To Restrict Migrants, Biden Leans on Trump’s Favorite Immigration Law

When President Donald J. Trump wanted to shut down the southern border in 2018, he found a 73-word provision in the asylum law that he said gave him “magical authorities” to keep migrants out of the country.

President Biden turned to that same provision on Tuesday as he took executive action to temporarily close the border to asylum seekers, suspending longstanding guarantees that anyone who steps onto U.S. soil has the right to ask for protection in America.

“The simple truth is, there is a worldwide migrant crisis,” Mr. Biden said in remarks at the White House, “and if the United States doesn’t secure our border, there’s no limit to the number of people who may try to come here.”

Mr. Biden’s announcement is a stunning reversal for a president and a party that spent years arguing that America was a country of immigrants. When President Barack Obama wanted to shore up his chances of re-election in 2012, he issued a sweeping executive order on immigration — one that allowed millions of immigrants to stay in the country legally.

A dozen years later, with the number of people crossing the border illegally at historic highs, the next Democratic president moved entirely in the other direction. Critics say Mr. Biden is adopting the tactics of Mr. Trump and Stephen Miller, his immigration czar, to end asylum, even using the same clause in the Immigration and Nationality Act that Mr. Trump cited to justify a travel ban on Muslim countries.

“Stephen Miller and Donald Trump peddled fear-based politics on immigration, and the Biden White House has decided to buy,” said Heidi Altman, the policy director at the National Immigrant Justice Center. She called it “a dangerous shift” that will “put the United States at odds with core values and commitments.”