WASHINGTON – In the last month alone, President Joe Biden’s administration ended a policy forcing asylum-seekers to remain out of the country, terminated the contracts of two controversial ICE facilities and given long-sought protected status to Haitian immigrants.
Immigration advocates hope it’s only the beginning of an aggressive effort to tackle an issue that has proven to be among the most tumultuous for Biden during his first few months in office.
Biden and his initially made immigration a top priority, but quickly received an avalanche of negative attention from liberals and conservatives alike as they struggled to respond to a surge of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.
But now progressive activists say they see signs that the White House is “regaining their confidence” on the issue, said Frank Sharry, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice.
“They seem to be re-emerging,” Sharry said. “They seemed to go into something of a deep freeze, and it’s thawing, even melting now.”
Immigration advocates caution that even though they are optimistic about the progress they have seen in recent weeks, the administration still has a long list of looming decisions over the coming months that it needs to resolve.
At the top of their priority list is including a pathway to citizenship for at least some undocumented immigrants in a bill using the reconciliation process, which would allow Democrats to pass the measure on a party-line vote in the U.S. Senate without any Republican support.
The White House has said it would prefer not to pass immigration legislation using that method, meaning the legislation would require support from at least 60 senators — including at least 10 Republicans — to be approved.
But activists say they think that the political pressure the administration faced earlier this year has abated now, at least somewhat, even as more migrants are expected to attempt to cross the southern border this summer.
The border surge was a focus of early attention from conservative critics and the meda. During Biden’s first press conference in March, he received more questions about immigration than even the coronavirus pandemic.
“What we saw during that big spike was the administration was allowing the opposition, in a very crass and gross way, to define the playing field,” said Todd Schulte, president of FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group.
But Schulte, speaking last week during an online panel discussion about the White House’s immigration policy, said he thought he had seen a “sea change” from the administration in recent months.
He cited Biden’s decision to highlight immigration during a joint address to Congress in April and, more recently, the appearance of Cabinet officials like Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg with immigration advocates.
“It’s not that long ago they were blocking TPS status for Haiti, they were keeping the refugee numbers at historic lows, they were not leaning in on these citizenship bills, which are kind of the crown jewel accomplishment of what we’re trying to get done here,” Schulte said.
The Biden administration announced last week it was granting Temporary Protected Status to undocumented Haitian immigrants, which allows them to live and work in the U.S. It was a change advocates had long lobbied the administration to make, citing the violence in the Caribbean country.
That followed a decision from the administration to raise the number of refugees from around the world it would let into the country, reversing an earlier announcement from the White House that drew widespread anger from Democrats.
Biden’s poll numbers on immigration have consistently been among his lowest as president of any issue. A CNN survey in late April, for instance, found that while 53% of Americans approved of his overall job performance, just 41% approved of the way he was handling immigration.
Schulte said he thought Democrats had successfully regained momentum on the politics of immigration, due to a renewed commitment to promoting the Biden administration’s more popular actions, such as its family reunification initiative.
But whether that political momentum continues over the course of the summer remains to be seen, advocates say. Biden will be faced with potential decisions on ending the use of all private detention facilities to house migrants, rescinding a public health act known as Title 42 used to close the border, and extending TPS status to immigrants from other central American countries like Honduras.
The primary point of focus, however, is whether the administration includes support for a pathway to citizenship in a potential reconciliation bill.
Jess Morales Rocketto, a veteran immigration advocate who joined Schulte on the call, said she hoped to see such an effort materialize sometime in June or early July.
“If it doesn’t, that would be, I would say, not warmly received by advocates,” she said.
