President-elect Donald Trump has pledged to clamp down on migrant crossings at the southern border by quickly restoring the policies of his first term, including “Remain in Mexico,” which required asylum seekers to wait outside U.S. territory while their cases were decided.

Trump has said repeatedly that on Day 1, he will “seal” the southern border, and launch what he calls “the largest deportation program in American history,” invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 - last used during World War II - to help make that happen.

Biden and the Democratic leadership changed its approach to immigration. Their positions have moved significantly to the right in part due to Republican attacks and changing public views on border security.

The U.S. Supreme Court has blocked a case brought by five Republican attorneys general who wanted their states to take over defending an asylum ban introduced by the Biden administration last year.

Vice President Kamala Harris faced a series of questions from Fox News’ Bret Baier on Wednesday about the administration’s record on the border crisis – but did not mention a number of key decisions that critics say fueled the historic migrant crisis.

The Biden administration said Monday it is making asylum restrictions at the southern border even tougher, as it’s increasingly eager to show voters uneasy over immigration that it is taking a hard stance on border security

Republicans have repeatedly hammered President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris on the issue and painted a picture of an out-of-control immigration system where migrants are straining services as would-be terrorists and criminals take advantage of the chaos to infiltrate the country.

After coming into office promising a kinder approach to immigration, Biden administration officials found themselves struggling to control the southern border. They have cracked down on asylum access but also created new ways for migrants to come to America and for some of those already here to become citizens .

Biden administration introduced an ‘asylum ban’ that bars asylum seekers who crossed through another country on their way to the southern U.S. border, unless they have previously applied for, and been denied, asylum elsewhere or managed to receive an appointment at a port of entry through a U.S. government app for smartphones.

Trump also intends to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented parents, deport and revoke the visas of foreign pro-Palestinian student protestors, revoke humanitarian parole, and impose "ideological screening."

The Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy, Migrant Protection Protocols and asylum bans were some of the policies that restricted asylum access during his first term. What would another term mean for asylum seekers?

Border Patrol encounters with migrants in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in May were down 79% from the previous year, according to data released Thursday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. That’s the biggest drop in migrant encounters from the previous year of any Border Patrol sector on the Southwest border.

According to the Proclamation, and with limited exceptions, the limitation and suspension of US/Mexico border entries is only to be lifted two weeks after average border encounters of migrants reach a ‘7-consecutive-calendar-day average of less than 1,500’.

Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico plummeted 33% in July to the lowest level since September 2020, a result of asylum being temporarily suspended, authorities said Friday. The Border Patrol made 56,408 arrests last month, down from 83,536 arrests in June, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, its parent agency.

Trump promised mass deportations as part of his 2016 campaign. “My very first day back in the White House, I will terminate every single open border policy of the Biden-Harris administration, and we will seal the border.” Trump has promised to restore some of his hardline immigration policies that the Biden administration has reversed.

The executive order will allow Biden to declare that he has pushed the boundaries of his own power after lawmakers, specifically congressional Republicans, killed off what would have been the toughest border and asylum restrictions in some time. Biden's order is aimed at trying to head off any potential spike in border encounters that could happen later this year, closer to the November elections.

Hundreds of migrants from around a dozen countries left Mexico’s southern border area by foot onSunday, heading north toward the US border. They hope to make it to the frontier before November’s election out of fear that Donald Trump could win and close the border to asylum-seekers.

During former President Donald Trump's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, he displayed a graph he described as the "chart that saved my life." It's the same chart that was displayed behind Trump when shots rang out during his attempted assassination on July 13.

Under Republican Governor Greg Abbott, Texas has intensified efforts to criminalize all support for migrants. And its controversial attorney general, Ken Paxton, has launched a crackdown on shelters, mostly Catholic, with the goal of closing them down.

In a stark parallel to four years of vicious Trumpian gutting of immigrant rights, Biden has signed an executive order aimed at further eliminating options for asylum seekers in the US. On June 4, Biden used his executive authority to set new policies that would highly restrict asylum-seeking migrants from crossing the US-Mexico border.