transition from one administration to another. And so we are executing on our plans.” “We are executing the plan that we have and let me share with you because we will succeed and when we look back at this time however difficult it has been we will get through it.” “We administered the laws as they were intended and we lived up to our values and our principles as a nation and that is what we are accomplishing, and that is not what was done in the prior administration.”
  • March 24, President Biden assigns to Vice President Kamala Harris “to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.And, you know, back when I was Vice President, I got a similar assignment, but one of the things we did was we made sure that we got a bipartisan agreement with Democrats and Republicans to provide over $700 million to the countries in the Northern Triangle to determine the best way to keep people from coming is keep them from wanting to leave.”
Remarks by President Biden and Vice President Harris in a Meeting on Immigration | The White House
Kamala Harris become the Immigration Czar
YouTube player

April 30, 2021:

June, 2021:

  • The Biden Administration announced expansion of the Central American Minors (CAM) program to broaden the list of illegal aliens who can sponsor family members through the program, including illegal aliens who claim asylum.
  • Attorney General Merrick Garland rescinded the Trump-era decision In Matter of L-E-A-, thereby expanding asylum eligibility to allow nuclear or immediate familial relationships to be treated as a “particular social group.”
  • Attorney General Merrick Garland rescinded the Trump-era decision in Matter of A-B I and A-B II, thereby expanding asylum eligibility to include gender and domestic relationships as certain social groups, reverting to policy under in Matter of A-R-C-G.

July, 2021:

  • The United States Border Patrol (USBP or BP) released at least 50,000 aliens without giving them a “Notice to Appear” (a court date), instead advising them to self-report to ICE on their own. Unsurprisingly, 87% of aliens fail to report.

August, 2021:

August, 2021:

September, 2021:

  • Biden issues an executive order dated September 9 that gave federal contractors until December 8 2021 to comply with vaccine mandate, this injected a clause into government contracts and contract-like instruments requiring full vaccination.
Biden administration gives federal contractors until Dec. 8 to comply with vaccine mandate
Like the vaccine mandate for employees, federal contractors must also show proof of vaccination to their employer. The Biden administration’s vaccine policies also apply to federal contractors working from home, as well as employees working for a covered contractor but not directly on specific government project.

However illegal immigrants entering the United States did not have any vaccination requirements.

  • September 10 2021 – Jen Psaki, White House spokesperson was asked; Reporter: “you’re trying to require anybody with a job or anybody who goes to school to get the Covid-19 vaccine but you are not requiring that of migrants that continue walking across the southern border into the country” Psaki: “well look our objective is to get as many people vaccinated across the country as humanly possible and so the president’s announcement yesterday was an effort to empower businesses to give businesses the tools to protect their workforces that’s exactly what we did but certainly we want everybody to get vaccinated and more people are vaccinated whether they are migrants or whether they are workers protects more people in the United States” Reporter: it’s a requirement for people at a business with more than 100 people it’s not a requirement for migrants of the southern border” Psaki: “that’s correct go ahead”

Fiscal Year 2021:

October, 2021:

November, 2021:

  • The Biden Administration formally created a program that included alternatives to detention (ATD) plus parole, resulting in “catch and release” for hundreds of thousands of aliens into the U.S. interior after they were encountered at the border (338,000 aliens were released in Fiscal Year 2022 alone) under this program.

April, 2022:

  • ICE Principal Legal Advisor issued memorandum promoting termination of cases in immigration court and directing ICE Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) trial attorneys to comb through their cases to determine whether aliens would be considered a “priority” for removal under the Biden “enforcement priorities.”
  • Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas visits Panama “The US and Panama signed a migration arrangement later Tuesday “to improve migration management, expand stabilization efforts, and increase access to legal pathways and protection for those in the region.” see update ↓

(update. March, 2024: drone footage)

This was recorded on March 2, 2024, it shows the United Nations immigration camp in Darien, Panama, locally called San Vicente and also called China Camp. It is the same facility that Secretary Mayorkas visited in April 2022 to direct its expansion. 

June, 2022: Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection

Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection | The White House
We, the Heads of State and Government of the Argentine Republic, Barbados, Belize, the Federative Republic of Brazil, Canada, the Republic of Chile, the

“We, the Heads of State and Government of Argentina, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, the Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, America and Uruguay…We are committed to protecting the safety and dignity of all migrants, refugees, asylum seekers, and stateless persons, regardless of their migratory status, and respecting their human rights and fundamental freedoms.  We intend to cooperate closely to facilitate safe, orderly, humane, and regular migration and, as appropriate, promote safe and dignified returns, consistent with national legislation, the principle of non-refoulement, and our respective obligations under international law.“

One word that is notably missing from the list of adjectives (“safe, orderly, humane, and regular”) before the noun “migration” is “legal”.

August, 2022

September, 2022:

October, 2022:

  • DHS finalized a rule to “fortify DACA”, which declares DACA recipients as “lawfully present” and grants them employment documents despite ongoing litigation.

December, 2022:

  • The Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) sued the State of Arizona in order to force Arizona to remove shipping containers placed to close gaps in the border wall.
  • Secretary of State Anthony Blinken signs an agreement with a Non Governmental Organization (NGO) called TENT PARTNERSHIP FOR REFUGEES. This NGO comprises more than 400 major multinational companies committed to hiring “refugees” The agreement lauds that it will: “expand economic opportunity for refugees” in the private sector with employers such as RedRoof Inn, Royal Farms, Shopify, CSX, Delta Airlines, DoorDash, and so on.A Bloomberg report showing how meatpacker Tyson Foods Inc. is set to hire tens of thousands of migrants via Tent Partnership. Tyson already employs 42,000 migrants among its 120,000 US workforce.“We would like to employ another 42,000 if we could find them,” said Garrett Dolan, who leads Tyson’s efforts to eliminate employment barriers such as immigration status.“We’re recognizing there’s not a lot of people that are going to be working labor-manufacturing jobs that are American,” Dolan said, adding a large portion of new hires “are going to come from refugees and immigrants, so we’re now in the business of strategically thinking that through.“
@Reuters on X
LIVE: Secretary of State Antony Blinken makes remarks on Tent Partnership for Refugees

January 2023: Declaration of North America (DNA)

“Today, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, President Joseph R. Biden, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Mexico City for the 10th North American Leaders’ Summit (NALS). The leaders are determined to fortify our region’s security, prosperity, sustainability and inclusiveness through commitments across six pillars: 1) diversity, equity, and inclusion; 2) climate change and the environment; 3) competitiveness; 4) migration and development; 5) health; and 6) regional security.“

Countries such as the Guyana and Uruguay are not intended destinations for the hundreds of thousands of migrants moving through the Americas — the United States is.

The DNA continues: “Since June, Mexico, the United States and Canada have collectively welcomed record numbers of migrants and refugees from the Western Hemisphere under new and expanded labor and humanitarian programs.”

There is a lot to unpack in that one sentence but suffice it to say that few if any “migrants and refugees” are headed to Canada, whereas to the extent that they are being “welcomed” in Mexico, it is under the proviso that they keep going north.

The verb “welcomed” reveals that the intention is not to dissuade or deter foreign nationals, instead – Biden, AMLO and Trudeau affirm “joint commitment to safe, orderly, and humane migration under the Los Angeles Declaration and other relevant multilateral frameworks”.

This, the DNA explains, includes “providing protection to refugees, asylum seekers, and vulnerable migrants” and “assisting host communities and promoting migrant and refugee integration”.

January 2023:

  • CBP changed CBP One app to allow border crossers to schedule online appointments, expanding the number of aliens allowed into the United States.
  • The Biden Administration began abusing statutory parole authority under INA 212(d)(5) by creating a categorical parole program for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. Parole was intended by Congress to be used sparingly and only on a “case by case” basis, yet DHS continues to create and administer categorical parole programs to allow hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens to classes of aliens.

March, 2023:

April, 2023:

May, 2023:

  • The Biden Administration terminated use of Title 42 policy expulsion authority.
  • The evening that Title 42 was ended, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken went on PBS and said that there would be a crackdown on illegal crossings, watch: “...shared sense of responsibility that we’re trying to build across the hemisphere” “we’re also working with these countries to strengthen their own asylum systems to strengthen the protections that they offer to migrants as well as to strengthen opportunity so that people who may choose to avail themselves of asylum in a third country have something to go to and something to look toward.” “I cite that simply as one example of work that we’re doing with countries across the hemisphere to strengthen the protections that they offer, uh, to strengthen their own asylum systems” “even as we are working to expand legal pathways to this country.”
  • The Biden Administration ended the DNA testing program used to verify that adults who crossed the border with a child and claimed to be related to that child, are in fact related. Ending the program promotes not only illegal immigration, but also child exploitation and trafficking.

July, 2023:

August, 2023:

September, 2023:

  • The Biden Administration promulgated a proposed rule to reverse Trump-era policy and allow Immigration Judges to administratively close or dismiss removal proceedings without any action (something not allowed by statute), resulting in no decision denying asylum.

October, 2023:

  • The Biden Administration issued new rules on UACs that fails to prevent the release of illegal alien children to strangers, fails to facilitate age determinations, and fails to collect immigration information on sponsors. All of this will encourage trafficking of children, including by the cartels.

November, 2023: VIDEO, migrant caravan

Efrain González is an American journalist who joined a migrant caravan to report on its logistics complexity. Someone is giving these groups GPS coordinates for exactly where to go.

November, 2023: VIDEO, Chuck Schumer

“get a path to citizenship for all 11 million, or however many undocumented there are here”.

DREAMers are the bait, while a full and total amnesty is the hook.

December, 2023:

January, 2024:

VIDEO: DEMOCRATS denying a border crisis

March 2024

  • The Center for Immigration Studies filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, learning that U.S. Customs and Border Protection approved secretive flights that last year (2023) alone ferried hundreds of thousands of inadmissible aliens from foreign airports into some 43 American ones over the past year, all pre-approved on a cell phone app. 

cbp immigration one app adam townsend

  • CBP will not disclose the names of the 43 U.S. airports that have received 320,000 inadmissible aliens from January through December 2023, nor the foreign airports from which they departed. The agency’s lawyers have cited a general “law enforcement exception” without elaborating – until recently – on how releasing airport locations would harm public safety beyond citing “the sensitivity of the information,” claiming the public can’t know the receiving airports because those hundreds of thousands of CBP-authorized arrivals have created such “operational vulnerabilities” at airports that “bad actors” could undermine law enforcement efforts to “secure the United States border” if they knew the volume of CBP One traffic processed at each port of entry.
  • The direct flight program is in addition to another one that gives CBP One users a green light into the U.S. That program, the report said, “has brought in another 420,000 immigrants from nearly 100 nations from May 2021 through December 2023.”

CONCLUSION: The staggering costs

Few studies exist to demonstrate the comprehensive scope of the overall federal and state costs of the ongoing crisis and mass illegal immigration. Instead, Americans must rely on a patchwork of federal and state records, media reports, and other publicly available information to gain even limited insights into the costs illegal aliens represent.

THE HISTORIC DOLLAR COSTS OF DHS SECRETARY ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS’ OPEN-BORDERS POLICIES COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY MAJORITY REPORT PHASE 4 INTERIM REPORT NOVEMBER 13, 2023
The range of costs inflicted by Mayorkas’ border crisis cover everything from emergency medical care to increased demands on law enforcement to housing and shelter benefits for illegal aliens.
Many additional costs involve devoting resources to many uses Americans would never think of, as this report will demonstrate.

UPDATE, May 2024: “Gotaways”

Known ‘gotaways‘ are illegal aliens that have been seen or detected via cameras, sensors, footsign, etc, but are never apprehended.

From the report by Bill Melugin:

“Internal CBP data I obtained via FOIA request reveals 13 years of known gotaways data at the border, showing gotaways have exploded under the Biden admin compared to the Trump & Obama years.
This is the first time these numbers have ever been revealed.

New data reveals Illegal immigrants eluding Border Patrol spiked under Biden, surpassing predecessors
The number of illegal immigrants evading Border Patrol as “gotaways” has skyrocketed under the Biden administration, new data obtained by Fox News shows.
  • FY2010 155,599
  • FY2011 86,226
  • FY2012 105,105
  • FY2013 171,663
  • FY2014 162,071
  • FY2015 101,495
  • FY2016 106,643
  • FY2017 104,294
  • FY2018 128,679
  • FY2019 151,466
  • FY2020 136,808
  • FY2021 387,398
  • FY2022 606,131
  • FY2023 670,674

UPDATE May 2024: The industry of resettling immigrant children

Quoting from The Free Press: Nonprofits Are Making Billions off the Border Crisis

“Although the federally funded Unaccompanied Children Program is responsible for resettling unaccompanied migrant minors who enter the U.S., it delegates much of the task to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that run shelters in the border states of Texas, Arizona, and California.

And with the recent massive influx of unaccompanied children—a record 130,000 in 2022, the last year for which there are official stats—the coffers of these NGOs are swelling, along with the salaries of their CEOs.

The Free Press examined three of the most prominent NGOs that have benefited: Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors, Inc. These organizations have seen their combined revenue grow from $597 million in 2019 to an astonishing $2 billion by 2022, the last year for which federal disclosure documents are available. And the CEOs of all three nonprofits reap more than $500,000 each in annual compensation, with one of them—the chief executive of Southwest Key—making more than $1 million.

Some of the services NGOs provide are eyebrow-raising. For example, Endeavors uses taxpayer funds to offer migrant children “pet therapy,” “horticulture therapy,” and music therapy. In 2021 alone, Endeavors paid Christy Merrell, a music therapist, $533,000. An internal Endeavors PowerPoint obtained by America First Legal, an outfit founded by former Trump aide Stephen Miller, showed that the nonprofit conducted 1,656 “people-plant interactions” and 287 pet therapy sessions between April 2021 and March 2023. 

Endeavors’ 2022 federal disclosure form also shows that it paid $5 million to a company to provide fill-in doctors and nurses, $4.6 million for “consulting services,” $1.4 million to attend conferences, and $700,000 on lobbyists. In 2021, the NGO shelled out $8 million to hotel management company Esperanto Developments to house migrants in their hotels. Endeavors, which gets 99.6 percent of its revenue from the government according to federal disclosure forms, declined to comment to The Free Press.

The Administration for Children and Families, a division of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, funds the nonprofits through its Office of Refugee Resettlement, and its budget has swelled over the years—from $1.8 billion in 2018 to $6.3 billion in 2023. The ORR is expected to spend at least $7.3 billion this year—almost all of which will be funneled to NGOs and other contractors.”

Whole story is here ↓

Nonprofits Are Making Billions off the Border Crisis
Federal funding has turned the business of resettling migrant children into a goldmine for a handful of NGOs—and their top executives.

EPILOGUE? 2024 montage of Biden blaming Trump for the Immigration crisis

I’m not going to update this post with every big and little ‘news’ about immigration or its consequences, so, ending it here, not with a whimper but with a bang. 

Video by MAZE

UPDATE June 2024: Biden takes Executive action on the border

Biden eo immigration june 4 2024

On June 4th 2024, Biden announced a series of executive actions that would limit the flow of migrant illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border.

The changes will allow his administration to close the border between legal ports of entry, meaning border agents could turn away asylum-seekers if crossings surpass a certain number per day. 

Additionally, visas for CEOs and government officials who profit off operations to bring immigrants to the U.S. unlawfully will have their visas revoked.

The order would shut down the border after daily encounters reach an average of 2,500, and the border would reopen once that number drops below 1,500, senior administration officials said.

The impact of the 2,500 figure means that the executive action could go into immediate effect because daily crossings are currently higher than that.

According to Customs and Border Protection, there were 179,725 encounters by Border Patrol agents along the southern border in April 2024, which averages to 5,991 encounters per day.

So far this fiscal year, CBP has reported more than 1.5 million encounters along the southern border, consistent with last year’s record-setting numbers.

The devil in the details

The language of the executive order is deliberately ambiguous: the Biden administration claims that it would only “consider” shutting down the US-Mexico border once illegal crossings hit 2,500 per day. 

One of the biggest loopholes is that the executive order will not apply to most illegal aliens who cross into the U.S. through official ports of entry. Yet, under President Biden’s policies, more and more illegal aliens are being steered to the ports of entry to enter the U.S. through fabricated “legal pathways.” These include asylum seekers and would-be parolees using the CBP One app, who, under Biden’s 2023 regulation, must enter through ports of entry.

Government data shows that the number of illegal aliens processed at our ports of entry by the Office of Field Operations (OFO) has skyrocketed.

  • In fiscal year 2021, the number was 294,000 (15 percent of total encounters).
  • In fiscal year 2022, that number grew to 552,000 (20 percent).
  • In fiscal year 2023, 1.137 million illegal aliens (36 percent) were processed at ports of entry.
  • In fiscal year 2024, that number to date has grown to 809,000, 41 percent of the total.
  • In total, between February 2021 and April 2024 over 2.7 million illegal aliens were processed at ports of entry.

Having legally directed so many illegal aliens to ports of entry, the Biden Administration clearly could not make the executive order applicable to them. That would undermine the open-borders policies the Administration has worked so hard to implement. Thus, the Biden Administration expressly exempted asylum-seekers and would-be parolees who use the CBP One app.

This is not a small exception. To put this in perspective:

  • April data shows that 62 percent of Venezuelans were encountered at ports of entry.
  • For Nicaraguans, the number was 76 percent encountered at ports of entry;
  • for Cubans, 96 percent;
  • for Haitians 99.5 percent.

In addition these asylum seekers would-be parolees, the executive order exempts aliens using any other “lawful pathway” program the Administration has designed, any group of illegal aliens it decides to allow entry for “operational reasons” and any group of aliens who have urgent humanitarian or health needs. Most, if not all of these aliens will be seeking to enter the U.S. via ports of entry.

Not only will most illegal aliens entering through ports of entry be exempt from the President’s executive order, the number of illegal aliens coming through ports of entry will even count towards the 2,500 threshold that triggers Homeland Security’s ability to summarily expel migrants.

None of President Biden’s executive actions that led to the current crisis were ended by the proclamation.

A Proclamation on Securing the Border | The White House
There are more people around the world who are displaced from their homes today than at any point in time since World War II. Many factors have contributed to this problem. Failing regimes and dire economic conditions afflict many countries, including several in the Western Hemisphere. Violence linked to transnational criminal organizations has displaced…

UPDATE, June 9th leaked memo about Biden’s executive order

Bill Melugin reports that: “Fox News has obtained an internal Border Patrol memo sent to agents in San Diego sector after President Biden’s executive order took effect, instructing them to release single adults from all but six countries in the eastern hemisphere & classifying them as “hard” or “very hard” to remove.

Specifically, the memo instructs agents to process all single adults from 100+ countries in the eastern hemisphere as NTA/OR, which means “Notice to Appear/Release on Own Recognizance”, except for six countries which are deemed “mandatory referral” countries (Uzbekistan, Russia, Tajikistan, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan).

President Biden & DHS promised consequences & removal for those who cross illegally between ports of entry after the executive order took effect – but the overwhelming majority of illegal crossers in San Diego sector, including the Chinese, Middle Eastern, & African adults we’ve been showing, are still being released into the U.S. with future court dates, as our coverage has shown repeatedly with Border Patrol mass releases at a trolley station in San Diego.

In a background call with reporters, DHS officials acknowledged the difficulty of removing illegal immigrants from eastern hemisphere countries, as some governments won’t cooperate with U.S. repatriation flights/travel documents & won’t take their citizens back.

DHS officials said they are engaged with these countries and are trying to enhance cooperation.

Bottom line in the short term: Mass catch & release continues for illegal immigrants in San Diego sector, who continue pouring in from all around the globe.”

In a follow up, Bill Melugin tweeted that “NEW: Just spoke to senior CBP officials about this memo. I’m told this was localized guidance put out to San Diego sector only because of the unique countries around the world they encounter there, & this is not CBP or DHS’ guidance for the entire border. The CBP officials said even if these migrants are released into the US, they still are not eligible for asylum and cannot request it. They also pointed out that while, yes, San Diego sector is encountering large numbers from the eastern hemisphere who are being released with a court date because their home countries won’t cooperate with deportations (China, for example) two thirds of the encounters in San Diego sector are from easy to remove Western Hemisphere countries, large numbers of which are being placed into expedited removal, including Colombia and Ecuador, and thousands from these western hemisphere countries have already been removed or returned since the order went into effect. The CBP officials added that they’ve been “clear eyed” about the fact that it will take time to ramp up implementation of this executive order, and they will continue to engage with uncooperative countries to start taking their citizens back.”

UPDATE, what is the “2030 AGENDA”

Watch this, buckle up…

UPDATE: (writing this part now, so it’s a work in progress) Kamala, the “Immigration Czar”

Kamala Harris tweeted this in 2019

Kamala immigration 1