RESTRICTING ACCESS AT THE BORDER

This would establish an emergency authority to temporarily prohibit asylum requests by those crossing the southern border between ports of entry when border encounters reach very high levels. Specifically, the prohibition would be required whenever encounters between ports of entry average 5,000 or more per day over a 7-day period, or exceed 8,500 in a single day. Ports of entry would remain open for asylum processing at all times — including during the emergency — with a required minimum daily processing capacity. The temporary prohibition would lift when encounters fell back below specified levels.

The Case For

Supporters argue that this proposal is a sensible and workable compromise on asylum. They note that it’s based on the 2024 bipartisan Senate border bill (negotiated by Senators Lankford (R), Sinema (I), and Murphy (D)). Even though it fell short, they argue, it attracted more bipartisan support than any proposal of its kind to date.

Advocates argue it attracted bipartisan support for good reason. They contend that the asylum system cannot handle the volume of requests that arrive during border surges. When daily crossings exceed the limits in the proposal, they argue, the existing framework breaks down. Border Patrol resources are consumed by processing rather than enforcement, asylum officers face backlogs that take years to clear, and migrants released into the country pending hearings often disappear into the interior before their claims are adjudicated. Supporters argue an emergency authority is the right response: it acts as a circuit breaker that gives the system room to catch up.

The Case Against

As with many compromise proposals, the border crisis restrictions proposal draws opposition from both sides — those who think it doesn’t do enough and those who think it goes too far.

Insufficient

Opponents who think the proposal doesn’t go far enough argue that 5,000 daily crossings is itself a crisis — waiting for that level before acting allows hundreds of thousands of asylum requests per year during non-crisis periods. Some opponents in this camp argue that the proposal addresses the symptom rather than the disease. The asylum framework, designed in 1980 for Cold War refugees from specific persecuting regimes, has become a primary pathway for general migration from across the Western Hemisphere. Crisis-triggered restrictions slow the flow during the worst periods but leave the underlying mismatch intact, and these opponents argue that deeper reform is needed. They contend that it should include substantially tighter restrictions at all times, fundamental changes to who qualifies for asylum, or both.

 

 

 
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Too Much/Far

Opponents who think that the proposal goes too far argue that prohibiting asylum requests based on aggregate border conditions rather than individual circumstances violates the fundamental purpose of asylum. Whether someone qualifies for protection should depend on the merits of their fear of persecution, not on how many other people happen to cross the border in the same week. These opponents also argue that the proposal puts the US in tension with its international agreements, which prohibit returning people to countries where they face persecution, regardless of overall migration levels.