The Biden administration is mulling a change that'd have migrant families who entered the U.S. illegally remain near the border in Texas during vetting of their asylum applications, the Los Angeles Times reported Thursday.
The change is being considered amid the staggering numbers of families that crossed the southern border into states like Texas and Arizona in July. While the Border Patrol put the number at more than 60,000, The Washington Post reported last week the number was closer to 91,000 families, which would be a record.
By tracking and limiting their travels within the rest of the country, the administration aims to be able to more quickly deport those families that fail asylum screenings, per the Times report. Officials also see it as a potential deterrent, per the Times.
The impetus for the program: that rounding up families to arrest and deport in the interior of the country is difficult, the Times reported.
Federal officials would track the migrants with GPS monitoring devices and work with local organizations to house them while they wait for their hearing, according to the Times. Other border states, not just Texas, are also being considered.
As the program currently stands, Family Expedited Removal Management (FERM) imposes curfews and tracks migrant families traveling freely to large cities. The Biden administration was hoping that alone would deter families from crossing, per the Times.
The focus would be on Central American families, given the proximity to the U.S. and ease of deporting large numbers.
"DHS continuously holds policy and operational discussions on how to leverage our authorities to ensure a fair, humane, and effective immigration process that efficiently removes those without a lawful basis to stay in the country," a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Times.
The policy, if implemented, wil harken back to the Reagan administration, which in the late 1980s tried implementing a policy of applying for asylum where you crossed and waiting in place for the asylum process to play out.
For its part, Texas has been searching for its own strategies to better manage and perhaps curb the migrant influx across its border with Mexico.
For instance, it placed a floating buoy barrier across a section of the Rio Grande to discourage crossings, though this is under legal challenge.
Texas is also among those states that have bused or flown some migrants to bluer states, like New York, in an effort to shift the burden.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said his state, like others, is struggling to meet the needs of a massive influx of tens of thousands of migrants and he called on President Joe Biden to curb the flow across the southern border, just as officials in Texas, Arizona and other states have done.
"This issue will destroy New York City," he said. "... All of us are going to be impacted by this. I said it last year when we had 15,000, and I'm telling you now at 110,000. The city we knew, we're about to lose."
It was unclear at press time whether these developments had factored into the proposed policy shift being eyed by the Biden administration.
In a Newsmax interview on Thursday, Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, said that when it comes to migrants trying to enter the United States, "Donald Trump had the right policy of wait in Mexico.
"If you're going to claim asylum, your case will be adjudicated, you will wait in Mexico, thereby providing a huge disincentive for people to take a very long and dangerous journey from southern Mexico, central Mexico and Central America," he said.