Biden's immigration advisers reportedly discussed the possibility of setting up reception centers along the border in late September
The Biden administration is looking at Europe for a roadmap to curb an out-of-control migrant crisis at the United States-Mexico border, a new report revealed on Tuesday.
Officials are considering European-style migrant 'reception centers' along the southwest border to both curb the number of people apprehended and released into the country as well as provide an alternative to the recently-reinstated Remain in Mexico policy.
US authorities arrested a record 1.7 million migrants at the southern border in fiscal year 2021.
President Joe Biden's advisers met at the White House to discuss the possibility as recently as late September, the Washington Post reported.
Proposals on the details of how border reception centers would look are still up in the air, administration officials and other sources told the outlet, but migrants would probably have to remain there in federal government custody for the duration of their asylum cases.
They would also be deported if their cases are turned down, the report notes.
More than 185,000 people were apprehended by US Border Patrol officers in September, according to the most recently available data from US Customs and Border Patrol.
While it's a decline from the 21-year high seen in July, the figure is more than double September 2020's roughly 54,700 encounters.
The number of people who are coming to the border is putting a serious strain on the US court system, as evidenced by 1.4 million backlogged immigration cases.
National Security Council immigration adviser Katie Tobin told the Post that administration officials were trying to focus on 'testing innovative ideas that are humane, that maintain the due process that’s required in an asylum adjudication but that get us away from a system where people wait five years for a decision.'
Sheets and mylar blankets flutter in the wind at a makeshift shelter at the U.S.-Mexico border wall as immigrants wait for transport to a U.S. Border Patrol processing center on December 9
Migrants, part of a caravan that is slowly moving north, stop and rest at the Casa del Peregrino San Juan Diego shelter in Mexico City, Monday, December 13. A judge recently rejected the Biden administration's appeal to stop the Remain in Mexico policy, which would force US asylum seekers to wait for their cases to be processed in Mexico
Tobin added those delays are 'not good for our country and not good for people who are really in need of protection.'
According to anonymous sources cited in the report, federal agencies and nonprofit groups
