SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — The Southern Border Communities Coalition dismissed President Biden’s executive order to limit the number of asylum seekers as simply a way to try and “score political points during an election year.”
Furthermore, Lillian Serrano, the SBCC’s director, said migrants aren’t paying attention to what Biden does, and they will come anyway.
“We don’t really expect any executive action to have an impact on the amount of migrants that arrive to our country. They’re not watching what the president does, they’re driven by need and their plight” said Serrano. “What we might see is a push of migrants to remote paths into the country that will increase the number of deaths and human suffering.”
Serrano fears migrants, relying on smugglers, will simply shift to more desolate areas along the southern border as they try to get into the U.S.
She believes Biden’s executive order is a breach of both domestic and international law.
Serrano went on to say it’s likely migrant advocates will take legal action to overturn President Biden’s executive order, something they did when the Trump administration tried to limit the number of asylum seekers.
“Any attempt to limit the amount of people who can exercise their human rights is in violation of not only our own laws in this country, but also international law — without changing the law, and that is something only Congress can do, it limits what the administration can legally do.”
Others, like Democratic U.S. Senator Alex Padilla from California, are also criticizing today’s decision by the president to limit the number of asylum seekers.
“By reviving Trump’s asylum ban, President Biden has undermined American values and abandoned our nation’s obligations to provide people fleeing persecution, violence, and authoritarianism with an opportunity to seek refuge in the U.S.,” Padilla said. “This asylum ban will fail to address the challenges at our border, just as it did under the Trump Administration, it will lead to people with legitimate asylum claims being prevented from seeking safety and returned to harm.”
San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, a Republican, was also critical of Biden’s executive order.
“If the President truly cared about securing the border, he would come to San Diego and see the more than 150,000 people who have been released on our streets or the 52,000 Special Interest Aliens who have crossed into San Diego,” Desmond said.