The potential measures to crack down on immigrations reportedly being considered by the Biden administration are getting tougher by the day.
After NBC News reported on Wednesday that the government is weighing making it harder to qualify for asylum and easier to quickly deport people who don't meet the criteria, CBS News indicated that it is contemplating a tougher measure: a sweeping presidential authority that allows him to "suspend the entry" of foreigners when it is determined that their arrival is not in the best interest of the country. Moreover, Axios said that the order would give the administration the ability to turn asylum seekers away if they cross illegally.
Citing an administration official, the outlet added that the executive action could be announced within the next two weeks, but that no final decision has been made.
The law, known as 212(f), was used by the Trump administration to, among other things, ban immigration and travel from a series of countries, most of them predominantly Muslim, and to prevent migrants from getting asylum if they entered the country illegally.
The measure would likely be met with resistance within more progressive factions of the Democratic party, which have already been conveying discomfort with the new, tougher rhetoric the President's been using.
More than 130 organizations from around the country sent a letter to Biden opposing the deal and the tougher standards for asylum. Some of these activists expressed their frustrations with Biden and a lack of enthusiasm to go knock on doors for him at a recent gathering of more than a dozen advocacy groups in Arizona.
Julian Castro, the former San Antonio mayor and secretary of housing and urban development who ran against Biden for the presidential nomination in 2020, suggested Biden and his allies were adopting the terms of Trump's "Make America Great Again" movement and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell.
"Democrats, you're never going to be cruel enough, 'tough' enough, anti-immigrant enough or able to deport your way to the negotiating table with McConnell and MAGA," Castro said. "Stop playing their game."
However, Biden's rhetoric shift seems to be working for other registered Democrats, specially those in cities largely dealing with the migrant crisis.
In New York, for instance, Democrat Tom Suozzi gained a seat in the House, following a campaign that ran ads calling for more border security and featuring an interview he did on Fox News in which he supported U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Likewise, in Nevada, a critical swing state in November's election, Democrats are resonating with this new rhetoric.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat and the only Hispanic woman in the upper chamber, said her constituents want to see an "orderly process at the border."
Moreover, figures show that the border situation can be an electoral liability, as as almost 80% of people in the U.S. believe the soaring of crossings in the southern border of the country is a grave problem and that the Biden administration is not doing a good job addressing it, according to a new poll by the Pew Research Center.
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