Rep. Omar Condemns Biden's Expansion Of Trump Immigration Policy

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Rep. Ilhan Omar on Friday condemned President Joe Biden's crackdown on people crossing the border from Mexico illegally.

Biden said that starting immediately, any migrants seeking asylum in the United States will be turned away if they try to illegally cross the border.

"Do not, do not just show up at the border," Biden said Thursday in a news conference. "Stay where you are and apply legally from there."

The administration aims to ease the influx of migrants who try to cross into the U.S. without authorization.

But Omar — who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Somalia — said she was "deeply disappointed by the Biden Administration’s announcement yesterday expanding the use of the inhumane and ineffective Trump-era Title 42 policies."

Title 42 restrictions were introduced under President Donald Trump as an emergency health measure at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Title 42 restricted the number of asylum-seekers accepted into the U.S., and Biden's move Thursday expands upon that measure.

"The right to seek asylum is a fundamental human right, enshrined in U.S. and international law," Omar continued. "By definition, under both domestic and international law, no person seeking asylum is crossing the border 'illegally.' The proposed transit ban represents a dereliction of our responsibilities to our fellow human beings."

But Omar praised Biden's expansion of a parole program that will accept up to 30,000 people per month from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuban nationals.

Border crossings by migrants from those four nations have risen the most sharply during Biden's two years in office.

A previous parole program introduced exclusively for Venezuelans in the fall significantly reduced the flow of undocumented people from that country to the U.S. border. Going forward, the Biden administration hopes the same will happen with migrants from Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba.

Omar said she supports the new parole options "but there is no moral or legal reason they should not also be available for Mexicans, Guatemalans, Salvadorans, and Hondurans."

"The problems at our Southern border do not begin at our Southern border – people from the Americas are fleeing their countries for a reason," she continued.

"We should be honest and admit that some of those reasons are related to U.S. foreign policy—including draconian sanctions, a failed war on drugs, blanket support for multinational corporations over indigenous rights, and a decades-long embargo on Cuba. We have to break the cycle where our policies exacerbate instability and violence, and then we turn away the very people trying to flee those conditions."

Reporting from the Associated Press was used in this story.