Biden looking at Europe's approach to mass migration

The Biden administration is looking at establishing border immigration centers, after it lost a legal bid this week to overturn the Trumpera "Remain in Mexico" policy for migrants, according to a media report.

A US appeals court on Monday rejected an attempt by the White House to end a policy of former president Donald Trump that required tens of thousands of migrants to wait in Mexico for the resolution of their US asylum cases.

President Joe Biden, a Democrat, had previously ended his Republican predecessor's policy. But after Texas and Missouri sued over the revocation, a federal judge ruled that it had to be reinstated.

Under the 2019 policy, officially the Migrant Protection Protocols, those seeking asylum must wait in Mexico for a US court date instead of being allowed to wait in the United States for their hearings.

The Biden administration reissued a memo terminating the protocols in the hope it would overcome legal challenges. But the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals was unmoved.

The court said the US Department of Homeland Security "claims the power to implement a massive policy reversal-affecting billions of dollars and countless people-simply by typing out a new Word document and posting it on the internet. No input from Congress, no ordinary rule-making procedures, and no judicial review.

"DHS has come nowhere close to shouldering its heavy burden to show that it can make law in a vacuum," the judges wrote.

In response, the administration began returning the asylum-seekers to Mexico again last week.

The number of migrants apprehended at the US-Mexico border has reached record highs this year. About 500,000 to 600,000 of the 1.7 million border crossers who arrived during the 2021 fiscal year were not expelled or deported by US authorities, Customs and Border Patrol statistics show.

In October, the Border Patrol arrested nearly 22,000 people at Yuma, Arizona, a 1,200 percent increase from January, according to Customs and Border Patrol data.

Many of those arrested are quickly expelled under a different Trump policy installed at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which Biden has kept in place. Title 42, a 1940s-era policy, prohibits entry when "there is a serious danger to the introduction of (a communicable) disease into the United States".

According to the latest Customs and Border Patrol report dated Nov 15, officials had 93,676"encounters" at the border, and more than 57 percent of those arriving were processed for expulsion under Title 42.

Biden's immigration advisers are discussing proposals to set up European-style reception centers along the Mexican border that would revamp the way asylum-seekers are processed and potentially slow the release of migrants into the US, according to administration officials, The Washington Post reported on Monday.

The reception-center model represents a possible breakthrough because it would reduce the number of illegal border crossers who are issued a notice to appear in US courts, a practice criticized by Republicans as "catch and release".

It also potentially offers Democrats a more politically acceptable alternative to the "Remain in Mexico" program.

Migrant reception centers were established in Europe after an influx of asylum-seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and North Africa on the continent in 2015 and 2016. The centers provide housing and also give migrants "information about their rights, a path to a residency permit, freedom of movement and access to healthcare, education and work," according to the European Insights website.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis wants $8 million to create a program to allow the state to use private contractors to transport "unauthorized aliens" out of Florida. The governor said the plan would fight "back against the Biden border crisis".

DeSantis has said that Florida should be able to use buses to relocate migrants to other parts of the country, such as Delaware, where Biden has a main residence. The governor has been holding regular news conferences to talk about "clandestine "flights carrying migrants into Florida late at night with no notice from the federal government.

A senior White House official told the McClatchy Washington Bureau: "This is a very inappropriate villainization and victimization of migrants when this is literally just the normal process. These aren't people being released. This is all just normal processing in what are standard immigration pathways for a variety of immigration groups, in this case specific to unaccompanied minors."

Reuters contributed to this story.