Biden Mulls Over Option to Shut Down Border

(UnitedHeadlines.com) – On April 9, President Joe Biden, 81, said he is “examining” if he has the power to use executive action to close the southern border.

Biden’s answer was in response to Univision’s Enrique Acevedo, who asked Biden during an interview if he could potentially use an executive order to control the border. Biden added that “There’s no guarantee” he has the “power all by myself without legislation” to control crossings at the border, which he stated has 5,000 people per day attempting to cross it.

Biden’s comments come after a bipartisan bill failed to pass in the Senate. The bill would have allowed the Department of Homeland Security to close the border if a threshold of 5,000 illegal migrant crossings were reached on any day in a week. The proposed legislation would have also allowed asylum recipients to receive automatic work permits. Biden called the legislation “good,” adding that he’s “not giving up on it.”

This is not the first time Biden has claimed to be examining taking executive action to control the border. Amid a surge in illegal border crossings in February, Biden claimed he had been mulling taking executive action to close the border when illegal crossings exceeded a certain threshold. Though Biden has yet to take any executive action, one of the options Biden was reportedly considering was the same executive action used in 2018 by former President Donald Trump that restricted migrants from claiming asylum if they illegally crossed the border into the United States. When Biden took office in January 2021, he overturned Trump’s executive order.

According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, CBP agents have encountered over 7 million migrants at the border since Biden took office in January 2021. In February, CBP data shows there were 189,922 attempted border crossings, higher than previous years but down from the 302,000 attempted border crossings in December 2023, which was the highest monthly number ever recorded. There have been 961,537 encounters so far this fiscal year, according to CBP data.