WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by former President Donald Trump to unilaterally enact a sweeping crackdown at the southern border, according to three people familiar with the deliberations.

The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that President Joe Biden could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks said. But the plans are nowhere near finalized and it’s unclear how the administration would draft any such executive actions in a way that would survive the inevitable legal challenges. The officials and those familiar with the talks spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to comment on private ongoing White House discussions.

The exploration of such avenues by Biden’s team underscores the pressure the president faces this election year on immigration and the border, which have been among his biggest political liabilities since he took office. For now, the White House has been hammering congressional Republicans for refusing to act on border legislation that the GOP demanded, but the administration is also aware of the political perils that high numbers of migrants could pose for the president and is scrambling to figure out how Biden could ease the problem on his own.

White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández stressed that “no executive action, no matter how aggressive, can deliver the significant policy reforms and additional resources Congress can provide and that Republicans rejected.”

“The administration spent months negotiating in good faith to deliver the toughest and fairest bipartisan border security bill in decades because we need Congress to make significant policy reforms and to provide additional funding to secure our border and fix our broken immigration system,” he said. “Congressional Republicans chose to put partisan politics ahead of our national security, rejected what border agents have said they need, and then gave themselves a two-week vacation.”

Arrests for illegal crossings on the U.S. border with Mexico fell by half in January from record highs in December to the third lowest month of Biden’s presidency. But officials fear those figures could eventually rise again, particularly as the November presidential election nears.

The immigration authority the administration has been looking into is outlined in Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives a president broad leeway to block entry of certain immigrants into the United States if it would be “detrimental” to the national interest of the United States.

Trump, who is the likely GOP candidate to face off against Biden this fall, repeatedly leaned on the 212(f) power while in office, including his controversial ban to bar travelers from Muslim-majority nations. Biden rescinded that ban on his first day in office through executive order.

But now, how Biden would deploy that power to deal with his own immigration challenges is currently being considered, and it could be used in a variety of ways, according to the people familiar with the discussions. For example, the ban could kick in when border crossings hit a certain number. That echoes a provision in the Senate border deal, which would have activated expulsions of migrants if the number of illegal border crossings reached above 5,000 daily for a five-day average.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has also called on Biden to use the 212(f) authority. Yet the comprehensive immigration overhaul Biden also introduced on his first day in office — which the White House continues to tout — includes provisions that would effectively scale back a president’s powers to bar immigrants under that authority.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Build more wall. Reinstate Trump-era immigration policies. Or simply shut down the U.S.-Mexico border.

Congressional Republicans argue that President Joe Biden already has all the authority he needs to halt the flow of migrants through the U.S.-Mexico border. They’re making the claim as a bipartisan deal that the president negotiated with senators to expand his authority is facing near-certain defeat.

The reality about Biden’s powers to control migration is far more complicated.

Without changes to immigration laws or more funding to manage the growing number of migrants arriving at the Southern border, not much of what Biden can try will stick — just as was the case for presidents before him.

“President Biden needs Congress to be able to address the situation at the border,” said Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a lawyer and policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. “That is the simplest way to put it.”

The $118 billion bipartisan proposal in Congress would overhaul the asylum system to provide faster and tougher enforcement, as well as give presidents new powers to immediately expel migrants if authorities become overwhelmed with the number of people applying for asylum. It also would add $20 billion in funding — a huge influx of cash.

The package, which pairs border enforcement policy with wartime aid for Ukraine, Israel and other U.S. allies, would be the most significant immigration legislation in a decade. It has the potential, for better or worse, to transform some of the most vexing border problems. And up until recently, it appeared to have a chance at passing. Donald Trump’s allies are looking to sink the deal in large part because the Republican presidential frontrunner is loathe to give Biden a win on immigration. Trump wants to hammer the president on the issue during the campaign.

“Just months ago, Republicans were asking for this exact bill to deal with the border, to provide support for Ukraine and Israel. And now it’s there. And they’re saying, ‘Nevermind. Nevermind,” Biden said Tuesday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday he would not put the bill on the House floor in its current form, saying it would act as a “magnet” for illegal immigration, the authority to shut down asylum was “riddled with loopholes” and that the release of migrants into the U.S. would only continue.

“If you give extraordinary authority to the very architect of the catastrophe, it will do no good,” Johnson said.

Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican posted on X, formerly Twitter: “Biden has the power to end the border crisis without Congress. He just doesn’t want to.”

But immigration officials do not have expanded detention capability unless they get more funding for detention. They also can’t hold families in detention longer than roughly three weeks under a longstanding policy, and they can’t mix together single adults and family units for safety reasons under law.

Biden already has flexed his unilateral powers to address the border in multiple ways.

The Biden administration has taken more than 500 executive actions on immigration since he took office, according to the Migration Policy Institute, more than Trump did in four years as president. Some policies have been successful, but the number of crossings has continued to rise to record numbers.

His administration’s approach has been to pair new humanitarian pathways for migrants with a crackdown at the border to try to discourage migrants from making the dangerous journey to the U.S.-Mexico border on foot. He also has tried to make the issue more global, using his foreign policy experience to broker agreements with other nations.

And the administration has worked to restrict asylum through a proposed federal rule. But that policy is currently tied up in litigation, much like what stymied Trump during his tenure. A law change by Congress would make those lawsuits less frequent and less successful, and an infusion of cash would make it possible to hire more employees to dig out from the backlog.

“Just point blank, that Biden could do this on his own is just not true. There’s simply not enough asylum officers,” said Taylor Levy, a longtime immigration attorney who has spent years at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Biden could say he was going to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border entirely, but there would be billions of dollars lost or delayed in trade, and the U.S. would be in violation of international laws that govern what a country must do with refugees.

As for some of the other policies, they’re also not likely to be easily reinstated even if Biden wanted to, which he doesn’t.

The Title 42 policy rolled out by Trump relied on special powers granted a president during a public health emergency. It allowed border agents the ability to turn away many asylum seekers immediately. Those powers went away when the national emergency over the pandemic was ended by Congress last May.

The so-called “ Remain in Mexico” policy put in place by the Trump administration forced asylum seekers to wait out their claims in Mexico in squalid camps riddled with crime and sickness. But that agreement relies on cooperation from Mexico, and President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is hinting that talks with the U.S. on migration could suffer after reports of a U.S. investigation into suspected drug money donations for his 2006 campaign. On Tuesday he said he finally agreed to meet with a top White House adviser only after he got a call from the president.

As for the border wall, Trump tried to build some without Congressional approval. He declared a national emergency so that he could divert billions of federal dollars from military construction and other purposes after Congress approved only a fraction of the money he had demanded. The issue was challenged in court almost immediately and went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Anna Cabot, immigration clinic director at the University of Houston Law Center, said reimposing Title 42 rules would require action by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and some sort of justification, like the coronavirus. Even then, it would face litigation. As for the Remain in Mexico policy and “emergency” border wall construction both would “immediately be tied up in most likely losing litigation,” she said.

The bipartisan bill has earned a wide range of support, including from the Border Patrol union, though some Democrats and immigrant advocates say it’s far too restrictive and would change the U.S. role as a haven for refugees.

But Biden has said it was the best effort so far to stop the continued flow of migrants that are straining an already broken system.

He went so far as to adopt Republican language, saying he’d “shut down the border” when he was given the authority to do so. And on Tuesday, he questioned why it appeared Congress was not willing to give him the tools to manage the growing numbers at the border and accused Republicans of being too afraid to stand up to Trump on an issue critical to the country and also to the world.

“Republicans have to decide. Who do they serve? Donald Trump or the American people?” he asked.

___ Associated Press Writer Mark Stevenson in Mexico City contributed to this report.

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The fumes that wafted through the Tecate streets gave people headaches and left children vomiting. Authorities warned the community it was from a chemical leak at a place called Recicladora Temarry de Mexico.

It’s a recycling facility that’s one of the biggest destinations for California’s hazardous waste. Places like Tesla, Sherwin-Williams and Sally Beauty Supplies stores have long shipped flammable, toxic liquids here to be treated. Even California’s own government agencies used Temarry, including paint waste from the state prisons and ink from the agency that prints government forms.

Throughout this year, we’ve been investigating how California’s companies and governments handle toxic waste. In this latest installment, CalMatters reporters Robert Lewis and Wendy Fry dug deep into what happens when the Golden State’s toxic waste crosses international borders, and discovered that Temarry has been dogged by allegations of mishandling waste and covering-up the March 2022 leak.

Some of the key takeaways:

• California companies and government agencies have found it easier and far less expensive to avoid the Golden State’s strict environmental regulations by shipping the waste across borders, including to Mexico.

• Less than two miles across the border from inland San Diego County, Temarry is a startling example of how California exports the risk from its hazardous waste.

• The local mayor accused the company in public statements of trying to cover up the March 2022 chemical leak.

• In court documents, Temarry’s current owner accused its former president and founder of ordering waste illegally dumped into an open pit and misrepresenting on legal documents the type of waste coming from the U.S. to Mexico.

• The California Department of Toxic Substances Control seems uninterested in getting answers. In fact, the agency has been stonewalling our reporters for months, ignoring a Public Records Act request for nearly nine months. Under law, they’re supposed to respond within 10 days. One of California’s top hazardous waste regulators acknowledged the state should be making sure its hazardous waste isn’t harming people outside of state lines.

Katie Butler, the Department of Toxic Substances Control’s hazardous waste management program deputy director: “I think we have a responsibility to make sure our decisions here in the state — they don’t disproportionately impact other vulnerable communities and that may mean vulnerable communities in other countries.”

Asked if the department is doing that, she was unequivocal: “No.”

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PHOENIX (AP) — Despite President Joe Biden’s loathing of his predecessor’s practice of separating migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border, his administration argued in federal court Tuesday that a lawsuit seeking money for five affected mothers and their children should be dismissed.

Justice Department attorney Phil MacWilliams told U.S. District Court Judge Susan R. Bolton the claims were improper and the case shouldn’t be tried. He argued that the Yuma, Arizona-based Border Patrol agents involved used their discretion to separate the families, not a policy aimed at deterring migrants arrivals.

Attorney Diana Reiter, representing the families, argued the case should go to trial because the separations were part of a bigger policy under then-President Donald Trump aimed at preventing migrants from arriving at the border. She noted that because the women were never prosecuted the separations were unnecessary.

Bolton will issue a decision in the coming weeks.

The U.S. government’s push to prevent a trial underscores the awkward position the Biden administration is now in as it grapples with its own problems managing migrant arrivals at the border.

The mothers and their children sued the U.S. government in 2019, seeking monetary compensation for the trauma they suffered the previous year when they were torn apart by the separation policy.

In 2021, the Biden administration participated quietly in settlement negotiations to end such lawsuits filed on behalf of parents and children who were forcibly separated under the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy. But U.S. officials withdrew from such talks in December 2021 and said it would instead defend each case in court.

The negotiations in cases involving hundreds of plaintiffs were carried out for months until The Wall Street Journal reported in October 2019 that the government was considering paying about $450,000 to each person affected by the policy. The Associated Press later confirmed that figure was discussed.

About 5,500 children were forcibly removed from their parents in 2018 under Trump as his administration sought to stop an increase in people crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, including migrants who showed up to seek asylum as the law allowed. Trump halted the family separation practice later that year amid widespread outrage.

Biden’s administration since reversed some of Trump’s actions designed to keep migrants from arriving at the border, including legally.

The American Immigration Council filed suit on behalf of the mothers and their children, who are also being represented by Reiter’s firm, Arnold & Porter, as well as the National Immigrant Justice Center, National Immigration Litigation Alliance, and Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feinberg & Lin.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden predicted Tuesday that the U.S.-Mexico border would be “chaotic for a while” when pandemic-related restrictions end, as 550 active-duty troops began arriving and migrants weighed whether or when to cross.

The restrictions have been in place since 2020, and allowed U.S. officials to quickly return migrants over the border. They are ending later this week and the U.S. is putting into place a set of new policies that will clamp down on illegal crossings while offering migrants a legal path to the United States if they apply online through a government app, have a sponsor and pass background checks.

Biden said his administration was working to make the change orderly. “But it remains to be seen,” he told reporters. “It’s going to be chaotic for a while.”

Biden and Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador spoke for roughly an hour Tuesday to discuss the border. Mexico shares a 1,951-mile border with the United States, so the nation is key to the success of any plans by the United States to control immigration at the southern border.

Migrants are already arriving. About 100 people — mostly from Colombia — came across the border before dawn Tuesday and walked nearly two hours through remote, boulder-strewn mountains east of San Diego to a sandy plateau where Border Patrol agents watched over them.

Andres Barra, 39, left Colombia on Friday, flew to Tijuana, Mexico, and paid a smuggler $300 to guide him to a mountain peak near the agents, to whom they surrendered. He fled Colombia because frequent robbery and extortion made it difficult to live.

He said he wanted to enter the United States while the restrictions were still in effect, because he heard it would be more difficult after Thursday.

“It won’t be so easy anymore,” he said.

Agents in the U.S. Border Patrol’s relatively quiet El Centro, California, sector stopped about 260 migrants a day over a four- or five-day period through Sunday, up from about 90 a day the previous week, said Gregory Bovino, the sector chief. On Monday, agents found migrants from 22 countries.

In the Mexican border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, Texas, groups handed out fliers Tuesday that explained in English and Haitian Creole how to register for the CBP One app that the U.S. has been using to allow migrants to schedule an appointment to try to gain admittance to the U.S.

Standing in Reynosa’s central square Tuesday, Phanord Renel of Haiti said he would not risk deportation to cross. “We don’t want to go back there (Haiti) because the situation is very complicated there,” he said. “If we can’t cross, we have to put up with it here, maybe the government will do something for us, but cross illegally — no.”

U.S. and international law give migrants the right to seek asylum. However, the U.S. has used Title 42 of a public health law to expel migrants with no chance at asylum 2.8 million times since March 2020 on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

The Biden administration has said it is ready to deal with whatever happens after Title 42′s use ends, although it has also repeatedly criticized Congress for not making changes to the country’s immigration system.

“We believe we have a robust process to deal with what is going to occur after Title 42 lifts. Again, we’re using the tools that are available to us because Congress refuses to do their job as it relates to the border,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Tuesday.

The movement of troops is part of efforts to beef up security along the southern border, but they will mainly be used to help monitor and watch the border, or do data entry and support, and are “not there in any way to be interacting with migrants,” said Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary. The goal is to free up U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel to do law enforcement activities.

At least some of the active-duty troops will be used near El Paso, Texas, he said, while adding that CBP will decide where forces will go. More than 900 additional soldiers, Marines and airmen will follow around the end of May.

Roughly 2,500 National Guard members are already spread across all sectors of the border, providing an array of support to CBP, including monitoring, detection and air transportation. Separately, Texas National Guard troops are also working along the border under state authority.

Even with the COVID-19 asylum restrictions still in place, the administration has seen record numbers of people crossing the border. The Biden administration’s plan is meant to crack down on those who cross illegally and by creating new pathways meant to offer alternatives to a dangerous and often deadly journey.

Some migrants have been spurred by false information from smugglers or widespread rumors about what the changes will mean for their chances of being able to remain in the U.S.

“It’s a very complicated legal system and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to communicate the realities of our clients,” Daniel Berlin, of the International Rescue Committee, said. ”While we try to communicate the most accurate and up to date information that we have, smugglers and traffickers and other bad actors are communicating false information.”

Effects have also been felt far from the southern border. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot issued an emergency declaration in response to a tenfold increase in the number of asylum-seekers arriving in the city in need of temporary shelter and other help.

Chicago officials have warned for several weeks that its shelters can’t accommodate the larger number of migrants arriving daily since late April. Migrants have been sheltering inside city police stations or airports because city-run shelters are full.

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According to the Los Angeles Times, the union that represents U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services employees is criticizing the Biden administration’s anemic attempts to stem the flow of asylum-seekers across America’s border with Mexico.

Under Biden’s plan, illegal aliens who failed to request protection from countries they passed through on the way to the U.S. would be ineligible to seek asylum here. This isn’t a particularly radical move. Rather, it’s just Team Biden revisiting the long-established “first country of asylum,” “first safe country,” or “first country of refuge” concept, which has been a part of asylum law for decades.

It’s based on the recognized reality that if migrants are in genuine need of protection, they’ll seek it in the closest place where they won’t be persecuted, not in the place where they can obtain the highest standard of living. Nevertheless, the Times article quotes attorneys for the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) asserting that proposed new regulations would “‘violate asylum officers’ oath to carry out the immigration laws set out by Congress and ‘could make them complicit in violations of U.S. and international law.’”

Asylum Officers made similar claims during the Trump administration and they are just as spurious now as they were back then. Let’s take a look at U.S. law first: It is important to note that neither the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, nor any other domestic statute, requires the United States to grant asylum to anyone at all. In fact, even people who are clearly subject to persecution in their home countries may be denied asylum if they cannot establish that they merit a favorable exercise of the Immigration Court’s discretion to grant relief.

Ultimately, the decision whether or not to protect a particular asylum-seeker is one that the United States is entitled to make based entirely on its own public safety, national security and foreign affairs interests. And American courts have regularly affirmed this fact in opinions ranging from Matter of Salim in 1982 to Patpanathan v. Attorney General decided in 2014.

Moreover, Congress intentionally structured asylum as a discretionary form of relief in order to protect American sovereignty. As the Supreme Court stated in Chae Chan Ping v. United States, “That the government of the United States, through the action of the legislative department, can exclude aliens from its territory is a proposition which we do not think open to controversy. Jurisdiction over its own territory to that extent is an incident of every independent nation. It is a part of its independence. If it could not exclude aliens it would be to that extent subject to the control of another power.”

The mere fact that an alien claims to be subject to persecution at the hands of his own government does not abrogate American sovereignty and obligate the U.S. to confer any particular immigration status upon him/her. Simply put, Asylum Officers’ hysterical claim that a safe third country policy will violate their oath and make them complicit in violations of U.S. law simply doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

But what of international law? The proposition that Asylum Officers will be in violation of international law if they refuse to grant protection to aliens who have transited multiple countries on the way to the U.S. is beyond disingenuous; it is an outright lie. To begin with, the term “international law” refers to the body of rules which govern relations between nation states.

Thus, in the event that an international tribunal ever reviewed a case involving an American denial of asylum, the party subject to sanction would be the government of the United States, not any particular asylum officer. However, that isn’t likely to happen. The 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees defines political asylum for international law purposes. The U.S. is a signatory to this treaty. And, as the International Justice Resource Center notes, “The 1951 Convention does not define how States parties are to determine whether an individual meets the definition of a refugee. Instead, the establishment of asylum proceedings and refugee status determinations are left to each State party to develop.”

In other words, pursuant to its treaty obligations, the U.S. must have a system in place for adjudicating asylum claims, but it is free to determine to whom it wishes to grant protection and under what circumstances it wishes to do so. Despite the anti-borders contingent’s claims to the contrary, America has a comprehensive and generous asylum system. As such, the Asylum Officers’ claims about international law don’t stand up to close examination either.

So, what are the AFGE and its asylum corps members really complaining about? Apparently, they’re under the mistaken impression that the primary function of an Asylum Officer is to secure access to the United States for foreign nationals. But that just isn’t the case. In reality, Asylum Officers have two primary jobs: 1) to vet asylum applicants and make sure they are not a threat to national security or public safety; and 2) to ensure that U.S. immigration law is applied correctly and fairly.

It’s high time that someone pointed out that they can’t do either if they have no idea what the law – domestic or international – really requires.

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — A sharp drop in illegal border crossings since December could blunt a Republican point of attack against President Joe Biden as the Democratic leader moves to reshape a broken asylum system that has dogged him and his predecessors.

A new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research shows some support for changing the number of immigrants and asylum-seekers allowed into the country. About 4 in 10 U.S. adults say the level of immigration and asylum-seekers should be lowered, while about 2 in 10 say they should be higher, according to the poll. About a third want the numbers to remain the same.

The decrease in border crossings followed Biden’s announcement in early January that Mexico would take back Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans under a pandemic-era rule that denies migrants the right to seek asylum as part of an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19. At the same time, the U.S. agreed to admit up to 30,000 a month of those four nationalities on humanitarian parole if they apply online, enter at an airport and find a financial sponsor.

The administration has also proposed generally denying asylum to anyone who travels though another country on their way to the U.S. without seeking protection there — effectively all non-Mexicans who appear at the U.S. southern border.

The new rules put forth by Biden could help the president fight back against critics who complain he hasn’t done enough to address border security issues. But the moves have also fueled anger among some of his Democratic allies who are concerned that he is furthering a Trump-era policy they view as anti-immigrant and hurting vulnerable migrants who are trying to escape dangerous conditions in their native countries.

And the new changes — and subsequent drop in illegal border crossings — are unlikely to stop the barrage of attacks from conservatives who see border security as a powerful political weapon.

Biden has been on the defensive as Republicans and right-wing media outlets have hammered him over the soaring increase in migrant encounters at the border. The new House GOP leadership has held hearings on what they call the “Biden border crisis” and talked of impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Agents detained migrants more than 2.5 million times at the southern border in 2022, including more than 250,000 in December, the highest on record. According to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, Border Patrol agents stopped migrants about 130,000 times in February, similar to January.

Among Republicans, the poll shows about two-thirds say there should be fewer immigrants and asylum-seekers, while only about 1 in 10 say there should be more.

Democrats are split: About a quarter say the number of immigrants should increase, a quarter say it should decrease, and about 4 in 10 say it should remain the same. They are slightly more supportive of asylum-seekers specifically, with 37% supporting an increase, 26% backing a decrease, and 36% saying the number should remain the same.

Under U.S. law, numbers are not capped on asylum, which was largely a policy afterthought until about a decade ago. Since 2017, the U.S. has been the world’s most popular destination for asylum-seekers, according to U.N. figures. Even those who lose in court can stay for years while their cases wind through a backlogged system.

Omar Reffell, a 38-year-old independent voter in Houston, said that he supports immigration but that news coverage of “caravans of people trying to cross the border” sends the wrong message to migrants.

“People think that they just show up at the border, come across, there is not going to be any repercussions,” Reffell said. “I’m not against immigration. I think immigration is good for the country, but it has to happen in a very orderly manner or it puts a lot of stress, especially on the border states being able to provide resources.”

More than 100,000 migrants each month were being released in U.S. border cities late last year with notices to appear in immigration court or report to immigration authorities.

Dan Restrepo, a top White House adviser on Latin America during Barack Obama’s presidency, believes the American public will accept high levels of immigration — if a systematic process can be followed.

The challenge in managing migration “is the sense of chaos and disorder that can be created by images of overwhelmed processing facilities and the like at the physical border,” he said. “It’s less the numbers and more the imagery” that bothers voters.

Republicans cast Biden’s expansion of humanitarian parole for four nationalities as a political ploy to divert attention from the border and are not likely to let up on their criticism of the president on immigration. The Federation of American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigration group, called January’s plunge in border numbers “a shell game” to boost Biden’s reelection prospects.

Fox News Channel has hit hard on the story over the last year. Reporter Bill Melguin said in a “Battle for the Border” special on Nov. 3 that he had spent more than 200 days on the Texas border.

“We’ve been shooting the video all day long,” Melugin said in a typical report from the Texas town of Eagle Pass. “We keep getting these massive groups of 150 to 200 crossing every single day.”

The network’s night-vision drone cameras have showed hundreds of migrants walking across the border, each one appearing as a luminous white stick slowly advancing across a dark screen.

The poll found 39% of U.S. adults approve of how Biden is handling immigration, and 38% approve of him on border security — slightly below his overall approval ratings. About two-thirds of Democrats but only about 1 in 10 Republicans say they approve of his handling of either issue.

The poll was taken Feb. 16-20, just before the administration proposed on Feb. 21 that asylum should generally be denied to migrants who pass through another country without applying for protection there if it is deemed safe. The administration is angling to have the new rule take effect before the pandemic-related limits on asylum are expected to end May 11, though legal challenges appear imminent.

Becky Steelsmith, a 70-year-old independent voter from Zachary, Louisiana, is reluctant to heap blame on Biden because solutions also eluded his predecessors, but she notes that the optics are not great.

“The only reason why I disagree with Biden’s handling of it is that I think he’s a little too soft,” said Steelsmith, a retired teacher. “I’m not saying it’s his fault that it’s happening. I’m saying that as president, he needs to sit down and really focus and come up with some kind of a solution, or the beginning of a solution.”

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Drones that the Kremlin said were launched by Ukraine flew deep inside Russian territory, including one that got within 100 kilometers (60 miles) of Moscow, signaling breaches in Russian defenses as President Vladimir Putin ordered stepped-up protection at the border.

Officials said the drones caused no injuries and did not inflict any significant damage, but the attacks on Monday night and Tuesday morning raised questions about Russian defense capabilities more than a year after the country’s full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

Ukrainian officials did not immediately take responsibility, but they similarly avoided directly acknowledging responsibility for past strikes and sabotage while emphasizing Ukraine’s right to hit any target in Russia.

Although Putin did not refer to any specific attacks in a speech in the Russian capital, his comments came hours after the drones targeted several areas in southern and western Russia. Authorities closed the airspace over St. Petersburg in response to what some reports said was a drone.

Also Tuesday, several Russian television stations aired a missile attack warning that officials blamed on a hacking attack.

The drone attacks targeted regions inside Russia along the border with Ukraine and deeper into the country, according to local Russian authorities.

A drone fell near the village of Gubastovo, less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from Moscow, Andrei Vorobyov, governor of the region surrounding the Russian capital, said in an online statement.

The drone did not cause any damage, Vorobyov said, but it likely targeted “a civilian infrastructure object.”

Pictures of the drone showed it was a small Ukrainian-made model with a reported range of up to 800 kilometers (nearly 500 miles) but no capacity to carry a large load of explosives.

Russian forces early Tuesday shot down another Ukrainian drone over the Bryansk region, local Gov. Aleksandr Bogomaz said in a Telegram post.

Three drones also targeted Russia’s Belgorod region on Monday night, with one flying through an apartment window in the capital, local authorities reported. Regional Gov. Vyacheslav Gladkov said the drones caused minor damage to buildings and cars.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine used drones to attack facilities in the Krasnodar region and neighboring Adygea. It said the drones were brought down by electronic warfare assets, adding that one of them crashed into a field and another diverted from its flight path and missed a facility it was supposed to attack.

Russia’s state RIA Novosti news agency reported a fire at the oil facility, and some other Russian reports said that two drones exploded nearby.

While Ukrainian drone strikes on the Russian border regions of Bryansk and Belgorod have become a regular occurrence, other strikes reflected a more ambitious effort.

Some Russian commentators described the drone attacks as an attempt by Ukraine to showcase its capability to strike deep behind the lines, foment tensions in Russia and rally the Ukrainian public. Some Russian war bloggers described the raids as a possible rehearsal for a bigger, more ambitious attack.

Andrei Medvedev a commentator with Russian state television who serves as a deputy speaker of Moscow’s city legislature and runs a popular blog about the war, warned that the drone strikes could be a precursor to wider attacks within Russia that could accompany Ukraine’s attempt to launch a counteroffensive.

“The strikes of exploding drones on targets behind our lines will be part of that offensive,” Medvedev said, adding that Ukraine could try to extend the range of its drones.

Russia hawks urged strong retaliation. Igor Korotchenko, a retired Russian army colonel turned military commentator, called for a punishing strike on the Ukrainian presidential office in Kyiv.

Another retired military officer, Viktor Alksnis, noted that the drone attacks marked the expansion of the conflict and criticized Putin for failing to deliver a strong response.

Also on Tuesday, authorities reported that airspace around St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, was temporarily closed, halting all departures and arrivals at the main airport, Pulkovo. Officials did not give a reason for the move, but some Russian reports claimed that it was triggered by an unidentified drone.

The Russian Defense Ministry said it was conducting air defense drills in western Russia.

Last year, Russian authorities repeatedly reported shooting down Ukrainian drones over annexed Crimea. In December, the Russian military said Ukraine used drones to hit two bases for long-range bombers deep inside Russian territory.

Speaking at Russia’s main security agency, the FSB, Putin urged the service to tighten security on the Ukraine border.

In another development that fueled tensions across Russia on Tuesday, an air raid alarm interrupted the programming of several TV channels and radio stations in several regions. Russia’s Emergency Ministry said in an online statement that the announcement was a hoax “resulting from a hacking of the servers of radio stations and TV channels in some regions of the country.”

Meanwhile, satellite photos analyzed by The Associated Press appeared to show a Russian warplane in Belarus that Belarusian guerrillas claimed to have targeted as largely intact.

Tuesday’s high-resolution images from Planet Labs PBC showed no immediate signs of damage to the Russian A-50 early warning and control aircraft after what Belarusian opposition activists described as an attack on the Machulishchy air base Sunday outside the Belarusian capital of Minsk.

Belarusian activists supporting Ukraine alleged that the aircraft was seriously damaged. Russian and Belarusian officials did not comment on the claims.

In Ukraine, four people were killed and five others wounded Tuesday by renewed Russian shelling of the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson, regional Gov. Oleksandr Prokudin said in a Telegram.

A 68-year-old man was also killed as Russian forces shelled Kupiansk, a town in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said.

The fiercest fighting continued to be in eastern areas of Ukraine, where Russia wants control over all four of the provinces it illegally annexed in September.

Ukrainian officials said Russian forces have deployed additional troops and equipment, including the latest T-90 battle tanks, in those areas.

In a video address, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy thanked U.S. industrialists for supporting Ukraine and voiced hope for their support in rebuilding the country after the war. Zelenskyy noted that the country faces a “colossal task” to restore hundreds of thousands of damaged sites, including “whole cities, industries, productions.”

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EL PASO, Texas (AP) — Francisco Palacios waited for four hours with his wife and 3-year-old daughter at a border crossing between Tijuana and San Diego early Wednesday before going to a nearby hotel for a three-hour nap. They came back, bags packed, only to be disappointed again.

But the family from the western Mexican city of Morelia is prepared to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether and when to lift pandemic-era restrictions that have prevented many from seeking asylum, said Palacios.

“We don’t have a choice,” Palacios said in Spanish, explaining that his family arrived in Tijuana two weeks ago to escape violence and gangs that extorted them for years for a chunk of their income selling fruit from a street cart.

They’re among thousands of migrants gathered along the Mexican side of the border, camping outside or packing into shelters as the weather grows colder.

The limits on border crossings had been set to expire Wednesday before conservative-leaning states sought the top court’s help to keep them in place. The Biden administration asked the court to lift the restrictions, but not before Christmas. It’s not clear when the court’s decision will come.

Texas National Guard members took up positions in El Paso at the behest of the state, while volunteers and law enforcement officers worried that some migrants could succumb to the cold. Nighttime temperatures have been in the 30s and will be even colder in coming days. The Roman Catholic Diocese of El Paso, where nighttime temperatures could drop into the 20s this week, planned to open two more shelters for up to 1,000 people at area churches.

Jhorman Morey, a 38-year-old mechanic from Venezuela, warmed his hands by a campfire with a half-dozen other migrants on the southern side of the Rio Grande. He said he was waiting for a decision on the restrictions before attempting to cross into the U.S. Other migrants waded through shallow waters toward a gate in the border fence.

“I want them to decide” on the public health rule known as Title 42, said Morey, who arrived six weeks ago in the Mexican city of Juarez, across the border from El Paso. He now rarely eats after exhausting his savings.

Hundreds of migrants remained in line in Juarez. Others slept along the concrete embankments of the Rio Grande.

As crowds gathered on the riverbanks, 1st Sgt. Suzanne Ringle said one woman went into labor and was assisted by Border Patrol agents. She added that many children were among the crowd.

In Tijuana, an estimated 5,000 migrants were staying in more than 30 shelters and many more renting rooms and apartments. Layered, razor-topped walls rising 30 feet (9 meters) along the border with San Diego make the area daunting for illegal crossings.

A mood of resignation prevailed in Tijuana’s Agape shelter, which housed 560 predominantly Mexican migrants on Wednesday.

Maricruz Martinez, who arrived with her 13-year-old daughter five weeks ago after fleeing violence in Mexico’s Michoacan state, said rumors were rampant that migrants should line up at the border crossing to San Diego Monday.

Albert Rivera, the pastor and shelter director, convened a meeting to tell people migrants that they should only trust official U.S. sources. He convinced most occupants, but said he would like the U.S. government to provide more detailed updates.

A Mexican woman staying at the shelter with her husband and 11-year-old son, who declined to give her name because she is being pursued by a gang, said she fled her village of about 40 homes in Michoacan state after a gang forced her brother to join, killed him, and then burned her house down. The last straw came after the gang forced her 15-year-old son to join them under threat of killing the family and demanded her husband join, sending photos of chopped limbs as a message of the price for resistance.

The woman said the gang took her husband’s refusal as an insult. “They think we are making fun of them for not wanting to join them,” she said, fighting back tears.

The pastor said psychologists had interviewed the woman and he hoped for her to be exempted from Title 42.

A Mexican man who asked that he be identified by his first name, Brian, for safety reasons, said his refusal to join a gang after seven years in the army prompted him to flee his home in Guerrero state with his wife and two sons two months ago. He avoids leaving the shelter except for quick shopping trips.

Brian said he applied for an exemption to the asylum ban.

“Desperate, sad,” he said when describing his thoughts when he learned that Title 42 would be extended beyond Wednesday. “It’s dangerous because you don’t know who could be following you.”

Under Title 42, officials have expelled asylum-seekers inside the United States 2.5 million times, and turned away most people who requested asylum at the border, on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19.

Immigration advocates have said the restrictions go against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution, and that the pretext is outdated as coronavirus treatments improve. They sued to end the use of Title 42; a federal judge sided with them in November and set the Dec. 21 deadline.

Conservative-leaning states appealed to the Supreme Court, warning that an increase in migration would take a toll on public services and cause an “unprecedented calamity” that they said the federal government had no plan to deal with.

In response, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary order to keep the restrictions in place.

The federal government then asked the Supreme Court to reject the states’ effort while also acknowledging that ending the restrictions abruptly will likely lead to “disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings.”

States filed a response early Wednesday, arguing that letting the restrictions expire while the court reviews the lower court decision would cause “immediate, severe, and irreversible harms” to the states.

Though the Wednesday expiration date was set weeks ago, the U.S. government asked for more time to prepare — while saying that it has sent more resources to the border.

About 23,000 agents are deployed to the southern border, according to the White House. The Biden administration said it has sent more Border Patrol processing coordinators and more surveillance and has increased security at ports of entry.

Should the Supreme Court act before Friday, the government wants the restrictions in place until the end of Dec. 27. If the court acts on Friday or later, the government wants the limits to remain until the second business day following such an order.

Title 42 allows the government to expel asylum-seekers of all nationalities, but it’s disproportionately affected people from countries whose citizens Mexico has agreed to take: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and, more recently, Venezuela, in addition to Mexico.

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — Show up at a border crossing with Mexico and ask a U.S. official for asylum? Sign up online? Go to a U.S. embassy or consulate?

The Biden administration has been conspicuously silent about how migrants who plan to claim should enter the United States when Trump-era limits end, fueling rumors, confusion and doubts about the government’s readiness despite more than two years to prepare.

“I absolutely wish that we had more information to share with folks,” said Kate Clark, senior director for immigration services at Jewish Family Service of San Diego, which has facilitated travel within the United States for more than 110,000 migrants released from custody since October 2018.

Migrants have been denied rights to seek asylum under U.S. and international law 2.5 million times since March 2020 on grounds of preventing COVID-19 under a public-health rule that was scheduled to expire Wednesday until U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts ordered a temporary hold. Title 42 has been applied disproportionately to those from countries that Mexico agrees to take back: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and more recently Venezuela, in addition to Mexico. People from those countries are expected to drive an anticipated increase in asylum claims once the rule is lifted.

Many expect the government to use CBPOne, an online platform for appointment registration that was introduced in 2020. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection mobile app has had limited use for people applying for travel permits and for those tracking U.S. immigration court hearings under the now-defunct “Remain in Mexico” policy.

It’s expected migrants using the app would make appointments to seek asylum in the United States, but would have to remain outside the country until their slotted time and date.

CBPOne, which some advocacy groups oppose over data privacy concerns, may be impractical for migrants without internet access or language skills. The agency also must get the word out.

Nicolas Palazzo, an attorney with Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center in El Paso, Texas, said he worries scammers will charge migrants to sign them up and that CBP’s limited processing capacity will result in intolerable waits.

“Unless they plan to ramp that up significantly, someone applying for admission on CBPOne is going to be given a date that is like a year out,” Palazzo said. “Realistically, can they tell me with a straight face that they expect people to wait that long?”

Mohamad Reza Taran, 56, left Iran on Nov. 26 after converting to Christianity and flew to Tijuana, Mexico, where U.S. border inspectors at a San Diego crossing turned him away when he asked for asylum.

The computer technician planned to wait to see if he would get in immediately after Title 42 is lifted and, if not, said he would cross the border illegally, perhaps by climbing the border wall in San Diego or walking across flat desert in Yuma, Arizona. He has family in Los Angeles and sees the United States as his only option.

“I have nothing here,” Taran said in an interview outside a church in Tijuana, where he was searching for people who could instruct him on U.S. policies.

U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, said CBP officials told him last week they hoped to funnel asylum-seekers through official crossings and turn back to Mexico anyone who crosses the border illegally to the greatest possible extent. Doing so would likely be challenged in court because asylum law says people who enter illegally are entitled to seek protection.

No one disputes that the Border Patrol is woefully ill-equipped for processing — even while Title 42 kept a lid on numbers.

The Border Patrol paroled nearly 450,000 migrants in the United States through October — including 68,837 in October and 95,191 in September — sparing its agents the time-consuming work of issuing orders to appear in immigration court. According to a Government Accountability Office report, it typically takes at least two hours to prepare a court case, compared to a half-hour to release someone on parole.

Migrants paroled by Border Patrol agents are allowed to move freely within the United States and told to report to an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices at their final destinations, typically in two months.

The GAO report, released in September, details how the processing work dumped on ICE has hamstrung employees. As of March, ICE scheduled 15,100 appointments for families to complete processing as far out as March 2024. One ICE office reported up to 500 people a day showing up in person, most without appointments.

After families get a court appearance, they contend with a court system that is backlogged by more than 2 million cases, resulting in waits of several years for judges to reach decisions.

Waiting two years to just get on the court docket reflects a “totally collapsed” system, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, managing director of immigration and cross-border policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center.

Online registration using CBPOne would be “antithetical to the whole concept of asylum” because it could force people to wait in unsafe places, said Melissa Crow, litigation director for the Center for Gender & Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

Crow and others believe CBP could process far more people than they have been.

Earlier this year, the agency processed up to about 1,000 Ukrainians a day at San Diego’s San Ysidro border crossing, about three times its custody capacity.

Since the pandemic, migrants released in San Diego have been housed in motels until leaving, usually on a flight to family and friends east of the Mississippi River, Clark said. To prepare for the end of Title 42, Jewish Family Service opened a building for families to snack, watch television and play in a courtyard after they book travel, freeing up motel rooms for new arrivals. Clark likens it to an “airport lounge.”

CBP has been releasing more migrants to Jewish Family Service through exemptions to the asylum limits — about 200 to 250 a day, Clark said. Others are housed by the Catholic Charities Diocese of San Diego.

“It’s a day we’ve been working toward for some time,” Clark said Monday, having heard nothing from CBP about how migrants will be processed after asylum limits end. She anticipates more releases but doesn’t know how many.

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