Biden Moves In Silence Again: Reverses Another Trump Immigration Policy

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Homeland Security issued new rules that will require every decision that happens will have to be under a supervisor’s review in hopes to approve more cases, according to The Washington Times.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services revoked a policy placed by Trump limited supervision reviews to those that were new asylum officers.

Trump’s alleged thinking was that officers with more than 6 months of training and completed 150 cases or more, no longer needed hand-holding.

Andrew Davidson, the chief of USCIS’s asylum division, called that policy “deficient.”

Davidson claimed that the policy “no longer reflects the … operational reality and it is not appropriately tailored to the program’s quality needs.”

Former agency officials cleared up that what the Biden team is doing is scrapping a policy that made adjudications more efficient all in the name of wiping clean anything with the Trump imprimatur.

“This is odd,” Ken Cuccinelli, who made the changes while running USCIS in 2019.

“It will slow down case consideration for sure.”

“My change to that policy was a pure common-sense, efficiency effort,” said Mr. Cuccinelli.

Asylum is humanitarian protection requested by migrants already in the U.S.

Asylum allows for the opportunity to stay in the US and gain full citizenship without having to fear deportation.

Applications came in two types, one was in request to avoid deportation and the other was in preparation of entering the US through Asylum/

In 2018 and 2019, more than 203,000 affirmative petitions were filed. Slightly more than 52,000 were approved.

Venezuela, Guatemala, China and El Salvador were the countries that had the most citizens applying.

The standard for asylum is supposed to be someone who is fleeing government-sanctioned persecution at home, though who exactly should qualify is heatedly debated.

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Mr. Davidson said the Trump administration’s hiring surge brought on a glut of new officers who need the extra hand-holding. He also blamed the coronavirus pandemic, saying there have been too few cases coming through to give everyone enough training.

“As a result, recent quality assurance reviews, including one conducted of affirmative cases, not all of which received supervisory review, highlighted issues to be addressed relative to the quality of adjudications,” he wrote.

More from The Washington Times:

The Trump administration tightened the window, arguing general crime and violence weren’t sufficient, and the system was being abused by traditional immigrants without documentation who were making bogus claims. Immigrant-rights activists countered that the Trump team was denying valid claims.

Biden administration officials echo the activists’ concerns, and have vowed to undo the Trump changes.

The Times reached out to several immigrant-rights groups active on asylum issues but none provided comment.