Illegal Immigration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      As U.S. Navigates Crisis in Haiti, a Bloody History Looms Large

      by

      American policy decisions are vital to understanding Haiti’s political instability, and why it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.In September 1994, the United States was on the verge of invading Haiti.Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected president, had been deposed in a military coup three years earlier. Haiti had descended into chaos. Gangs and paramilitaries terrorized the population — taking hostages, assassinating dissidents and burning crops. International embargoes had strangled the economy, and tens of thousands of people were trying to emigrate to America.But just days before the first U.S. troops would land in Haiti, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator on the Foreign Affairs Committee, spoke against a military intervention. He argued that the United States had more pressing crises — including ethnic cleansing in Bosnia — and that Haiti was not especially important to American interests.“I think it’s probably not wise,” Mr. Biden said of the planned invasion in an interview with television host Charlie Rose.He added: “If Haiti — a God-awful thing to say — if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interest.”Despite Mr. Biden’s apprehension, the invasion went forward and the Haitian military junta surrendered within hours. Mr. Aristide was soon restored to power, and the Clinton administration began deporting thousands of Haitians.Nearly a decade later, Haiti’s constitutional order would collapse again, prompting another U.S. military intervention, more migrants and more deportations. As rebels threatened to invade the capital in 2004, Mr. Aristide resigned under pressure from U.S. officials. A provisional government was formed with American backing. The violence and unrest continued.That cycle of crisis and U.S. intervention in Haiti — punctuated by periods of relative calm but little improvement in the lives of most people — has persisted to this day. Since July, a presidential assassination, an earthquake and a tropical storm have deepened the turmoil.Mr. Biden, now president, is overseeing yet another intervention in Haiti’s political affairs, one that his critics say is following an old Washington playbook: backing Haitian leaders accused of authoritarian rule, either because they advance American interests or because U.S. officials fear the instability of a transition of power. Making sense of American policy in Haiti over the decades — driven at times by economic interests, Cold War strategy and migration concerns — is vital to understanding Haiti’s political instability, and why it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, even after an infusion of more than $5 billion in U.S. aid in the last decade alone.A bloody history of American influence looms large, and a century of U.S. efforts to stabilize and develop the country have ultimately ended in failure.Marines in Haiti marched during the last days of occupation, which ended in 1934 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy.Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe American Occupation (1915-34)The politics of slavery and racial prejudice were key factors in early American hostility to Haiti. After the Haitian Revolution, Thomas Jefferson and many in Congress feared that the newly founded Black republic would spread slave revolts in the United States.For decades, the United States refused to formally recognize Haiti’s independence from France, and at times tried to annex Haitian territory and conduct diplomacy through threats.It was against this backdrop that Haiti became increasingly unstable. The country went through seven presidents between 1911 and 1915, all either assassinated or removed from power. Haiti was heavily in debt, and Citibank — then the National City Bank of New York — and other American banks confiscated much of Haiti’s gold reserves during that period with the help of U.S. Marines.Roger L. Farnham, who managed National City Bank’s assets in Haiti, then lobbied President Woodrow Wilson for a military intervention to stabilize the country and force the Haitian government to pay its debts, convincing the president that France or Germany might invade if America did not.The military occupation that followed remains one of the darkest chapters of American policy in the Caribbean. The United States installed a puppet regime that rewrote Haiti’s constitution and gave America control over the country’s finances. Forced labor was used for construction and other work to repay debts. Thousands were killed by U.S. Marines.The occupation ended in 1934 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy. As the last Marines departed Haiti, riots broke out in Port-au-Prince, the capital. Bridges were destroyed, telephone lines were cut and the new president declared martial law and suspended the constitution. The United States did not completely relinquish control of Haiti’s finances until 1947.François Duvalier, top, and his son Jean-Claude, bottom, were both dictators who presented themselves as anti-communist to gain the support of the United States.Agence France–Presse/ Getty ImagesThe Duvalier DynastyThe ruthless dictator François Duvalier took power in 1957, as Fidel Castro led a revolution in Cuba and as U.S. interests in the region were becoming increasingly focused on limiting the influence of the Soviet Union.Duvalier, like many other dictators in the Caribbean and Latin America, recognized that he could secure American support if he presented his government as anti-communist. U.S. officials privately described Duvalier as “the worst dictator in the hemisphere,” while deeming him preferable to the perceived risk of a communist Haiti.When the United States suspended aid programs because of atrocities committed soon after Duvalier took office, the Haitian leader hired public relations firms, including one run by Roosevelt’s youngest son, to repair the relationship.Duvalier — and later his son Jean-Claude — ultimately enjoyed significant American support in the form of aid (much of it embezzled by the family), training for Haitian paramilitary forces who would go on to commit atrocities and even a Marine deployment in 1959 despite the protests of American diplomats in Haiti.By 1961, the United States was sending Duvalier $13 million in aid a year — equivalent to half of Haiti’s national budget.Even after the United States had tired of Duvalier’s brutality and unstable leadership, President John F. Kennedy demurred on a plot to remove him and mandate free elections. When Duvalier died nearly a decade later, the United States supported the succession of his son. By 1986, the United States had spent an estimated $900 million supporting the Duvalier dynasty as Haiti plunged deeper into poverty and corruption.President Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated in July, ruled Haiti by decree and turned to authoritarian tactics with the tacit approval of the Trump and Biden administrations.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesFavored CandidatesAt crucial moments in Haiti’s democratic era, the United States has intervened to pick winners and losers — fearful of political instability and surges of Haitian migration.After Mr. Aristide was ousted in 1991, the U.S. military reinstalled him. He resigned in disgrace less than a decade later, but only after American diplomats urged him to do so. According to reports from that time, the George W. Bush administration had undermined Mr. Aristide’s government in the years before his resignationFrançois Pierre-Louis is a political science professor at Queens College in New York who served in Mr. Aristide’s cabinet and advised former Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis. Haitians are often suspicious of American involvement in their affairs, he said, but still take signals from U.S. officials seriously because of the country’s long history of influence over Haitian politics.For example, after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, American and other international diplomats pressured Haiti to hold elections that year despite the devastation. The vote was disastrously mismanaged, and international observers and many Haitians considered the results illegitimate.Responding to the allegations of voter fraud, American diplomats insisted that one candidate in the second round of the presidential election be replaced with a candidate who received fewer votes — at one point threatening to halt aid over the dispute. Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, confronted then-President René Préval about putting Michel Martelly, America’s preferred candidate, on the ballot. Mr. Martelly won that election in a landslide.A direct line of succession can be traced from that election to Haiti’s current crisis.Mr. Martelly endorsed Jovenel Moïse as his successor. Mr. Moïse, who was elected in 2016, ruled by decree and turned to authoritarian tactics with the tacit approval of the Trump and Biden administrations.Mr. Moïse appointed Ariel Henry as acting prime minister earlier this year. Then on July 7, Mr. Moïse was assassinated.Mr. Henry has been accused of being linked to the assassination plot, and political infighting that had quieted after international diplomats endorsed his claim to power has reignited. Mr. Martelly, who had clashed with Mr. Moïse over business interests, is considering another run for the presidency.Robert Maguire, a Haiti scholar and retired professor of international affairs at George Washington University, said the instinct in Washington to back members of Haiti’s political elite who appeared allied with U.S. interests was an old one, with a history of failure.Another approach could have more success, according to Mr. Maguire and other scholars, Democratic lawmakers and a former U.S. envoy for Haiti policy. They say the United States should support a grass-roots commission of civic leaders, who are drafting plans for a new provisional government in Haiti.That process, however, could take years. More

    • 113 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      The Democrats Are in Danger of a Midterm Rout

      by

      The Democrats are staring down real danger.They just aren’t getting enough done. They aren’t moving quickly enough on President Biden’s major campaign promises.The warning signs are all around.Democrats are still wrangling over their infrastructure and social spending bills. And the longer the fight drags on, the uglier it looks. Washington watchers are right — to a degree — to say that this is simply the way that large legislation is worked through. It’s a slog.In the end, I believe that the Democrats will have no choice but to pass something, no matter the size, because the consequence of failure is suicide. Democrats must go into the midterms with something that they can call a win, with something that at least inches closer to the transformations Biden has promised.But the budget isn’t the only issue.There is still a crisis at the border. In August, the Pew Research Center noted that the U.S. Border Patrol had reported “nearly 200,000 encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border in July, the highest monthly total in more than two decades.”That’s the largest number since Bill Clinton was president.The handling of Haitian immigrants was a particular blight on the administration, and the images of officers cracking their reins like whips will be hard to erase from memory.Furthermore, the Senate parliamentarian has advised Democrats against including a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers and other undocumented immigrants in their spending bill. It is not clear if Senate Democrats will try to get around the parliamentarian’s nonbinding ruling, but 92 legal scholars have called on them to do just that.As for police reform, negotiations on that legislation completely fell apart with customary finger-pointing as the epilogue.The president has said that, “The White House will continue to consult with the civil rights and law enforcement communities, as well as victims’ families to define a path forward, including through potential further executive actions I can take to advance our efforts to live up to the American ideal of equal justice under law.”But executive orders are severely limited when it comes to state and local policing, and any order one president issues can be rescinded by the next.Then there is the massive, widespread assault on voting rights rolling out across the country, what some have rightly referred to as Jim Crow 2.0.As the Brennan Center for Justice put it earlier this month, “In an unprecedented year so far for voting legislation, 19 states have enacted 33 laws that will make it harder for Americans to vote.”And yet, it is still not clear if there are enough votes in the Senate to pass voter protections, Senator Joe Manchin hasn’t agreed to change filibuster rules which would allow Democrats to pass the legislation on their own, and Biden has yet to throw his full weight behind the fight to preserve the franchise from Republican assaults.Not to mention that Covid is still killing far too many Americans. The surge of cases during Biden’s first year ate away at any optimism about the development and administration of vaccines.Democrats have been unable to deliver much to make their voters happy, and their major agenda items have been stalled in Congress for so long that many of those voters are growing impatient and disillusioned.As a result, many recent polls have shown Biden’s approval ratings plummeting to the lowest level of his young presidency: According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 38 percent of respondents approved of Biden’s job performance, but 53 percent disapproved.More than half disapproved of his handling of the economy, the military, taxes, and foreign policy, and nearly 70 percent disapproved of his approach to immigration reform and the situation at the Mexican border. Only his handling of Covid received a smaller disapproval rating, of 50 percent.As Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy put it, “Battered on trust, doubted on leadership, and challenged on overall competency, President Biden is being hammered on all sides as his approval rating continues its downward slide to a number not seen since the tough scrutiny of the Trump administration.”Black voters continue to be Biden’s strongest supporters on many of these metrics, but even their support seems disturbingly soft.Maybe the Democrats will pass a massive spending bill and tout it well, and people will forget their disappointment on other issues and revel in the mound of cash the Democrats plan to spend. Maybe. There is no doubt that this country desperately needs the investments Democrats want to make. In fact, it needs even more investment than the amount Democrats have proposed.But even if they succeed in passing both the infrastructure framework and the social spending bill, those investments may come too late to discharge growing dissatisfaction. An unpopular president with slipping approval numbers is an injured leader with little political capital to burn.Biden is better than Trump, but that’s not enough. People didn’t just vote for Biden to vanquish a villain; they also wanted a champion. That champion has yet to emerge.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

    • 125 Shares99 Views

      in Elections

      How the Census Bureau Stood Up to Donald Trump’s Meddling

      by

      WASHINGTON — There were 10 days left in the Trump presidency. And John Abowd and Tori Velkoff had a decision to make.Six months earlier, in July 2020, President Donald Trump had ordered the Census Bureau, where they were senior officials, to produce a count of every unauthorized immigrant in the nation, separate from the 2020 census count that was well underway. The Trump administration’s goal was to strip those immigrants from the population count used to divvy up House seats among the states.The move promised to benefit Republicans by sapping electoral strength from Democratic-leaning areas and handing more voting power to older, white and most likely more conservative populations.Mr. Abowd, the bureau’s chief scientist, and Ms. Velkoff, its chief demographer, were obligated by law to carry out the president’s orders. They’d assigned some of their top experts to produce an immigrant count from billions of government records. Mr. Trump had also inserted four political appointees into the bureau’s top ranks since June, in no small part to ensure that the numbers were delivered.But despite months of work, the results, in Mr. Abowd’s and Ms. Velkoff’s view, fell far short of the bureau’s standards for accuracy. Now the agency’s director, Steven Dillingham, was demanding the tallies — accurate or not — before the president left office.Mr. Abowd and Ms. Velkoff went to Ron Jarmin, the deputy director. The trio, who had more than 75 years of experience in the bureau among them, agreed on a response: They would reject the demand unless they could explain in a technical report why the numbers were useless. (In an interview this month, Mr. Dillingham said that he was merely asking for an assessment of the immigrant tabulations, with whatever caveats were necessary. “I said, look over that data and see if any of it is ready,” he said.)Mr. Jarmin then sent a message to three other Census Bureau experts whom he had assigned to assist the political appointees. Stop whatever you’re doing, it said. Any future orders will come from me.That internal struggle, which has not been previously reported, was the breaking point in a battle with the Trump administration over political interference in the census. By now, tales of Trump appointees disrupting, or outright corrupting, the work of federal agencies are familiar. But in this case, the meddling threatened not just to change the allocation of federal power, but also to skew the distribution of trillions of federal tax dollars.It was not a revolt or some sort of deep-state resistance that thwarted that effort. Instead, a slice of the career bureaucracy that keeps the federal government running, day in and day out, stood up for what it saw as the core function of the Census Bureau — to produce the gold standard for data about the nation’s population.“We tried to do what we thought was statistically sound and valid,” Ms. Velkoff said in an interview in June. “If we didn’t have a statistically sound and valid methodology, then we pushed back.”The episode pitting career officials against political appointees raises an important question: Should the Census Bureau be better protected from such political interference in the future?The White House had initially sought to identify unauthorized immigrants by adding a question about citizenship to the census form itself. Mr. Abowd had warned that doing so would harm the quality of the count. In focus groups the bureau conducted, people in various ethic groups expressed an “unprecedented” level of concern about giving the government identifying information, according to a 2017 report on the research. Nonetheless, Wilbur Ross, the secretary of the Commerce Department, which includes the Census Bureau, ordered the agency to go ahead with the citizenship question.But in June 2019, the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Ross’s proffered rationale — that adding the citizenship question was necessary to better enforce the Voting Rights Act — calling it “contrived.”With that avenue closed, the administration immediatelyordered the Census Bureau to gather data on unauthorized immigrants by combing through records of some 20 federal agencies.Mr. Abowd, Ms. Velkoff and their colleagues spent the next year collecting immigrant data from the administrative records. Then in July 2020, Mr. Trump ordered the data to be used to remove unauthorized immigrants from the coming census totals that would reapportion the House for the next decade. But to segregate unauthorized immigrants from the census totals for each state, there first had to be a census.And that was a problem. In the summer of 2020, the bureau faced the huge challenge of counting every household in the midst of a pandemic. Despite that, Mr. Ross ordered the agency to finish the count by Sept. 30 and to produce the politically crucial population figures for apportioning House seats among the states by Dec. 31. The deadlines ensured the census totals would be delivered to Mr. Trump whether or not he won the November election.Internally, census officials were aghast. Anyone who thought the agency could meet the December deadline, the day-to-day leader of the census, Timothy Olson, wrote to Mr. Jarmin and other senior census officials, “has either a mental deficiency or a political motivation.”But the anti-immigrant forces within Mr. Trump’s administration kept the pressure on, creating four new political jobs in the bureau’s top ranks — an unprecedented step — beginning in June 2020.Senior bureau officials gave them offices. They also quietly ordered that the appointees be given only rounded numbers — estimates, which could not be labeled official for political or other reasons.The first of the new political appointees was Nathaniel Cogley, a political-science professor at a state university in rural Texas who has specialized in African studies. He was soon joined by the other three, and they reported weekly to an aide to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff.Mr. Cogley began attacking the bureau’s effort to count a small share of known households that evade the best efforts of census takers. In these cases — 1.2 million people in 2010, but probably many more in pandemic-scarred 2020 — the bureau has long used a statistical method called imputation, looking at nearby households to make educated guesses about who lives in the places the census field operation missed.Some of those households are occupied by right-leaning libertarians who are deeply suspicious of the government. But many are low-income families, members of minorities and unauthorized immigrants, who expand the count for urban areas and thus increase representation for traditional Democratic strongholds.“If you leave out imputations, you leave out African Americans, Hispanics and other hard-to-count people,” Kimball Brace, a demographer and president of a consulting firm that does work on redistricting, said in an interview. Mr. Cogley called him to ask for evidence that imputation was statistically unsound. “I saw Cogley’s view as totally a way of justifying how the Republicans come out on this,” Mr. Brace said. (Mr. Cogley did not respond to calls, texts and emails asking for comment.)Mr. Ross had the power to order the bureau to do as Mr. Cogley wished. But after listening to dueling presentations, he allowed the imputation work to continue — handing the career officials a victory on one of their most important concerns. (Mr. Ross declined to comment on the record.)In early November, when Joe Biden won the presidential election, the 10-week clock for Mr. Trump’s time in office began to tick with new urgency. There would be no second term. Mr. Abowd, Ms. Velkoff and their colleagues raced to meet the Dec. 31 deadline. But the bureau hit a major technical snag: The pandemic had scrambled the locations of tens of millions of people, like college students and agricultural workers, who should have been counted where they studied or worked but instead lived elsewhere temporarily because of the coronavirus.Putting them in their proper place would take time. In late November, census officials told Mr. Dillingham, the bureau’s director, that they could not meet the Dec. 31 deadline and maintain the agency’s standards for accuracy.Mr. Cogley and other political appointees pressed for shortcuts to speed ahead, going so far as to suggest commandeering computers from other agencies to accelerate data processing, an idea the bureau dismissed as impractical. But the political appointees and the White House never answered a basic question about the numbers they most wanted: What definition of “unauthorized immigrant” should the bureau use? Did it include people contesting their deportation in court? Or children whose birthplace was unclear? Or immigrants whose green cards were being processed?In December, the White House tried one last tack: If census experts could not reliably say who should be removed from the state-by-state apportionment totals because they were in the country illegally, then administration officials would decide for them, using whatever tabulations of immigrants the bureau provided.This would take a hammer to the bureau’s standards for accuracy. It would also reverse past practice, in which the Census Bureau calculated the House apportionment and the White House delivered the results to Congress as a formality. In January, Mr. Dillingham told Mr. Jarmin it was the bureau’s No. 1 priority — above the census itself — to turn over figures on undocumented immigrants to the White House by Jan. 15. He acknowledged proposing cash bonuses to those who could make it happen, but said he made sure anyone working on the project “would not be pulled off the 2020 census data.”This last-minute order, which Mr. Dillingham delivered orally rather than in writing, was the breaking point for the career officials who had carried out every other directive. “The integrity of the statistical process that the Census Bureau is ethically committed to was abrogated in serious ways,” Mr. Abowd said.Separately and anonymously, three career officials filed whistle-blower complaints with the Commerce Department’s inspector general. The complaints accused Mr. Dillingham of violating a cardinal rule for the federal government called Statistical Policy Directive 1. “A federal statistical agency,” it states, “must be independent from political and other undue external influence in developing, producing and disseminating statistics.” Mr. Dillingham said this month that when he heard about the complaints to the inspector general, he stopped asking for the immigrant tabulations.On Jan. 18, Mr. Dillingham resigned. Mr. Trump left office two days later without the counts that would have downgraded the status of immigrants and most likely helped more Republicans win election.The census has been wielded as a political weapon before. When the very first count in 1790 fell short (at 3.9 million) of George Washington’s expectations, he didn’t change the number, but he instructed Thomas Jefferson to check it. When Jefferson’s work produced an estimate above four million, he included the higher number in descriptions of the census abroad to make the new country appear stronger.When the 1920 census counted rising population totals in American cities — thanks to an influx of Italians, Poles, Jews and others from outside Northern Europe — Congress refused to reapportion the House until 1929 so that rural areas wouldn’t lose seats.And most notoriously, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Army used census information to round up Japanese Americans for internment. (In 2000, the bureau apologized.)Now a group of officials at the agency are considering how the census could be better protected from political meddling and misuse. In July, a committee of career professionals put in place a new policy on data stewardship, which firms up the rules governing internal as well as external access to confidential data. A bigger idea is to move the bureau out of the Commerce Department to make it more independent, like the National Science Foundation. Congress could also mandate by statute that immigrants who reside in the country must continue to be counted, as they always have been. Lawmakers (or the president, by executive order) also could further strengthen the existing safeguards in Statistical Policy Directive 1.In the end, the delays that frustrated the anti-immigrant ambitions of Mr. Trump’s administration may end up helping his party. The bureau’s release of redistricting numbers on Thursday was several months behind schedule. Republicans, who control more state legislatures and have shown a greater appetite for extreme gerrymandering than Democrats have, could benefit because little time remains to contest maps before the 2022 elections.The newly released numbers will now set the stage for what are likely to be colossal battles over control of the House and State Legislatures.For career professionals, “the highest priority now,” Mr. Abowd said, “is restoring the credibility of the 2020 census and the Census Bureau.”Emily Bazelon is a staff writer at The Times magazine. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      White House Considers Lifting Rule That Blocked Migrants During Pandemic

      by

      Among the plans under consideration is whether to give migrant families a chance to apply for protections, and to possibly lifting the public health rule for single adults this summer.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is in the later stages of planning how to phase out a Trump-era public health rule that has allowed border agents to rapidly turn away most migrants who have arrived at the southern border during the pandemic, according to two administration officials. It is possible that in the coming weeks, border officials could start allowing migrant families back into the country, with an eye toward lifting the rule for single adults this summer.The plan, while still not final, is sure to ​complicate an already thorny issue for President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, who is visiting the border on Friday as Republicans accuse the administration of being slow to address what they describe as an unrelenting surge of migrants trying to enter the country. Lifting the rule will only exacerbate that.Since the beginning of the pandemic, border agents have turned away migrants nearly 850,000 times under the public health rule, known as Title 42, which immigration and human rights advocates call unnecessary and cruel, particularly for those seeking asylum. Migrant families have been turned away more than 80,000 times since the rule was put in place in March 2020, according to government data.The White House has deflected questions about how much longer the rule will remain in place, saying it is up to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued the policy. An agency spokeswoman referred questions about the rule to the White House.Mr. Biden, who has promised a more humane approach to immigration enforcement, decided not to continue the Trump administration’s policy of expelling children who arrived alone at the border. Single adults and many families, however, have continued to be turned away because of the public health rule, whose stated purpose is to prevent the coronavirus from spreading at points of entry or Border Patrol stations. Still, some migrant families have been allowed into the United States because Mexico or their home countries refuse to take them back.Despite the measured approach, lifting the rule — which many public health experts say has little point this late in the pandemic — is likely to sharply increase the flow of migrants, at least in the short term. That would force Mr. Biden to address the issue without compromising his pledge to take a more compassionate approach to enforcing immigration laws.Plans to lift the rule have been under discussion for weeks, but there appears to be a fresh sense of urgency; officials familiar with the evolving plan shared details with The New York Times on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it. Axios earlier reported some of the details.For migrant families, the officials said, one idea under consideration is to put those seeking asylum into one of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s alternatives to detention. That includes having them wear ankle bracelets as their request makes its way through the immigration system, a process that can take years because of a chronic backlog of cases. The administration has already been doing this for other migrant families this year.The administration is considering placing families who do not make asylum claims in the queue for expedited removal, a process that allows immigration officers to deport people without a hearing, a lawyer or a right of appeal in some cases.One official familiar with the plans said that all the ideas under consideration included health and safety measures to avoid the spread of the virus.Lifting the public health rule for single adults is likely to come later, according to the most recent discussions, possibly by the end of the summer. Single adults have been barred from entering the country more than 262,000 times since the rule went into effect. The administration is still debating where these migrants would go once they enter the country, including whether to place them in expedited removal or in home detention so as to avoid a detention center, as Mr. Biden campaigned against mass incarceration of undocumented immigrants.Representative Henry Cuellar of Texas, a senior Democrat on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, said border officials had been bracing for an end to the public health rule and other pandemic restrictions, including a ban on nonessential cross-border commercial traffic that was recently extended until July 21.President Biden has promised a more humane approach to immigration enforcement and started to allow children who arrived alone at the border to enter the country.Pete Marovich for The New York Times“That could be, according to them, ‘a perfect storm,’ because all of a sudden all those people will be coming into the U.S.,” Mr. Cuellar said.The Biden administration is trying to avoid just such a storm with a phased-in approach.Another challenge for the administration is that detention centers overseen by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are filling up, holding nearly 27,000 as of Thursday. That is a 90 percent jump compared with the average number of detainees in March, according to government data. If the administration lifts the health rule entirely, it would face the question of where to house the migrants, caught between significantly increasing the number of detained immigrants and releasing everyone to wait for court proceedings.Lifting the public health rule for families, though, will make it hard for the administration to defend keeping it in place for single adults.“This piecemeal approach doesn’t cut it,” said Denise Bell, a researcher for Amnesty International’s refugee and migrant rights program. “How many carve-outs until you have to admit there is no good public health rationale for Title 42?”Lifting the public health rule could lead to some bottlenecks along the border, but it could also ease pressure on the Department of Health and Human Services, which is overseeing the care of unaccompanied migrant children who have been arriving in record numbers.As of Thursday, about 14,500 such children were being held in government shelters, according to internal government data obtained by The Times, as officials try to place them with family members or other sponsors in the United States. Nearly half of the children are staying in emergency shelters where some conditions are far below government standards; the average stay is currently 37 days.“When families were pushed back, sometimes they’d make that extraordinarily difficult choice to send their child ahead, with the hope that as an unaccompanied child migrating alone, they’d have a better chance of being accepted and processed through,” said Wendy Young, the president of a nonprofit, Kids in Need of Defense. “It’s a horrible choice that families have to make, but we did see families doing exactly that.”Without the public health rule, families may again start trying to cross the border together — a better option, Ms. Young said, than being placed in the large emergency shelters overseen by the health and human services department.Ms. Harris, who will travel to El Paso on Friday with Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, is leading the administration’s efforts to help improve conditions in Central America, where many of the children are coming from, to deter migration.For weeks, Republicans have pressed Ms. Harris about why she traveled to Central America this month, but not to the American side of the border with Mexico. Her visit comes just days before Mr. Trump goes to the border with a group of Republicans, including Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, who has pledged to finish Mr. Trump’s border wall in his state after Mr. Biden halted construction. Mr. Abbott has also threatened to kick thousands of migrant children out of shelters there. More

    • 125 Shares119 Views

      in Elections

      Fact-Checking Claims on the Migrant Surge at the U.S.-Mexico Border

      by

      As migrants arrive at the southwestern border in increasing numbers, lawmakers and officials are misleading about border policies, migrants, the coronavirus and immigration flows.With the number of migrants apprehended at the southwestern border expected to reach a two-decade high, Republicans are blaming President Biden for the surge, while Democrats argue that immigration system he inherited left him ill-prepared.Here’s a fact-check.Biden officials have inaccurately described the Trump administration’s actions.What Was Said“The previous administration was expelling these unaccompanied children, some who are girls under the age of 12, for example, back to Mexico. We ended that practice.”— Alejandro Mayorkas, secretary of homeland security, in a congressional hearing on Wednesday.This is misleading. The practice of expelling unaccompanied children ended thanks to a court ruling before Mr. Biden took office, though his administration declined to resume expulsions when an appeals court decided it could do so.Citing the threat of the coronavirus and using a public health emergency law known as Title 42, the Trump administration announced last March that it would send back to their home countries people who illegally crossed the southwestern border, rather than detaining and processing them.In mid-November, a federal judge ruled that the administration could not expel unaccompanied children. As a result, expulsions of unaccompanied children fell from nearly 3,200 in October to 1,520 in November to just three in December and 18 in January.An appeals court stayed that ruling in late January, once again allowing the expulsion of children, but the Biden administration has decided against the practice. It continues to send back adults and families, however.“Unaccompanied children haven’t been expelled since November,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy counsel for the American Immigration Council, which advocates on behalf of immigrants. “They chose to keep the status quo in place.”What Was Said“We inherited a government that had allowed the number of beds to safely and humanely house these children — administered by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Refugee Resettlement — had allowed it to shrink to a record low number.”— Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s chief of staff, in an interview this month on MSNBC.False. The Biden administration is struggling to find space for migrant children and teenagers who have recently arrived at the border, with some sleeping on gym mats with foil sheets in processing facilities as they wait to be transferred to shelters contracted with the Office of Refugee Resettlement. But Mr. Klain is wrong that the backlog is because the previous administration drastically downsized monthly bed capacity.When the Obama administration faced its own surge of migrant children, the refugee agency increased its monthly bed capacity to about 8,000 beds in the 2015 fiscal year from about 2,000 in the 2011 fiscal year, according to a Government Accountability Office report. Under the Trump administration, monthly bed capacity fell to about 7,000 in October 2017, but grew to over 16,000 by December 2018. By Mr. Trump’s last full month in office, in December 2020, monthly bed capacity was at 13,000 — hardly a “record low.”The issue, however, is that shelters could no longer operate at a full occupancy rate during a pandemic. The refugee office reduced capacity to at least 40 percent to comply with coronavirus protocols, before returning to full occupancy this month as the number of children increased.A White House spokesman acknowledged that the maximum number of beds “theoretically” stood at 13,000 under Mr. Trump, but contended that the previous administration took no steps to mitigate the reduction in occupancy capacity or shortages in staffing that reduction caused.Republicans have mischaracterized Mr. Biden’s immigration policies, especially in relation to the virus.What Was Said“The Biden border crisis, though, was created by Joe Biden’s promises of amnesty and open borders and free health care for illegals during the campaign.”— Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, in an interview on Monday on Fox News.“Yes, the signals that the Biden administration is sending by eliminating the migrant protection program or ‘Remain in Mexico’ program that was negotiated with the Mexican government, and as well as the failure to enforce the Title 42 public health order, which basically give the Border Patrol the ability to keep people out of the country who may infect the U.S. population, basically, they’re ignoring all of that.”— Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, in an interview on Sunday on Fox News.This is exaggerated. Both senators were partly accurate in their descriptions of Mr. Biden’s policies.It is true that Mr. Biden has proposed a pathway for citizenship for the undocumented immigrants currently residing in the United States and revoked the previous administration’s policy that required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico as they awaited decisions on their cases.But Mr. Cotton is wrong that Mr. Biden promised “free health care” for undocumented immigrants. A spokesman for Mr. Cotton said the senator was referring to the 2020 campaign, when Mr. Biden raised his hand after Democratic presidential candidates were asked during a 2019 debate whether their health care plans would allow unauthorized immigrants to have access to such care. But there was no mention of “free” health care. Under Mr. Biden’s plan, those immigrants could buy health care plans including a proposed public option on exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act.Mr. Cornyn’s reference to Title 42 was also inaccurate. Though the Biden administration has decided not to expel unaccompanied children, despite a court ruling allowing the practice, it has continued Title 42 expulsions of most border crossers. In fact, out of the more than 100,000 encounters at the southwestern border in February, 72,000 led to expulsions.What Was Said“When I talked to the doctor to see when they’re being tested for Covid, when they get out, more than 10 percent are testing positive, while you’re being stored together. In a time when the president will keep our country closed, when maybe we have hope for a Fourth of July to get together just with our family, how much spread of Covid is he creating every single day by his policies along this border?”— Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, on Monday in a news conference.This is exaggerated. Bob Fenton, the acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said during a congressional hearing a day later that migrants were testing positive at a rate of “less than 6 percent” across the entire border. That is a lower positivity rate than currently in Texas (9 percent), Arizona (11 percent) and New Mexico (8 percent), but higher than in California (3 percent).There are different coronavirus protocols in place for different migrant populations, but the notion that migrants are spreading the virus unchecked is hyperbolic.Asylum seekers with pending cases who returned to Mexico under the Trump-era program must test negative before entering the United States. Those who test positive with mild or no symptoms are required to quarantine for 10 days, while those who show severe symptoms must seek treatment in Mexico, according to the State Department.For migrants who are not immediately sent away and processed by border officials, the Department of Homeland Security relies on community organizations for testing and reimburses the costs, according to the department. Those who test positive while in Border Control custody are immediately isolated. Unaccompanied children specifically are tested at facilities operated by the Department of Health and Human Services.Mr. Mayorkas, in the congressional hearing on Wednesday, acknowledged that the system was not foolproof.“There were times earlier when individuals were apprehended and we sought to expel them and we were unable to expel them and we were compelled to release them and we did not have the opportunity to test them,” he said. “We are doing the best we can to ensure that the policy is executed 100 percent of the time.”Lawmakers omitted context in describing border crossing trends.What Was Said“You can’t help but notice that the administration changes and there’s a surge.”— Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, on Sunday in an interview on Fox News.“We began seeing the increase in unaccompanied minors going back to last April 2020. This is not something that happened as a result of Joe Biden becoming president. We saw the increases dating back almost a year. And this was during the Trump administration.”— Representative Veronica Escobar, Democrat of Texas, on Sunday in an interview on CNN.Mr. Cassidy is ignoring that encounters with migrants at the border have been ticking up for months before Mr. Biden took office, while Ms. Escobar is downplaying that the increases accelerated in February.“It’s both. We have been seeing an increase in overall encounters at the border since April of 2020, and there was a bigger increase than we’ve seen in the past few months in February,” said Jessica Bolter, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.Border Patrol agents encountered unaccompanied children at the southwestern border 741 times in April 2020, the lowest monthly level in a decade. That number did gradually increase over the last few months of Mr. Trump’s presidency. But in February, Border Patrol agents recorded more than 9,400 encounters with unaccompanied children, a 61 percent increase since January, a 170 percent increase from February 2020 and the highest number since May 2019.The exact impact of Mr. Biden’s policies or election on border crossings is difficult to gauge, as migration flows are driven by myriad factors and there has been only one full month of data under Mr. Biden.“The push factors are at the highest they’ve been at quite some time,” said Mr. Reichlin-Melnick, ticking off political corruption, instability, poverty and violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. The economic toll of the pandemic and two hurricanes that battered the region toward the end of last year further exacerbated difficult conditions.Conversely, better economic opportunities and the chance to reunite with family have pulled migrants to the United States, and immigration policy can act as an extra tug.Rescinding the Remain in Mexico policy, halting the construction of a border wall, and ending agreements allowing the United States to return asylum seekers to Central American countries “have motivated people to try to enter illegally now,” asserted Jessica M. Vaughan of the Center for Immigration Studies, which promotes lower levels of immigration.Whether or not those specific policies spurred the rise, Ms. Bolter said that Mr. Biden’s promises of a more humane border policy have been one of the factors in increased migration — a point acknowledged by White House officials and by people crossing the border themselves.But she cautioned that hyperbolic rumors and false advertising might also be at play.“It’s not like everyone in Central America is paying attention to the specific policy positions to the Biden administration,” Ms. Bolter said. “Smugglers see these opportunities and they exaggerate them.”We welcome suggestions and tips from readers on what to fact-check on email and Twitter. More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Why Arizona’s Senators May Collide With Democrats Who Elected Them

      by

      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyWhy Arizona’s Senators May Collide With Democrats Who Elected ThemSenators Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly ran on bipartisan approaches to governing, but some Democrats in Arizona view their openness to Senate Republicans with skepticism.Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, at the 2020 State of the Union address. She and Senator Mark Kelly have assumed unusual stature amid all the talk about bipartisanship.Credit…Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFeb. 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETDemocrats control the U.S. Senate by a single vote. President Biden has placed bipartisanship near the top of his agenda. Republican senators are pushing for deals, including on Covid-19 during a meeting on Monday with the president. On the economy, on immigration, on health care — the Biden administration will need votes from every senator it can get.Which is where Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly come in.Arizona’s two Democratic senators, both moderates, have assumed unusual stature amid all the talk about bipartisanship. Ms. Sinema made waves and frustrated progressives last month when she aligned with Republicans to maintain the filibuster, which empowers the minority party. Mr. Kelly was part of a bipartisan group of 16 senators who recently met with White House officials to discuss Covid relief. The pair represent a state that Mr. Biden narrowly flipped in November; pleasing Arizona is a new Democratic priority.But if Ms. Sinema and Mr. Kelly are emerging as players in Washington, the politics back home are more complicated. Arizona Democratic Party officials and activists threw themselves into the two senators’ races, despite the fact that many of these Democrats are more progressive than either Ms. Sinema or Mr. Kelly. Now they are eager for their senators not just to embrace the middle, but also to adopt the policies the left is pressing for as well. Many view the senators’ openness to Republicans with skepticism.Mr. Kelly and his wife, former Representative Gabrielle Giffords, after his swearing-in ceremony in December.Credit…Al Drago for The New York Times“So many things went into Kelly and Sinema’s victory that no one effort can take credit, but also everything was necessary, so nothing can be sacrificed,” said Ian Danley, the executive director of Arizona Wins, who helped coordinate voter outreach among dozens of liberal organizations last year. “They’re both in a tough spot. Those different strategies from a policy perspective can be in conflict.”Ms. Sinema, who was elected in 2018, and Mr. Kelly, who won last year, both ran for office on bipartisan approaches to government. And given the narrow Democratic control in the Senate, both senators are likely to prove essential to the Biden agenda as well as any major legislative deal-making on issues central to the state, including immigration, health care and Covid relief.Their importance was on clear display last week when Vice President Kamala Harris included the Phoenix ABC affiliate and The Arizona Republic’s editorial board in a round of interviews as she promoted the administration’s Covid relief package. Though Ms. Harris did not mention Ms. Sinema or Mr. Kelly by name, she left no doubt that their loyalty was paramount.“If we don’t pass this bill, I’m going to be very candid with you: We know more people are going to die in our country,” Ms. Harris said in the interview with The Republic. “More people will lose their jobs and our children are going to miss more school. We’ve got to be here collectively to say that that is not an option in America.”That same day, Ms. Harris offered similar comments to a television station and newspaper in West Virginia. Later, Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat who has represented the state since 2010 and relishes his reputation as an independent, voiced his own frustration, saying her interview was “not a way of working together.”Ms. Sinema and Mr. Kelly made no such comments, and some progressives viewed their silence as worrisome.“We need to be able to depend on these senators that we worked so hard to elect,” said Tomás Robles, an executive director of LUCHA, a civil rights group that knocked on tens of thousands of doors in Arizona for Democrats last year. “If they’re going to act like a moderate Republican, we will remember by the time elections come. We expect them to recognize that Latinos voted overwhelmingly for those two, and we expect them to repay our loyalty.”Nayeli Jaramillo-Montes, a canvasser with the Arizona advocacy group LUCHA, which knocked on tens of thousands of doors for Democrats last year.Credit…Gabriella Angotti-Jones for The New York TimesFor many immigration activists, a sense of pessimism has already begun to sink in. They fear that Democrats will try to strike a deal with Republicans who are unlikely to approve the sweeping changes Mr. Biden has proposed — similar to the strategy that failed during the Obama administration.Erika Andiola, a Phoenix-based immigration activist, became the first known undocumented congressional aide when she worked for Ms. Sinema in 2013, drawn to what she saw as Ms. Sinema’s intense interest and commitment in the issue. Now, Ms. Andiola said she viewed her former boss as moving to a more conservative stance on immigration — more often emphasizing border security than creating a path to citizenship for the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.“There is a window of time now and there is a way for Democrats to get something done on immigration — and they can do it on their own,” Ms. Andiola said. “In the moment of crisis, you have to choose your battles, you have to choose what you can win. Pick the right strategy. Compromising with Republicans is not going to get us anywhere.”Both Ms. Sinema and Mr. Kelly declined to be interviewed for this article, but statements from their offices emphasized bipartisanship and border security, as well as support for Dreamers, who were brought to the United States as children of unauthorized immigrants and have been threatened with deportation at times. Mr. Kelly is already part of the group of 16 senators tasked with finding bipartisan agreement on the relief package. Ms. Sinema has been one of the most outspoken critics of Arizona’s response to the pandemic, and some Arizona Democrats believe she will be supportive of the Biden administration’s package.Raquel Terán, the newly elected chair of the Arizona Democratic Party and a state representative, acknowledged that the two senators “didn’t campaign on the progressive end of spectrum.” But she said that while there might be some disagreements, she expected both to side with Mr. Biden on the relief package, health care and immigration.Raquel Terán, the new chair of the Arizona Democratic Party, said she expected the state’s senators to back President Biden’s agenda.Credit…Bob Christie/Associated Press“They will vote for the Democratic agenda, the agenda that Joe Biden has put forward — they supported him in the election and what they put on the table, so I am hopeful,” Ms. Terán said. “I hope that they will do everything to ensure that his agenda is not blocked.”Arizona has a long history with high-profile, independent-minded senators willing to buck party lines, and others who amassed political power — John McCain and Jon Kyl were long seen as two of the most influential senators during their time in office, and Jeff Flake became one of the first Republicans in the Senate to openly criticize former President Donald J. Trump.“There is no state in America that is going to play a more pivotal role in the direction of congressional legislation in the next two years,” said Glenn Hamer, the president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce. “Every major piece of legislation is going to go right through Arizona, and the role many of us want our senators to play is as someone who reaches across the aisle.”Many Democrats point out that the political atmosphere of the state has changed drastically since 2018, with voters flipping both Senate seats and a Democrat presidential candidate winning in Arizona in November for only the second time in five decades. And since the riot in Washington last month, more than 5,000 Republicans have dropped their party affiliation.Still, Mr. Hamer warned that both senators were in a precarious political position, particularly Mr. Kelly, who won a special election and is up for re-election in 2022. (The Chamber of Commerce endorsed his opponent in the election last year, and did not make an endorsement in Ms. Sinema’s race.)Approving major changes like a $15-an-hour minimum wage or an immigration package that does not include more enforcement, Mr. Hamer said, would turn off the moderate voters who also helped propel the pair to Washington.“I don’t believe you can have unity in America without bipartisan legislation, and I really believe both of them have a role to play in that,” he said. “That would be far better and more durable than trying to blow up the filibuster.”Mr. Danley, a longtime liberal activist, similarly warned that the two senators could not take new voters in the state for granted.“If we’re going to turn out voters who support you, we need ammunition, we need to have something that is real and legitimate,” Mr. Danley said. “We can’t keep going out saying they are better than the bad guys — that is too low of a bar. What about actually being good for these folks who showed up and who have expectations?”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

    • 125 Shares129 Views

      in Elections

      Biden Seeks Quick Start With Executive Actions and Aggressive Legislation

      by

      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Biden TransitionLatest UpdatesUnderstand the Trump ImpeachmentBiden Tries to Rise AboveWhat’s in Biden’s Stimulus PlanCabinet PicksAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden Seeks Quick Start With Executive Actions and Aggressive LegislationIn an effort to mark a clean break from the Trump era, the president-elect plans to roll out dozens of executive orders in his first 10 days on top of a big stimulus plan and an expansive immigration bill.President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s team is looking to quickly reverse some of President Trump’s more hotly disputed policies.Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York TimesMichael D. Shear and Jan. 16, 2021, 3:00 p.m. ETWASHINGTON — President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., inheriting a collection of crises unlike any in generations, plans to open his administration with dozens of executive directives on top of expansive legislative proposals in a 10-day blitz meant to signal a turning point for a nation reeling from disease, economic turmoil, racial strife and now the aftermath of the assault on the Capitol.Mr. Biden’s team has developed a raft of decrees that he can issue on his own authority after the inauguration on Wednesday to begin reversing some of President Trump’s most hotly disputed policies. Advisers hope the flurry of action, without waiting for Congress, will establish a sense of momentum for the new president even as the Senate puts his predecessor on trial.On his first day in office alone, Mr. Biden intends a flurry of executive orders that will be partly substantive and partly symbolic. They include rescinding the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, rejoining the Paris climate change accord, extending pandemic-related limits on evictions and student loan payments, issuing a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from families after crossing the border, according to a memo circulated on Saturday by Ron Klain, his incoming White House chief of staff, and obtained by The New York Times.The blueprint of executive action comes after Mr. Biden announced that he will push Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion package of economic stimulus and pandemic relief, signaling a willingness to be aggressive on policy issues and confronting Republicans from the start to take their lead from him.He also plans to send sweeping immigration legislation on his first day in office providing a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people in the country illegally. Along with his promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans for the coronavirus in his first 100 days, it is an expansive set of priorities for a new president that could be a defining test of his deal-making abilities and command of the federal government.For Mr. Biden, an energetic debut could be critical to moving the country beyond the endless dramas surrounding Mr. Trump. In the 75 days since his election, Mr. Biden has provided hints of what kind of president he hopes to be — focused on the big issues, resistant to the louder voices in his own party and uninterested in engaging in the Twitter-driven, minute-by-minute political combat that characterized the last four years and helped lead to the deadly mob assault on the Capitol.But in a city that has become an armed camp since the Jan. 6 attack, with inaugural festivities curtailed because of both the coronavirus and the threat of domestic terrorism, Mr. Biden cannot count on much of a honeymoon.While privately many Republicans will be relieved at his ascension after the combustible Mr. Trump, the troubles awaiting Mr. Biden are so daunting that even a veteran of a half-century in politics may struggle to get a grip on the ship of state. And even if the partisan enmities of the Trump era ebb somewhat, there remain deep ideological divisions on the substance of Mr. Biden’s policies — on taxation, government spending, immigration, health care and other issues — that will challenge much of his agenda on Capitol Hill.“You have a public health crisis, an economic challenge of huge proportions, racial, ethnic strife and political polarization on steroids,” said Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago mayor who served as a top adviser to Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. “These challenges require big, broad strokes. The challenge is whether there’s a partner on the other side to deal with them.”Mr. Biden’s transition is taking place as security is being increased because of the deadly assault on the Capitol this month. Credit…Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMr. Biden’s transition has been unlike that of any other new president, and so will the early days of his administration. The usual spirit of change and optimism that surrounds a newly elected president has been overshadowed by a defeated president who has refused to concede either the election or the spotlight.Mr. Biden spent much of this interregnum trying not to be distracted as he assembled a cabinet and White House staff of government veterans that look remarkably like the Obama administration that left office four years ago. He put together a team with expansive diversity in race and gender, but without many of the party’s more outspoken progressive figures, to the disappointment of the left.“He’s obviously prioritized competence and longevity of experience in a lot of his appointments,” said Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California and a national co-chairman of Senator Bernie Sanders’s primary campaign against Mr. Biden.But he said Mr. Biden’s team had reached out to progressives like him. “I do hope we’ll continue to see progressives who tend to be younger and newer to the party fill a lot of the under secretary and assistant secretary positions even if they’re not at the very top,” Mr. Khanna said.At the very top will be one of the most familiar figures in modern American politics but one who has appeared to evolve in recent weeks. After a lifetime in Washington, the restless, gabby man of consuming ambition who always had something to say and something to prove seems to have given way to a more self-assured 78-year-old who finally achieved his life’s dream.He did not feel the need to chase the cameras over the past 10 weeks — indeed, his staff has gone out of its way to protect him from unscripted exposure for fear of any stumbles, a goal that will be harder once in office.“He is much calmer,” said Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and a close ally. “The anxiety of running and the pressure of a campaign, all that’s behind him now. Even after the campaign was over, the election was over, all the foolishness coming from the Trump camp, you don’t know how all this stuff is going to play out. You may know how it’s going to end, but you’re anxious about how it plays out. So all that’s behind him now.”Throughout his career, Mr. Biden has been a divining rod for the middle of his party, more moderate in the 1990s when that was in vogue and more liberal during the Obama era when the center of gravity shifted.He is driven less by ideology than by the mechanics of how to put together a bill that will satisfy various power centers. A “fingertip politician,” as he likes to put it, Mr. Biden is described by aides and friends as more intuitive about other politicians and their needs than was Mr. Obama, but less of a novel thinker.While he is famous for his foot-in-mouth gaffes, he can be slow to make decisions, with one meeting rolling into the next as he seeks out more opinions. Each morning, he receives a fat briefing book with dozens of tabs in a black binder and reads through it, but he prefers to interact with others. During the transition, he has conducted many of his briefings using Zoom at his desk in the library of his home in Wilmington, Del., or at the Queen, the nearby theater where a large screen has been set up.He relishes freewheeling discussion, interrupting aides and chiding them for what he deems overly academic or elitist language. “Pick up your phone, call your mother, read her what you just told me,” he likes to say, according to aides. “If she understands, we can keep talking.” Aides made a point of editing out all abbreviations other than U.N. and NATO.As one former aide put it, Mr. Biden was the guy in college who was always leading study groups in the dorm, using notecards with his friends, constantly interacting, while Mr. Obama was the monastic, scholarly student with oil lamps sitting in a room alone poring through books.A drive-through testing site in Somerton, Ariz. The incoming administration has promised to vaccinate 100 million Americans for the coronavirus within its first 100 days.Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesLike Mr. Obama — and notably unlike Mr. Trump — Mr. Biden watches little television news other than perhaps catching “Morning Joe” on MSNBC while on the treadmill or the Sunday talk shows. Aides recall few times he came to them with something he picked up from television.Mr. Biden will be the first true creature of Capitol Hill to occupy the White House since President Gerald R. Ford in the 1970s. More than recent predecessors, he understands how other politicians think and what drives them. But his confidence that he can make deals with Republicans is born of an era when bipartisan cooperation was valued rather than scorned and he may find that today’s Washington has become so tribal that the old ways no longer apply.“Joe Biden is somebody who understands how politicians work and how important political sensitivities are on each side, which is drastically different than President Obama,” said former Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, who as the House Republican leader negotiated with Mr. Biden and came to like him.“I would think there may be a time when Washington could get something done,” said Mr. Cantor, who lost a Republican primary in 2014 in part because he was seen as too willing to work with Mr. Biden. “At this point, I don’t know, the extreme elements on both sides are so strong right now, it’s going to be difficult.”Mr. Biden’s determination to ask Congress for a broad overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws underscores the difficulties. In his proposed legislation, which he plans to unveil on Wednesday, he will call for a path to citizenship for about 11 million undocumented immigrants already living in the United States, including those with temporary status and the so-called Dreamers, who have lived in the country since they were young children.The bill will include increased foreign aid to ravaged Central American economies, provide safe opportunities for immigration for those fleeing violence, and increase prosecutions of those trafficking drugs and human smugglers.But unlike previous presidents, Mr. Biden will not try to win support from Republicans by acknowledging the need for extensive new investments in border security in exchange for his proposals, according to a person familiar with the legislation. That could make his plan far harder to pass in Congress, where Democrats will control both houses but by a slim margin.All of which explains why Mr. Biden and his team have resolved to use executive power as much as possible at the onset of the administration even as he tests the waters of a new Congress.In his memo to Mr. Biden’s senior staff on Saturday, Mr. Klain underscored the urgency of the overlapping crises and the need for the new president to act quickly to “reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration.”While other presidents issued executive actions right after taking office, Mr. Biden plans to enact a dozen on Inauguration Day alone, including the travel ban reversal, the mask mandate and the return to the Paris accord.As with many of Mr. Trump’s own executive actions, some of them may sound more meaningful than they really are. By imposing a mask mandate on interstate planes, trains and buses, for instance, Mr. Biden is essentially codifying existing practice while encouraging rather than trying to require broader use of masks.On the other side, Mr. Biden risks being criticized for doing what Democrats accused Mr. Trump of doing in terms of abusing the power of his office through an expansive interpretation of his executive power. Sensitive to that argument, Mr. Klain argued in his memo that Mr. Biden will remain within the bounds of law.Preparations underway this week for the inauguration on Wednesday.  The festivities have been curtailed because of both the coronavirus and the threat of domestic terrorism. Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times“While the policy objectives in these executive actions are bold, I want to be clear: The legal theory behind them is well-founded and represents a restoration of an appropriate, constitutional role for the president,” Mr. Klain wrote to his staff.On Mr. Biden’s second day in office, he will sign executive actions related to the coronavirus pandemic aimed at helping schools and businesses to reopen safely, expand testing, protect workers and clarify public health standards.On his third day, he will direct his cabinet agencies to “take immediate action to deliver economic relief to working families,” Mr. Klain wrote in the memo.The subsequent seven days will include more executive actions and directives to his cabinet to expand “Buy America” provisions, “support communities of color and other underserved communities,” address climate change and start an effort to reunite families separated at the border.Mr. Klain did not provide details about the executive actions, leaving unclear whether they will be merely statements of intent, like many of Mr. Trump’s executive actions. And he conceded that much of the agenda developed by Mr. Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris would require action by Congress.Congress has been largely gridlocked for years, and even with Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate, Mr. Biden faces an uphill climb after this initial burst of executive actions. Tom Daschle of South Dakota, a former Senate Democratic leader who worked with Mr. Biden for years, said the incoming president had an acute sense of the challenges he faced and the trade-offs required.As leader, Mr. Daschle recalled that when things went wrong for him and he would complain, Mr. Biden would joke, “I hope that’s worth the car,” referring to the chauffeured ride provided the Senate leader. Now, Mr. Daschle said as Mr. Biden prepares to move into the Executive Mansion, “I’m almost inclined to say, well, whatever he’s facing now, I hope that’s worth the house.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More