A Biden administration initiative to require some migrant families to stay in Texas while immigration authorities investigated their eligibility for asylum fell apart due to local opposition in El Paso, CBS News reported on Wednesday.
Officials in El Paso, a Democratic-led border city, at first agreed to provide 400 hotel rooms to house migrants taking part in the plan, which was supposed to start last month, according to internal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) documents obtained by CBS News.
But the El Paso officials changed their mind on hosting the migrants after parts of the initiative became public, according to U.S. officials who insisted on anonymity.
The incident demonstrates the dilemma the Biden administration has over its immigration policies as it faces increasing criticism from Republicans and a growing number of Democrats, including party leaders in blue-dominated cities such as New York and Chicago, according to CBS News.
The rejected initiative was part of a broader Biden administration plan, the Family Expedited Removal Management (FERM) program that began in May to deter illegal crossings along the southern border by quickening deportations of migrant families who failed their first asylum screenings.
The plan to expand the policy to El Paso would have considerably altered the program by limiting the movement of some migrant families by requiring them to stay near the border with Mexico, which officials thought would discourage migrant families from crossing into the U.S. illegally since they wouldn't be permitted to live wherever they wanted in the U.S.
But after The Los Angeles Times reported that the administration was considering the change, both Republicans and Democrats expressed strong objections, although for different reasons.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, threatened to sue the Biden administration, saying federal officials should be forcing migrants to wait in Mexico, not Texas, while progressives said the proposal infringed on the rights of migrants by limiting their movement.
Democratic El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser told CBS News that "we have conversations with all our federal partners on the humanitarian crisis we are facing on a daily basis. The city of El Paso never agreed to any program in which migrant families would be subject to home curfews or ankle monitoring while under our care."
DHS spokesman Luis Miranda said officials are still attempting to "scale up" the initiative "significantly," explaining to CBS News that "FERM is one of the tools this administration is using to manage border encounters in a safe, orderly and humane way, while imposing consequences under the law for those who fail to avail themselves of a lawful pathway."