(Getty Images)

A new directive Attorney General Matt Platkin issued Thursday will limit — but not end — law enforcement’s ability to obtain blood samples drawn as part of a mandatory state newborn screening program.

Platkin’s directive was released alongside a Department of Health rules change limiting how long blood drawn for newborn screenings can be retained by the state. The changes come as New Jersey faces a class-action lawsuit lodged after the Office of the Public Defender alleged New Jersey State Police obtained blood from the screening program without a warrant and used it to tie the child’s father to a 1996 sexual assault.

A public records lawsuit filed by the New Jersey Monitor and the Office of the Public Defender later revealed four law enforcement agencies had issued five grand jury subpoenas to the program over a period of roughly five years.

“Even the infrequent use of information gathered via a public-health program can impact the public’s trust in such programs, which can in turn jeopardize public safety and public health,” Platkin said in the directive.

He said Thursday’s directive would ensure law enforcement only seeks information from the newborn screening program in “genuinely exceptional circumstances.”

Under the new rules, law enforcement would in most circumstances require court-issued subpoenas or warrants to obtain newborn blood spots, which are used to test newborns for dozens of rare and potentially deadly conditions.

The directive bars law enforcement from obtaining blood spots through grand jury subpoenas, instead requiring they obtain a Dyal subpoena, a court-issued subpoena that requires authorities to show they have a reasonable basis — a lesser legal standard than the probable cause required for a warrant.

Law enforcement can also obtain blood spots through administrative subpoenas issued in missing-persons or unidentified-body cases. The New Jersey State Police’s missing persons unit has statutory authority to issue administrative subpoenas to “obtain information necessary to conduct an investigation.”

“The Newborn Screening Program is an important public health program – and it is crucial for the success of the program that its information is kept private,” Platkin said in a statement. “Today’s Directive adds new limits to ensure law enforcement agencies only seek such information in genuinely exceptional circumstances.”

In each case, law enforcement agencies must file written requests with the director of the state’s criminal justice division that explain why other methods won’t work before demanding blood spots.

Attorneys at the Institute for Justice, the public-interest libertarian law firm representing plaintiffs in the class-action suit, said Platkin’s directive and the Department of Health rules change are a step in the right direction but still fall short of the plaintiffs’ goal.

“I think they’re trying to sound like they’re being more protective, but it seems to me to still have a lot of different ways that law enforcement can obtain these blood spots,” said Brian Morris, the Institute for Justice’s lead attorney on the case. “We think they should be off the table unless there’s a warrant through the regular warrant process.”

The plaintiffs have alleged existing state policies on the retention and use of blood spots drawn for the screening program violate Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

They’ve asked a judge to require the state to immediately destroy blood spots once testing is complete unless parents provide informed consent for their retention and use — including by law enforcement.

The Department of Health’s rules change cuts how long the state can retain newborn blood spots from 23 years to up to 10 years.

Under the new rules, blood spots that test negative would be destroyed two years after testing is complete, while those that test positive will be deidentified and retained for 10 years.

“Two years is obviously better than 23 years, but it’s still keeping the blood without asking parents for permission, which is really what our entire lawsuit boils down to,” Morris said.

The new Department of Health policy, which went into effect immediately with delays for the destruction of existing blood spots, allows parents to submit forms to have the state destroy the samples any time after testing is complete.

The new policy does not prevent the Department of Health from releasing blood spots to law enforcement, though it says if there is no parental consent, it will do so only under the conditions laid out in Platkin’s directive.

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TULSA, OK - JUNE 19: A man displays a shirt celebrating the freedom of enslaved Black people during the Juneteenth celebration in the Greenwood District on June 19, 2020 in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865, when a Union general read orders in Galveston, Texas stating all enslaved people in Texas were free according to federal law. (Photo by Michael B. Thomas/Getty Images)

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WASHINGTON, DC - FEBRUARY 24: U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks about Russia's "unprovoked and unjustified" military invasion of neighboring Ukraine in the East Room of the White House on February 24, 2022 in Washington, DC. Biden announced a new round of sanctions against Russia after President Vladimir Putin launched an attack on Ukraine from the land, sea and air on Thursday. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration Tuesday will announce deportation protections for long-term undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens, along with quicker approval of work permits for those in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

President Joe Biden will formally make the announcement during an afternoon White House event to celebrate the 12th anniversary of the DACA program. The initiative was launched during the Obama administration and was meant to temporarily protect undocumented children brought into the United States without authorization.

The new policies were previewed by senior administration officials to reporters late Monday.

The new DACA policy will allow those recipients who have graduated from an accredited university and have an offer by a U.S. employer for a highly skilled job to quickly qualify for one of the existing temporary work visas, such as an H-1B visa.

The new policies came two weeks after Biden enacted his harshest crackdown on immigration with a partial ban on asylum proceedings at the southern border. Immigration remains a top issue for voters and for Biden’s GOP rival, former President Donald Trump.

Democrats and immigration advocates have long pressed the Biden administration to instill permanent protections for the nearly 579,000 DACA recipients as they await a decision from the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that could deem the program unlawful. The legal dispute is likely to head to the Supreme Court.

Many immigration policy experts have called DACA outdated, because there are now thousands of undocumented people who are not eligible for the program because they were not even born yet. To qualify, an undocumented person needs to have continuously resided in the U.S. since 2007.

Murphy administration urges Biden to offer protections to undocumented spouses of U.S. citizens

Biden pushed to take action

Americans with undocumented spouses have expressed their frustration and pushed for the Biden administration to use executive action to grant relief for the more than 1.1 million Americans who fear their undocumented spouses could face deportation.

The deportation protections to those married to a U.S. citizens are a one-time action expected to allow roughly 500,000 noncitizen spouses and their children to apply for a lawful permanent residence — a green card — under certain requirements.

To qualify, a noncitizen must have resided in the U.S. for 10 years as of Monday, June 17, 2024, and be married to a U.S. citizen since that date as well. That spouse who is a noncitizen also cannot be deemed a security threat.

The Department of Homeland Security will consider those applications, which are expected to be open by the end of summer, on a case-by-case basis, a senior administration official said.

This move is also expected to affect roughly 50,000 children who are noncitizens and have an immigrant parent married to a U.S. citizen.

For those children to qualify, they have to be 21 or younger, unmarried “and the marriage between the parents has to have taken place before the child turned 18,” a senior administration official said.

Under current U.S. immigration law, if a noncitizen enters the country without authorization, they are ineligible for permanent legal status and would be required to leave the U.S. and reenter legally through a green card application by their U.S. spouse, which is a lengthy process that can take years.

“The challenges and uncertainty of this process result in many eligible spouses not applying for permanent residence,” a senior administration official said.

Application info coming

More information on the application and eligibility process will be published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks, a senior administration official said.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which oversees the legal immigration system, has a similar program that allows noncitizens who are immediate family members of U.S. military service members to obtain green cards without leaving the country.

“This announcement utilizes existing authorities to keep families together,” a senior administration official said. “But… only Congress can fix our broken immigration system.”

Any immigration reform from Congress is unlikely, with Republicans in control of the House and Democrats controlling the Senate. A bipartisan border security deal fell apart earlier this year. There was no pathway to citizenship in that deal for DACA recipients or longtime immigrants.

The closest Congress came to bipartisan immigration reform was in 2013, when the “Gang of Eight,” made up of four Republican and four Democratic senators, crafted a bill that would create a pathway to citizenship for millions of undocumented people.

It passed the Senate, but Republican House Speaker John Boehner never brought the bill to the floor for a vote.

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ELIZABETH, NJ - FEBRUARY 23: People protest outside of the Elizabeth Detention Center during a rally attended by immigrant residents and activists on February 23, 2017 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Over 100 demonstrators chanted and held up signs outside of the center which is currently holding people awaiting deportation. The demonstrators, five of whom were arrested, denounced President Donald Trump and his deportation policies. Around the country stories of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids have sent fear through immigrant communities. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Immigrant advocates in New Jersey are alarmed that a federal judge’s 2023 ruling that allowed a private immigrant jail to remain open could mean there is little they can do to prevent another immigrant detention center from opening in Newark.

“My concern is that New Jersey may become a private prison-only immigration detention state, and that’s really terrifying because all immigration detention is terrible, but private prisons in particular,” said Katy Sastre, director of First Friends of New Jersey and New York.

Dolly Hernandez, executive director of immigrant rights advocacy organization Casa Freehold, said she’s troubled by a recent letter from the state Attorney General’s Office to the federal judge that could make it easier for the new jail to open.

“It’s time to stop dehumanizing people. We are not money makers,” she said.

Gov. Phil Murphy in 2021 signed a law that bars public and private entities from entering into contracts to house immigrant detainees. But U.S. District Judge Robert Kirsch last year declared the law partially unconstitutional, saying the state cannot prevent the federal government from contracting with a private entity to jail immigrants. Kirsch’s ruling allowed private firm CoreCivic to continue operating its immigrant jail in Elizabeth. Attorney General Matt Platkin’s office has appealed.

In April, a second company, GEO Group, sued Murphy and Platkin, arguing that the 2021 law was preventing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from signing a contract with the company to jail immigrants at Delaney Hall, a facility it owns near Essex County’s jail. That case is also going before Kirsch.

On April 25, Solicitor General Jeremy M. Feigenbaum, writing on behalf of Platkin’s office, told Kirsch that as long as Kirsch’s order regarding CoreCivic is still in effect, the state would not attempt to enforce the 2021 law with regard to GEO Group.

Most of New Jersey’s congressional delegation signed recent letters to federal officials asking them to back away from immigrant detention contracts here, citing President Biden’s prior comments criticizing privately run prisons. Rep. Rob Menendez (D-08) told the New Jersey Monitor that the state’s D.C. Democrats have been vocal in their opposition to migrant detention centers in conversations with federal officials.

“It’s not in alignment with how we want to operate, how we want to reflect our values to the community, having a privately-run detention center is not an alignment there,” Menendez said. “So while we can’t get the entire fix that we want today, we can’t allow bad decisions to be made.”

An ICE spokesman said there’s no contract with GEO Group to house immigrants at Delaney Hall and declined to comment on pending contract negotiations. Currently, 243 detainees are housed at CoreCivic’s Elizabeth Detention Center, he said.

Immigrant advocates are criticizing Platkin’s office for telling Kirsch it would not enforce the 2021 law with regard to GEO Group. Michael Symons, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office, said the office had to take that position because “there were no material differences between the federal constitutional legal claims brought by GEO Group and by CoreCivic.”

“While the district court’s injunction remains in effect, we have acknowledged that we cannot enforce that state-law provision against any private detention facility. But we await oral argument on our fully-briefed appeal, and we hope to overturn the injunction,” Symons said.

Menendez called the legal terrain “challenging” but said he remains hopeful that an appeal will be successful.

“We’re going to take an exhaustive approach to make sure that any opportunity that we have to challenge the continuation of the (Elizabeth Detention Center) or the reopening of Delaney Hall, we do,” he said.

Life for immigrants picked up by ICE, meanwhile, has gotten worse, immigrant advocates say.

Sastre said some detainees have been moved from the Elizabeth jail to one in Moshannon Valley in Pennsylvania — that’s nearly 300 miles away — and families don’t find out until they show up for visitation.

Hernandez recalled a local resident who was picked up by ICE in late April and taken to Elizabeth. By the time Hernandez and the detainee’s wife showed up a few hours later, officials told them he wasn’t there and was being transferred to Moshannon. He’s been there awaiting trial for about a month and a half, Hernandez said.

“I think things haven’t changed. I think they’ve gotten worse,” she said.

According to ICE detention management data, detainees remain at the Elizabeth jail for an average of 17 days before being moved.

“Our standard is that immigration detention shouldn’t exist at all, but the way that it is currently being done in New Jersey, in New York, it’s causing a lot of confusion and fear,” Sastre said. “And I think it’s probably on purpose. Most of ICE’s tactics tend to be for the purpose of causing fear.”

The Elizabeth Detention Center can house a maximum of 300 people. In its lawsuit, GEO Group says its contract with ICE could lead to up to 600 detainees at Delaney Hall.

Sastre fears the increase in beds will lead to an increase in ICE arrests.

“It’s really concerning that we just might be inviting more of that kind of treatment of our community into New Jersey,” she said. “My gut feeling is that we’re going to end up with GEO Group and CoreCivic operating in New Jersey, and that is terrifying to me.”

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Omar Toumbou of Maryland speaks at a press conference hosted by the Ohio Immigrant Alliance on the U.S. Capitol grounds Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (Photo by Lia Chien/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON – The Ohio Immigrant Alliance at a Tuesday press conference at the U.S. Capitol called on members of Congress to bring deported family members back home to the United States.

Present at the event were relatives of those deported asking for both Congress and President Joe Biden to reform the American immigration system and allow their loved ones to return, many of whom had lived in the U.S. for decades.

Lynn Tramonte, director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, and Suma Setty, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy, a D.C.-based nonprofit fighting for policy solutions for low-income groups, also launched their new book, “Broken Hope: Deportation and the Road Home,” at the event.

“I just wanted to take a minute to ask you guys to think about what if somebody told you tomorrow, you had to walk away from everybody, and everything that you had built for 20 years?” said Tramonte. “That’s what deportation is. It’s an extreme consequence for a paperwork violation.”

Wafaa Hamdi, an Ohio resident, also spoke to the gathered crowd, flanked by her young niece and nephew at her side.

Her sister, Tina Hamdi, of Dayton, Ohio, was deported in 2017 to Morocco, after serving a drug-related sentence that resulted from an abusive relationship, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center, a nonprofit that advocates for migrants and works with pro bono lawyers.

Tina came to the U.S. when she was 3 years old, and had resided under DACA status — a program for undocumented people brought to the United States as children — until her incarceration. She hasn’t seen her children in eight years, Wafaa Hamdi said.

“There’s a lot of kids, a lot of people in general, that have a loved one that they cannot see and that they used to go to sleep or wake up to every day and they no longer get to,” said Wafaa.

Tina’s son also spoke up. “I’m here because I miss my mom,” he tearfully said.

Longtime simmering issue

Deportation in the U.S. has been a contentious issue and top priority for presidents in recent decades.

Under President Barack Obama, average annual deportations increased by over 26,000 compared to the George W. Bush administration, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse of Syracuse University, a data research center.

When former President Donald Trump took office, deportations to Africa increased by 74 percent compared to the Obama administration, according to Tramonte and Setty. Trump also enacted several travel bans from primarily African and Muslim countries during his first year in office.

This year, TRAC found that deportations are up 50% under the Biden administration compared to the Trump administration levels in 2019, according to the publication Border Report. Many of these migrants had crossed the southern border.

Omar Toumbou, a Maryland resident, spoke to the effect historical Western colonization in Africa has had on deportations. Toumbou’s uncle, Abdoulaye Thiaw, was deported to Mauritania.

“Starting here with the will to want things to change will allow us to really start to break down these issues on a larger scale, to really understand what colonialism has truly done to the continent, and how it’s created such a broken, fractured structure to where countries don’t even have stabilization within their own governments,” said Toumbou.

Toumbou pointed to damaging effects of Western colonization, like political and economic instability, as the primary driver of Africans fleeing to the U.S. He said reformed immigration policies must take into account the systemic violence many Africans have fled.

“A lot of these things are a result of decades of neglect and also decades of blatant assault on Africa as a continent,” he said. “We need to change the way that we actually look at the continent as a whole.”

Central process advocated

The National Immigrant Justice Center launched its Chance to Come Home campaign in 2021. Its mission is for the Biden administration to establish a central process through the Department of Homeland Security for deported individuals to apply to return to America.

Biden signed a similar order in 2021 for deported veterans to apply to come back.

Democrats including Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Reps. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, Adriano Espaillat of New York and David Trone of Maryland support NIJC’s campaign and urged Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to establish a central system.

Members of the Ohio delegation have also taken steps to protect those from Mauritania from deportation. Over half of Mauritanians coming to Ohio settled in Cincinnati.

In January, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Reps. Mike Carey, Joyce Beatty, and Greg Landsman introduced the TPS for Mauritania Act of 2024 to grant Mauritanians in the U.S. Temporary Protected Status, which allows migrants to stay and work in the United States temporarily. Many other activist organizations called on President Biden last year to halt all deportations to Mauritania.

For now, several issues plague those facing deportation from the U.S.

Demba Ndiath, an Ohioan whose close family member was deported to Mauritania, said language barriers, inadequate translators, and a lack of financial services for legal services make it difficult for people to argue their case to stay.

Tramonte pushed for overall immigration court reform in the U.S. and called for support for NIJC’s Chance to Come Home campaign.

The Ohio Immigrant Alliance also planned to meet with the Ohio congressional delegation to push for immigration justice.

The stories of those far away were top of mind for everyone at Tuesday’s event. Ndiath reminded listeners that they were making a difference for their loved ones.

“I wish they could see everybody who’s here,” he said. “Standing up for them, meeting with members of Congress, advocating for them. I think we’re building hope for them.”

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Delaney Hall in Newark (Photo by New Jersey Monitor)

Most of New Jersey’s congressional Democrats are urging the Department of Justice not to support a new immigrant detention center planned for Newark.

In separate letters asking federal justice officials to refrain from supporting prison company GEO Group’s plan to open the Newark immigrant jail, Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat, and the state’s eight House Democrats cited President Biden’s prior comments criticizing private prisons.

Biden has said “no business should profit from the suffering of desperate people fleeing violence” and has condemned private prisons for not maintaining “the same levels of safety and security for people in the Federal criminal justice system or for correctional staff.”

“These same disparate and dangerous conditions still persist in privately operated immigration detention centers and the efforts to expand such a system must not be met with support from the federal government,” the House Democrats’ letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland reads.

Opening a new federal immigration jail in Newark would undermine the efforts of New Jerseyans and lawmakers who worked “tirelessly” to ensure no more immigration centers would open in the state, the June 6 letter adds.

Booker, meanwhile, sent a letter June 6 to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Patrick Lechleitner asking them to reconsider plans to work with GEO Group to open the Newark jail. GEO Group says in court filings that it plans to submit a proposal to ICE to turn Delaney Hall into an immigrant jail.

“A new contract would also serve as an insult to immigrant communities and advocates in New Jersey and around the country who have fought tirelessly to document the human rights abuses at private detention centers and repeatedly pushed the Administration to detain fewer people in more humane settings. I urge you to commit to not open new, privately-run immigration detention facilities in New Jersey,” Booker said.

Murphy signed a law in 2021 banning local governments and private companies from entering into contracts to detain immigrants. A federal judge deemed the law partially unconstitutional last year after CoreCivic — which runs an immigrant jail in Elizabeth — sued the state over the law, with the judge saying the state cannot bar the federal government from contracting with a private company to detain immigrants. The state has appealed.

Attorneys for the Department of Justice in legal filings in that case said it would be “catastrophic” if CoreCivic were forced to close its jail.

GEO Group has cited similar arguments in its lawsuit against Murphy.

The Elizabeth Detention Center is the last functioning immigrant detention center in New Jersey. A study from Detention Watch Network found that conditions in the jail have long been unsanitary and dangerous, alleging people incarcerated there lack access to air or sunlight, live in quarters infested with vermin, and face abusive treatment from staff members.

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(Getty Images)

Plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit seeking to bar the state from retaining blood drawn to test newborns for disease asked a federal judge Tuesday to end a pause in the case amid a breakdown in settlement talks, according to court filings.

The request to resume the case comes three months after the parties said they were engaging in settlement talks over a longstanding screening program meant to identify scores of rare and potentially deadly conditions in newborns. The program has drawn controversy over other uses officials have found for the blood samples.

“I was hopeful that we could reach an agreement that would respect the rights of babies born in this state, but New Jersey still refuses to ask parents for consent to keep baby blood after the initial screening is done,” Hannah Lovaglio, one of the lead plaintiffs, said in a statement.

The Institute for Justice, a public-interest, libertarian law firm, filed the lawsuit in November.

In 2022, the Office of the Public Defender revealed that the New Jersey State Police used years-old blood drawn for the screening program to aid a criminal investigation.

Lacking probable cause for a warrant, the State Police subpoenaed the testing program to obtain the blood sample of a child whose father was suspected of committing the assault. DNA analysis of the blood was used to obtain a warrant for the father’s DNA, and he was later charged with a 1996 sexual assault.

A public records lawsuit lodged by the Office of the Public Defender and the New Jersey Monitor later revealed the newborn screening laboratory received five subpoenas from four law enforcement agencies over a period of roughly five years.

The class-action suit alleges that the state’s retention of dried blood used in the screenings — the samples can be retained for up to 23 years — and the use of that blood for purposes other than disease screening violate privacy protections under the Fourth Amendment.

It asks that the courts bar the state from retaining newborn blood after disease screenings are concluded unless officials inform parents of how the blood will be used and obtain their informed consent to retain it.

The Office of the Attorney General declined to comment.

The plaintiffs asked the court to set a June 25 deadline for the state to respond to their complaint, a timeline they said state attorneys did not object to.

“New Jersey had the opportunity to fix this problem without litigation. Instead, they’ve continued to operate under the flawed belief that these baby blood samples belong to the state, not the children from whom they’re taken,” said Christie Hebert, an attorney for the Institute for Justice.

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EAGLE PASS, TEXAS - MARCH 17: In an aerial view, a Texas National Guard soldier walks past a barrier of shipping containers and razor wire at he U.S.-Mexico border on March 17, 2024 in Eagle Pass, Texas. Texas National Guard troops have fortified the U.S.-Mexico border with vast a amount of razor wire as part of Governor Greg Abbott's "Operation Lone Star" to deter migrants from crossing into Texas. The U.S. southwestern border stretches nearly 2,000 miles, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Pacific Ocean and is marked by fences, deserts, mountains and the Rio Grande, which runs the entire length of Texas. The politics surrounding border and immigration issues have become dominant themes in the U.S. presidential election campaign. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Tuesday issued an executive order that will allow him to partially suspend asylum requests at the U.S.-Mexico border when daily unauthorized crossings reach a threshold of 2,500 migrants.

“I’ve come here today to do what Republicans in Congress refuse to do, take the necessary steps to secure our border,” Biden said. “This action will help us gain control of our border.”

The 2,500-crossing threshold would likely be triggered immediately, a senior administration official said on a Tuesday call with reporters previewing the executive order. The order would terminate once unauthorized crossings drop. It only applies to the southern border, including the southwest land border and southern coastal borders.

Biden was joined by lawmakers, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Democratic New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham and local leaders from Texas cities.

Biden added that in the coming weeks he’ll talk more about “how we can make our immigration system more fair and just.”

Lawmakers from both parties panned the order Tuesday, while immigrant advocacy groups promised legal challenges.

Border changes

The White House has been dealing with the largest number of migrant encounters at the southern border in 20 years. In addition, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has made it a top issue for voters. Biden’s move marks his most drastic crackdown on immigration during his administration.

The order makes three changes to current asylum law under Title 8 of the Immigration and Nationality Act  when that threshold of 2,500 migrants is reached, a senior administration official said. The first is that a noncitizen who crosses the border without authorization will be ineligible for asylum.

The second is any noncitizen who crosses the border while the order is in effect and is processed for removal will only be referred to a credible fear interview with an asylum officer “if they manifest or express a fear of return to their country or country of removal, a fear of persecution or torture, or an intention to apply for asylum,” a senior administration official said.

And the third is raising the standard for credible fear interviews to a “reasonable probability of persecution or torture standard,” which is “a new, substantially higher standard than is currently being applied at the border,” a senior administration official said.

“Taken together, these measures will significantly increase the speed and the scope of consequences for those who cross unlawfully or without authorization and allow the departments to more quickly remove individuals who do not establish a legal basis to remain in the United States,” a senior administration official said.

Trump comparisons

The order, versions of which were reported ahead of the White House announcement, drew criticism from both parties.

Republican leaders said the order didn’t go far enough. U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana called it a “weak executive order.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called the order “too little, too late.”

Progressive Democrats, meanwhile, slammed it as a partial ban on asylum, and advocacy groups blasted the order for betraying Biden’s campaign rhetoric.

Biden tried to frame the order as different from the immigration policies of the Trump administration by stating he would not separate children from their parents, bar people from the U.S. because of their religion or invoke white supremacist language that refers to immigrants as “poisoning the blood of a country” – all actions taken by Trump.

“I believe that immigration has always been a lifeblood of America, we’re constantly renewed by an infusion of people and new talent,” he said. “So I will never demonize immigrants.”

A senior administration official also argued that the executive order is different from the Trump administration’s immigration policies because the order will “only apply during times of high encounters.”

Biden, who campaigned in 2020 on protecting asylum law, is relying on the same presidential authority — Section 212(f) of the Immigration Nationality Act — that the Trump administration used to justify several immigration-related restrictions, such as the travel ban from predominantly Muslim countries.

The Biden order would also allow border officials to return certain individuals who cross the border without authorization back to Mexico – nationals from Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Venezuela.

There will be exemptions for lawful permanent residents, unaccompanied minors, people with an “acute medical emergency” or an extreme threat to life or safety, and for victims of human trafficking, a senior administration official said.

A senior administration official said this temporary order would go away when there are seven consecutive days when daily encounters are less than 1,500 migrants between ports of entry. Once that is established, the order expires in 14 calendar days.

Blocked bill

The Biden administration began to consider the executive order after an immigration deal the White House and Senate brokered earlier this year fell apart after Trump came out against it and Republicans quickly fell in line to oppose it.

Among other things, that deal would have given Biden the authority to shut down any asylum requests once encounters reached 5,000 people in a week or 8,500 in a day.

A senior administration official said the 2,500 threshold was chosen to be similar to the deal stuck in the Senate.

“To Joe Biden, the safety of American families should always come first,” senior deputy press secretary Andrew Bates said in a memo.

“That’s why today, the President is announcing new historic executive actions to bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum. Because of President Biden’s leadership, law enforcement will gain new capabilities that congressional Republicans cannot block.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, tried in late May to bring up the bipartisan border bill in the Senate but it failed for a second time during a procedural vote.

The lead Democratic negotiator on that bipartisan deal, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut, expressed skepticism Tuesday that the Biden administration could move forward with its executive order.

“I am sympathetic to the position the administration is in, but I am skeptical the executive branch has the legal authority to shut down asylum processing between ports of entry on its own,” Murphy said. “Meaningful asylum reform requires a bipartisan solution in Congress.”

‘Immediate litigation’

Section 212(f) of the Immigration Nationality Act allows the president “to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens,” if the president “finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Since the 1980s, administrations, including Biden’s, have evoked this code in certain circumstances, such as in 2022 for any individuals connected with Russia amid its war with Ukraine.

In general, the 212(f) code has been narrowly applied, said Amy Grenier, policy and practice counsel for the American Immigration Lawyers Association. She added that she expects Tuesday’s executive order to be legally challenged.

“There will be pretty much immediate litigation around whether or not that conflicts with the part of the statute that guarantees the ability to apply for asylum,” Grenier said.

A senior administration official said the White House expects those legal challenges.

“We are prepared for any litigation on this rule,” a senior administration official said.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which was at the forefront of many legal cases against the Trump administration’s immigration policies that restricted asylum, has already stated it plans to sue the Biden administration over its executive order.

“We intend to challenge this order in court. It was illegal when Trump did it, and it is no less illegal now,” Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said in a statement.

The executive order is a stark reversal of the president’s campaign promise to “restore our moral standing in the world and our historic role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum-seekers,” as Biden said in his 2020 acceptance speech at the virtual Democratic National Convention.

“This new executive order that we’re expecting, (is) unfortunately part of the trend of the Biden administration adopting many of the policies that were enacted under the Trump administration that are rooted in xenophobia, and a disregard for our international obligations to provide asylum,” Kate Mahoney, a senior staff attorney at Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said.

Mahoney said applying a numbers-based cap on asylum will only harm the most vulnerable of asylum seekers and will do little to deter people from coming to the southern border.

“This kind of blunt instrument will just turn away everyone,” she said. “It’s not doing anything to better identify people who have strong claims who will truly suffer harm in their home country.”

A growing share of migrants at the southern border are families, according to Pew Research Center, where as of December families make up 41% and unaccompanied children make up 5%. The rest, 54%, are single adults.

Progressives disappointed

Democrats expressed their disappointment in the new executive order.

Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus and is the top Democrat on a House Judiciary Committee panel on immigration policy, said in a statement that Tuesday’s announcement was “extremely disappointing.”

“This attempt to shut down the border to asylum seekers uses the same section of U.S. immigration laws that convicted felon Donald Trump used to implement the Muslim Ban and in attempts to cut off all access to asylum,” she said. “While there are some differences from Trump’s actions, the reality is that this utilizes the same failed enforcement-only approach, penalizes asylum seekers, and furthers a false narrative that these actions will ‘fix’ the border.”

Biden addressed those criticisms and said “be patient.”

“Doing nothing is not an option,” Biden said.

However, some Democrats in border states, including Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, welcomed the executive order. Kelly said in a statement that more needs to be done in Congress to address immigration.

“In Arizona, where Border Patrol agents and nonprofits are often overwhelmed by daily migrant crossings, this new effort will support their crucial work and help relieve border communities from the burden of our broken immigration system,” he said.

Several Senate Republicans held a Tuesday press conference where Texas Sen. John Cornyn accused the president of “not being serious” about the southern border for only issuing the order three years into his first term.

South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham said that the only way to curb migration at the southern border is to remove hundreds of thousands of noncitizens from the U.S. – something that Trump has promised to do should he win a second term.

“The only policy changes that will work is to have mass deportations,” Graham said.

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NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 18: Asylum seekers board a bus en route to a shelter at Port Authority Bus Terminal on May 18, 2023, in New York City. Mayor Eric Adams addressed the daily arrival of hundreds of migrants and stated that his administration is struggling to find emergency shelter sites and is pleading for help from federal and state officials. Adams has been exploring various options for shelters, including municipal buildings, vacant offices, and even Rikers Island, the notorious city jail, as well as 20 public school gyms to be used as emergency sites. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration will start a new system Friday to hasten asylum claims for single adults, administration officials said Thursday.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Justice will launch a new expedited docket for migrants who arrive alone at ports of entry and turn themselves in to border authorities, senior administration officials said on a call with reporters previewing the changes.

Those single adult migrants will have their asylum cases processed first, rather than have their case go to the back of the line, which can take years.

The new recent arrivals docket will “more swiftly impose consequences, including removal, on those without a legal basis to remain in the United States,” a senior administration official said. Administration officials briefed reporters on the changes on the condition they not be named.

“Today, we are instituting with the Department of Justice a process to accelerate asylum proceedings so that individuals who do not qualify for relief can be removed more quickly and those who do qualify can achieve protection sooner,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.

The recent arrivals docket will allow asylum cases to be decided in 180 days, or six months, rather than years, a senior administration official said.

As of April, there is about a 3.6 million-case backlog in U.S. immigration court that will take years to process, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, or TRAC, which is a research center at Syracuse University that collects data on immigration. There are roughly 600 immigration judges in the country.

Average asylum processing time nearly 3 years

Currently, when a migrant arrives to claim asylum, they are processed and, if they are not detained, they are allowed to live in the country while they await their court date. The average processing time for asylum cases for fiscal year 2023, was 1,016 days or about 2.8 years, according to TRAC.

“The recent arrivals docket is designed to decrease the amount of time it takes for certain noncitizen single adults to have their cases efficiently adjudicated by (the Executive Office for Immigration Review),” a senior administration official said.

A senior administration official said single adult migrants placed in the recent arrivals docket will have their cases processed before immigration judges in five cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York.

There will be 10 immigration judges dedicated to the docket, a senior administration official said.

The new arrivals docket will go into effect Friday, a senior administration official said.

The DOJ and DHS announced a similar process in 2021 where a dedicated docket applied to migrant families that arrived between ports of entry at the Southwest border.

The changes build upon the Biden administration’s announcement last week of a proposed rule that would allow immigration officials to reject asylum seekers who have a criminal record that poses a threat to national security or public safety and quickly remove them.

As the White House deals with the largest number of migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in 20 years, the Biden administration has faced continued intense criticism about its immigration policies from GOP lawmakers and the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump.

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Statehouse dome (Dana DiFilippo | New Jersey Monitor)

Immigrant workers are more reluctant to speak out about injustice in the workplace, report injuries, or cooperate in investigations out of fear of revealing their immigration status to authorities.

Now, a new bill would allow the state to levy hefty fines against employers threatening to use their workers’ immigration status against them during labor disputes. An example would be if a boss threatens to tell authorities that a worker came to the country illegally to pressure that worker into not reporting the employer for paying less than minimum wage.

“No worker should be forced to turn a blind eye to their employer’s unlawful behavior out of fear of being prosecuted for their immigration status,” bill sponsor Sen. Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex) said in a statement.

Businesses found to have exploited their workers based on their immigration status would face fines of up to $1,000 for the first violation, up to $5,000 for the second, and up to $10,000 for any subsequent violations.

The fines would be in addition to any fines related to violations of state labor laws.

But the bill is not enough for immigrant advocates who want to see more enforcement of existing laws and more serious consequences. Erik Cruz Morales of the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice said the bill is only a small first step toward tackling a bigger issue.

Morales said New Jersey should consider revoking business licenses from companies with multiple labor law violations. Even a $10,000 fine could be a slap on the wrist for companies bringing in millions of dollars, he noted.

Lawmakers should also look into beefing up the Law Against Discrimination to cover discrimination against immigration status, Morales said.

Morales said many immigrant workers fear filing complaints against their employers for breaking existing law — say, paying less than the state’s $15.13 minimum wage — let alone reporting them for violating a new law related to their immigration status.

“People are avoiding interacting with public government or filing a case, from what we’ve heard from people. They’re like, ‘I’m undocumented, what rights do I have in this country? I’m just going to stay quiet and get my $12 an hour, even though it’s $15,’” he said.

New Jersey is home to more than 2 million residents born out of the country and an estimated 440,000 undocumented immigrants, according to the Migration Policy Institute. 

While undocumented workers are protected by federal labor laws to prevent discrimination and are entitled to worker rights like breaks, minimum wage, and overtime, their immigration status often discourages them from fighting unfair work treatment, according to researchers at the University of Chicago. They found that undocumented workers are more likely to face discrimination and exploitation in the workplace.

Ruiz said the bill would protect workers’ rights and “hold businesses accountable for exploitative behavior.” The bill would help employees no matter what their immigration status is, she said.

It unanimously advanced out of the Senate Labor Committee Monday with no discussion. The companion bill still faces a vote in the Assembly Labor Committee.

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