Lifting of immigration restrictions on 13 countries, stoppage of the border wall construction on the U.S.-Mexico border are some of the Donald Trump administration’s policies reversed yesterday by United States President Joe Biden on his first day in office.
The Department of Homeland Security also announced it would implement a 100-day moratorium on deportations for immigrants in the U.S. facing removal, and suspended the Trump administration’s policy of requiring non-Mexican asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico for their U.S. court hearings. The order revoking Trump’s travel and immigration restrictions on a group of 13 nations, most of which are predominantly Muslim or African, instructed the State Department to begin processing visa applications from the 13 countries.“Those actions are a stain on our national conscience and are inconsistent with our long history of welcoming people of all faiths and no faith at all”, Biden wrote, referring to Trump’s restrictions, which he accused of being discriminatory.
In a memo, Acting DHS Secretary David Pekoske issued interim guidance instructing U.S. immigration officers to focus on deporting immigrants found to pose a national security threat, recent border-crossers and those who have been convicted of certain crimes. Through a proclamation, Biden also ordered officials to pause barrier construction on the U.S.-Mexico border within seven days and ended the national emergency declaration Mr. Trump used to divert billions of dollars in military funding to finance his long-promised wall. During his last week in office, Mr. Trump had extended the proclamation through February 2022.