Biden executive action on the border could come as early as Tuesday

President Joe Biden is set to sign a long-anticipated executive order as soon as Tuesday that would allow him to “shut down” the southern border should crossings surge, according to four people familiar with the administration’s plans. While those people cautioned that plans are fluid, the expectation is that Biden will issue the order before heading to France in the middle of the week for a ceremony celebrating the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

The order Biden is slated to announce would use section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to dramatically limit migrants’ ability to seek asylum at the southern border once encounters reach a new threshold. Administration officials have discussed 4,000 daily border crossings over the course of a week as the metric.

The White House has long been eager to show more action on the border — a longstanding political weak spot for the president. It supported a bipartisan border security bill tied to Ukraine aid. And after Republicans defeated that measure, Biden took a string of actions in recent weeks to speed up the asylum process and dissuade migration.

That push angered progressives, who argued that the White House was conceding the immigration debate to conservatives. But the pressure to act has only intensified as Donald Trump — who said he would close the border on his first day in office should he be elected to a second term — and Republicans have keyed in on the number of illegal crossings to attack the administration’s record.

“The border patrol, I know them so well. They endorsed me, they always endorse me. They say when Trump goes back, it will all be better. And Biden, by the way, he doesn’t need any legislation,” Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends this weekend. “In 2016, it was a big factor of my win … but now the border is 100 times worse than it was in 2016.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Sunday said that executive action by President Joe Biden on immigration would be “too little, too late.”

Biden officials have wavered on the timeline for issuing an executive order for months. The announcement was first anticipated ahead of the president’s State of the Union address, but White House officials shelved the plans in part because of a downtick in border crossings due to increased enforcement in Mexico. Biden officials also have sought to use the failure of the bipartisan border deal to hammer Republicans — who opposed the measure after Trump encouraged them to do so. Democrats used the second failed vote on the deal last month to once again argue that their GOP counterparts were not invested in legislative solutions.

The timing of the announcement will fall after Mexico’s Sunday election. Rolling out the policy this week also avoids an announcement falling too close to the 12th anniversary of DACA on June 12, at which pro-immigrant groups will continue to press the White House for additional action protecting classes of long-term, undocumented immigrants in the country.

The expected timing of this week’s announcement — tucked before a series of trips overseas — underscores the degree to which the president is attempting to balance a wide variety of domestic and foreign policy matters, all while breathing life into his presidential campaign.

“They’re really worried about the election,” said one of the people who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about private conversations.

But it’s unclear how successful the proposed executive order will be, operationally or politically. Using 212(f), which Trump employed repeatedly to shape the immigration system, is set to face steep blowback from the left. And like Trump, the Biden administration may also face legal challenges.

“While Congressional Republicans chose to stand in the way of additional border enforcement, President Biden will not stop fighting to deliver the resources that border and immigration personnel need to secure our border,” White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández said in a statement. “As we have said before, the Administration continues to explore a series of policy options and we remain committed to taking action to address our broken immigration system.”

Immigration policy experts also warn that the policy will do little to change the status quo at the border. Even with the administration’s efforts to curtail asylum seekers during spikes at the border, smugglers and traffickers will continue to target nationalities — like Cubans, Venezuelans and Colombians — that can’t be easily removed to countries that haven’t consistently accepted deportation flights from the U.S. or Mexico. They also warn that triggered border shutdowns tied to a specific number of illegal crossings will lead to more erratic surges at the border in desolate areas, upending Border Patrol’s security posture.

But while Biden administration officials don’t expect the policy to resolve a crisis that requires congressional action, they do hope it can chip away at some of the political pressure facing the president ahead of November.

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.