Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security team has grown worried that some of its policy language could cause “stress” to illegal immigrants, leading to the deletion of some phrasing that threatened deportation if a person overstayed their visa.
From the Daily Wire:
The Washington Times reported that the directive to remove the warning was issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which was apparently worried about “placing undue stress” on immigrants.
“This guidance will ensure the Agency is not placing undue stress on the customer who believes he/she may or may not receive an NTA based on the information provided in their denial notification,” the directive read, according to the Times.
The directive was an effort to roll “back a Trump policy that anyone who applied but was rejected for legal immigration status should be referred for deportation, through what’s known in government-speak as an NTA, or Notice to Appear,” the outlet reported.
DHS said that it was carrying out an Inauguration Day change by the new administration that will change many Trump-era directives and hinted there are more changes on the horizon.
“USCIS will issue additional implementation guidance on this issue in the near future,” the agency said.
But not everyone agrees with the changes.
“There’s no reason not to warn the rejected applicants that they are potentially removable, even if they are not a priority,” said the Center for Immigration Studies’ policy studies director Jessica Vaughan.
Vaughan also warned against referring to illegal immigrants as “customers.”
“They brazenly tried to exploit our immigration system, but are to be treated as customers who must be treated gently, and definitely not be frightened by the suggestion that they should leave before they are removed,” Vaughan said.
Biden has made undoing many of the Trump administration’s immigration agenda a priority in the early days of his administration. Several of the executive orders the new president has issued so far deal directly with immigration, including halting construction of the southern border wall.
Biden has defended his extensive use of executive authority thus far, claiming he is only using it to change “bad policy.”
“I want to make it clear — there’s a lot of talk, with good reason, about the number of executive orders that I have signed. I’m not making new law. I’m eliminating bad policy,” he recently told reporters.
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