Biden’s Executive Order Rips Away Right to Seek Asylum
Bob Avakian’s Answer to People Who Complain About Immigrants Crossing Borders
On June 4, Biden signed an Executive Order that basically “suspended” the right of refugees to seek asylum in the U.S.
For over 70 years, international law and American law have recognized that any immigrant who fears persecution in their home country has a right to apply for safety, for asylum, in a different country. In recent years in the U.S. (and around the world), this right has been seriously eroded. But Biden’s order will almost entirely eliminate it.
This is an extreme measure—the most extreme anti-immigrant policy that a Democratic president has ever signed into law. And it will result in more suffering and death.
Biden’s order takes away the right to apply for asylum from most of the immigrants who come across the U.S.’s southern border. Instead, refugees will be rapidly deported—or held in detention until they can be deported—without asylum hearings or any other legal process. And once deported, they may well face felony charges if they attempt to return within the next five years.
Biden claims this is a “temporary” measure that only kicks in during immigration “surges” when the number of immigrants known to have crossed the border tops 2,500 per day for a seven-day period. And that it will be suspended when it drops to 1,500 immigrants a day.
But last week, at least 3,500 people per day entered the U.S., and the last time the number was as low as 1,500 was in 2020. So effectively, this order is not “temporary”—it is the new “normal.”
This order will lead to many more people dying in an attempt to cross the border—in more far-flung deserts or in more turbulent waters, in order to evade the Border Patrol. And because unaccompanied minors can still apply for asylum, it means that desperate parents will send their children to cross the border alone!
Watch the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian answer people who complain about immigrants trying to cross the border:
The full impact of this vicious executive order is still unknown. Tune in next week for more analysis, the response from the Republi-fascists and what this has to do with the urgent need—and increased possibility—for revolution, in this time.
STOP the Demonization, Criminalization and Deportations of Immigrants and the Militarization of the Border!
We don't have an immigration problem, we have an imperialism problem!
We need and we demand: revolution for a whole new way to live, a fundamentally different system.
