Joe Biden and his White House team are considering using various aspects of federal immigration law – that were repeatedly utilized by Donald Trump during his hardline, anti-immigrant presidency – to unilaterally initiate a sweeping crackdown on migrants crossing into the US across the Mexico border uninvited, according to multiple reports.

The administration, stymied by Republican lawmakers who rejected a negotiated border bill earlier this month, has been exploring options that the US president could deploy on his own without congressional approval, multiple officials and others familiar with the talks told the Associated Press last night.

But the public is warned that plans are not finalized and it’s unclear how the administration would draft any such executive actions in a way that would survive the inevitable legal challenges.

Biden has hardened his rhetoric and policy intentions over the course of his presidency so far and the issue of irregular migration at the southern border – chiefly migrants crossing the border between official ports of entry into the US, because they can’t get an appointment or gain permission to enter for an asylum interview, and turning themselves in to border patrol, hoping then to be able to file an asylum claim.

The notion of a crackdown on asylum seekers by Biden goes against international human rights laws and a tradition of being able to request shelter after reaching US soil and will enrage progressives and immigration advocates, probably provoking legal challenges and political uproar. But voters have consistently told pollsters they disapprove of the White House’s handling of border security.

Good morning, US politics blog readers, it’s a very busy week considering that Congress isn’t even in full session, but there’s news out of the White House and on the campaign trail and we’ll bring it to you as it happens.

Here’s what’s afoot:

• Joe Biden is strongly considering taking executive action to crack down on undocumented migrants crossing the US-Mexico border to request shelter in the United States, according to multiple reports.

• With Congress stalled on legislative action to reform immigration laws and toughen asylum rules at the southern border, the White House is now reportedly weighing unilateral action.

• The US president is considering using provisions of federal immigration law repeatedly tapped by Donald Trump during his hardline presidency, but Biden would be likely to run into immediate legal challenges from immigrant rights groups and outrage on the left of his party.

• Irregular immigration is a huge election year topic and opinion polls show that a strong majority of American voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of migration issues at the US-Mexico border.

• Reverberations are widening from the Alabama court decision to declare that frozen embryos used in IVF are human babies and to destroy them would be a crime. Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley has weighed in behind the ruling but it’s thrown the healthcare sector and would-be parents into a conundrum.

• Joe Biden called Russian president Vladimir Putin a “crazy SOB” (son of a bitch) during a fundraiser in San Francisco, warning there is always the threat of nuclear conflict but that the existential threat to humanity remains the climate crisis.