‘A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY’

For U.S. advocates of migrants and refugees, Jan. 20, 2021, couldn't have come soon enough.

Joe Biden had barely been sworn in as the 46th president of the United States when he moved to quickly undo some of the pain they felt from the past four years.

He reversed his predecessor's "Muslim ban" keeping people from some Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. He also strengthened the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program for young adults who entered the U.S. illegally as children, a program President Donald Trump tried to end.

Biden also announced a 100-day halt on deportations and unveiled a preliminary plan to provide a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants.

Then on Feb. 2, Biden signed a trio of executive orders mostly reviewing immigration directives from his predecessor for possible reversal. But what that path forward, however, will look like still is not clear.

Just six days earlier on Jan. 26, a federal judge in Texas -- a Trump-appointee -- temporarily blocked the new president's executive order on deportations. Republicans in Congress also began signaling a fight ahead on any immigration legislation.

No matter what lies ahead, Biden's team is laying the groundwork for short-term and long-term solutions to one of the most contentious issues in the country: legal and illegal immigration.

Auxiliary Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville of Washington, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Migration, said the Feb. 2 orders "will help to ensure that immigrants and refugees are treated humanely and in accordance with their God-given dignity.”

In his statement, Bishop Dorsonville said migration policies implemented by the Trump administration "have directly impacted and harmed immigrants' and refugees' lives, in many cases needlessly instilling fear and creating or perpetuating family separation."

"The Catholic Church teaches that each person is created in the image and likeness of God and that we must uphold the inherent dignity of each person," he said. "As a society, we must remain consistent in our openness and treatment of all persons, regardless of whether they were born in the United States or immigrated here."

Bishop Dorsonville said the U.S. bishops "know that changes will take time but (we) applaud President Biden's commitment to prioritize assisting our immigrant and refugee brothers and sisters. We also offer our assistance and cooperation on these urgent matters of human life and dignity."

The administration further announced it will start a task force to reunite families separated at the border and also reimagine the current asylum and immigration systems.

The task force will be led by Alejandro Mayorkas, confirmed by the Senate on Feb. 2 -- and sworn in the same day -- to serve as the next U.S. secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes carrying out Biden's immigration agenda.

Mayorkas is the first immigrant as well as the first Latino appointed to the high-profile Cabinet position. The 61-year-old lawyer was born in Havana and brought to the United States as an infant when his family fled their homeland during the Cuban Revolution and headed to Florida. 

OPPORTUNITY FOR CATHOLICS

Some see a tough road, one paved with legal and political obstacles by those seeking to continue Trump's legacy against immigration -- legal and illegal. Others see it as an opportunity for the Catholic Church in the U.S., which long has favored immigration reform, to play a part in advancing several elusive pieces of legislation.

Writing Jan. 21 about Biden's "U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021" for America magazine, J. Kevin Appleby, a board member of the Hope Border Institute in El Paso, Texas, said the proposal presents "a unique opportunity for the Catholic community to work with the administration to finally get immigration reform over the finish line."

The proposed path to citizenship would legalize, in some form, large swaths of unauthorized immigrants in the country, a move welcomed by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and many affiliated faith-based organizations.

Some groups that would benefit include the young adults who arrived in the U.S. as minors and have protection under DACA, as well as recipients of Temporary Protection Status, known as TPS.

But it also would grant temporary legal status and a path to citizenship to those who entered the country illegally for various reasons before Jan. 1, 2021, as long as they have no criminal record.

Ronald Reagan in 1986 was the last U.S. president to successfully rally Congress to pass legislation that legalized, on such a grand-scale, groups that had entered the country without permission to do so by granting three million people what some call "amnesty."   

Appleby, who has advocated in Congress for immigration reform in the past as director of migration policy at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and later at the Center for Migration Studies of New York, sees similar promise in Biden, who wasted no time sending a strong signal about the importance of reform during his administration.

"The introduction of the bill on the first day of the administration signals that President Biden is willing to spend political capital in his first term to get it passed -- capital that two of his predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, were unwilling to spend until their second term," Appleby wrote in his piece for America.  "As a consequence, both Mr. Bush and Mr. Obama failed in their attempts to pass a bill."

‘ZERO TOLERANCE’

The Biden administration is expected to order a change of what critics of Trump consider his most controversial policies, including what has become known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP.

The policy kept those looking for asylum on the other side of the border until their cases could be adjudicated by U.S. immigration courts. Those with pending cases still will not be allowed in and the policy is not being immediately revoked. The administration will no longer enroll new asylum-seekers in the program, but it remains unclear what will happen to those waiting for their day in court.

On paper, public health measures to keep COVID-19 out of the United States by expelling migrants who cross the border illegally -- a policy put in place by Trump administration officials -- also seem to be staying put for the moment.

Biden's most pressing issue is to reunite hundreds of children who remain separated from family. From April to June 2018, the Trump administration instituted a "zero tolerance policy" that separated adults who were caught crossing the border with children, even if they were relatives or parents. The adults were prosecuted, detained and some deported, and the children were left behind, held in detention centers.

The exact number of minors still separated from family is not clear.

"We're going to work to undo the moral and national shame of the previous administration that literally, not figuratively, ripped children from the arms of their families, mothers, and fathers at the border with no plan, none whatsoever, to reunify the children, who are still in custody, and their parents," Biden said during a ceremony at the White House in which he signed the orders on Feb. 2.

Biden said the second order "addresses the root causes of immigration to the southern border," and the third "orders a full review of the previous administration's harmful and counterproductive administration policies, basically across the board."

Anna Gallagher, executive director of Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc., said while the actions are welcome, "expulsions and deportations of asylum-seekers who were not afforded due process under the prior administration continue."

In a Feb. 2 statement, she said urgent action, particularly for asylum-seekers, is needed immediately because people are still facing death and danger if they're not allowed in.

"This vision must be turned into action starting today, and the deportations of these asylum-seekers must be stopped," she said.