Biden should scrap plans to reverse Trump’s safe-third-country negotiation

President Biden may say to the U.S.-bound caravan from Honduras that it isn’t welcome here, but if he does indeed sign a reported executive order to scrap former President Donald Trump’s successful safe-third-country deals, that will constitute one clear message to the caravan that our borders are open for business.

The former president’s greatest success at securing our southern border was arguably his successful deal-making with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Under new safe-third-country agreements, migrants seeking asylum from any of those nations have to apply for asylum in the first nation whose border that they cross. Otherwise, the United States has the right to send an asylum seeker back to the person’s nation of origin. Biden has reportedly put the brakes on an executive order to cancel these safe-third-country deals, and he’d be wise to refuse to sign it altogether.

Over the last 20 years, U.S. border crossings of Mexicans have precipitously fallen, while the border apprehensions and immigration court cases of migrants from the Northern Triangle now constitute the vast majority of both. Unsurprisingly, border encounters reported by Border Patrol fell to their lowest point since the beginning of Trump’s presidency by mid-2020. Furthermore, pressure from Trump preceding the initiation of the safe-third-country deals finally forced Mexico to crack down on incoming caravans, creating an 88% decrease in reported encounters from May 2019 to April of the following year.

International law doesn’t require that nations abide by the standard that refugees must seek asylum in the first safe country they enter, but it’s a widely accepted precedent, whether it is a legally mandated one such as in the European Union or it is one in practice, such as in South Africa.

More than any other wall, this policy change has likely tightened a once-porous border and that Biden is considering striking it down is troubling enough. This has nothing to do with children in cages or expanding legal immigration and everything to do with letting migrants flood back into our borders and go free as a result of what will surely be a return to catch-and-release policy. If that doesn’t constitute “open borders,” then nothing does. Biden shouldn’t just delay this executive order. He should trash it.