An asylum seeker from Nicaragua waited with his 8-year-old son to enter the U.S. port of entry in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, to change their court dates earlier this year.
Photo: paul ratje/Agence France-Presse/Getty ImagesWASHINGTON—President Trump has used his executive-branch authority to remake nearly every facet of the U.S. immigration system. If Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is elected in November, he is expected to use many of those same levers to undo Mr. Trump’s changes and even end some immigration enforcement measures that have been in place for decades.
Many of Mr. Biden’s policy plans would require legislation to enact—but immigration is an issue where the former vice president would have the ability to enact much of Democrats’ desired agenda through regulatory changes and other executive actions. Mr. Biden has also said he would pursue a bill providing a pathway to citizenship for the 11 million immigrants in the country who lack permanent legal status, a task made easier if Democrats take back control of the Senate.
Mr. Biden said in an interview this month at a virtual joint convention hosted by the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists that he would halt construction of Mr. Trump’s border wall, the president’s signature 2016 campaign promise.
He has also said he would end Mr. Trump’s bans on travel from foreign countries—including 13 Muslim-majority and African nations—eliminate the wealth test Mr. Trump imposed on green-card applicants, restore the annual cap on refugees to 125,000 people from a record-low 18,000, and end a program that sends asylum seekers back across the border to Mexico to await their immigration hearings.
Contractors erected a section of border wall, a top priority of President Trump, in Yuma, Ariz., last year.
Photo: Matt York/Associated PressIn the early days of the Democratic campaign, Mr. Biden faced criticism from Latino organizations for tying himself too closely to the Obama administration’s immigration record, which they associate with high numbers of immigration arrests and other tough enforcement measures. The Obama administration deported more immigrants annually than the Trump administration.
President Obama also enacted immigration changes using executive authority, most notably to create a program to protect young immigrants known as Dreamers who had been living in the country illegally.
During the campaign, Mr. Biden shifted his tone on immigration and adopted several of the policy changes his more liberal rivals like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren proposed. For example, Mr. Biden adopted a proposal initially made by Mr. Sanders to halt deportations for the first hundred days of his presidency.
Mr. Biden also has promised to stop some enforcement measures taken by the government in recent decades, including a pledge to stop jailing families seeking asylum. That partly reflects the activism of immigration advocates, who say they wouldn’t be satisfied with a return to Obama-era immigration policies.
“The next Democratic administration must understand that it’s not enough to undo the harm, but to think aggressively and use every tool at their disposal to rethink and advance our system,” said Lorella Praeli, co-president of Community Change, a group that works in voter engagement for people of color. “We’re expecting that same focus on immigration, but in the opposite direction.”
People gathered in Tijuana, Mexico, to apply for asylum in the U.S. last month. Joe Biden has pledged to stop jailing families seeking asylum if he is elected president.
Photo: Gregory Bull/Associated PressMr. Trump, who is again making immigration a central issue of his campaign, has seized on Mr. Biden’s more progressive stance. The president says that many of the changes Mr. Biden and Democrats are championing would make Americans less safe, and frequently links illegal immigration to crime in his speeches.
“Biden’s plan would unleash a flood of illegal immigration like the world has never seen,” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Yuma, Ariz., on Aug. 18, adding that Mr. Biden’s policies would allow “violent criminal” immigrants to enter the country.
A spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign didn’t respond to questions about what immigration policies Mr. Trump would pursue in a second term. In the last few months, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Trump has shut down most legal immigration avenues, banning many visa categories, halting refugee admissions and denying nearly all migrants at the border a chance to ask for asylum.
Immigration hard-liners aligned with his administration, including the Heritage Foundation, have pushed him to issue an executive order, which Mr. Trump has suggested he might do several times, ending birthright citizenship for children born in the U.S. to immigrant parents. Many legal scholars say that such a move would be unconstitutional. Birthright citizenship is protected by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment and Supreme Court precedent.
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In recent years, each party has decried the executive actions taken by the president of the opposing party as an overreach of the power of the presidency, only to cheer their own president’s using the power similarly once they take office.
That dynamic threatens to create endless uncertainty for immigrants without a legislative overhaul of the system, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, who worked at the Department of Homeland Security in the Bush and Obama administrations.
“If you’re an immigrant, one day you’re eligible and the next day you’re not, and the day after that you are again,” said Ms. Brown, who is now the director of cross-border policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that has supported less restrictive immigration policies. “It’s no way to run a government.”
Progressive activists say they have interpreted Mr. Trump’s wide-ranging actions on immigration as encouragement that they can enact their own vision without compromise—as they would be forced to do in any legislative package.
Mr. Biden has adopted calls to wind down the use of family detention centers that the Obama administration first opened. He has promised to stop contracting with local police departments to arrest immigrants in the country without legal permission and to stop investigating workplaces that employ immigrants not authorized to work in the U.S.
“A Biden-Harris administration will reverse the Trump administration’s cruel and senseless policies that separate parents from their children at our border and more importantly push legislative immigration reform that will modernize our immigration system,” said Julie Rodriguez, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden’s campaign.
Mr. Biden hasn’t embraced all of his early rivals’ positions—he hasn’t endorsed decriminalizing border crossings or abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, for example.
But his platform now contains a note of contrition for his involvement in deporting more than three million immigrants: “Joe Biden understands the pain felt by every family across the U.S. that has had a loved one removed from the country, including under the Obama-Biden Administration,” his website reads.
Adding California Sen. Kamala Harris to the Democratic ticket boosted Mr. Biden’s standing among immigration advocates. Ms. Harris has made immigration a central theme of her time in the Senate, and as a presidential candidate, she introduced an immigration plan that used a legal maneuver to make it easier for Dreamers to qualify for permanent residence.
Taking on immigration too prominently as a campaign issue may prove risky for both Messrs. Biden and Trump. Polling shows more Americans view immigration as a positive force for the country. Gallup polling in May and June showed 34% of respondents supported more immigration to the U.S., up from 27% a year earlier and the highest since 1965.
An NPR/Ipsos poll taken July 30-31, meanwhile, showed 78% of Americans supported temporarily closing the U.S. border except for essential travel during the coronavirus pandemic.
Write to Michelle Hackman at Michelle.Hackman@wsj.com
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