2024 Rundown: Biden Never Ignored Or Opened The Border
Exploring the Republican claims that simply don't add up.
Republicans claim that Biden has been ignoring the border the last three years. They claim that Biden wants all of these extra migrants because they will be future Democrats. And Republicans claim that Biden not only hasn’t done anything to secure the border, but that he in fact has taken many steps to open the border to let migrants flood in.
Let’s take a look at what really happened.
Jan 20th 2021 President Biden announced the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021. A bill he sent to Congress that contained solutions for all aspects of immigration.
It included technology for border patrol and additional measures to secure the southern border between ports of entry. It tackled the source of migration by committing more assistance to nations like El Salvador and Honduras. It addressed issues with the asylum system. And it had a path to citizenship for undocumented migrants already in the US.
While that bill was introduced to both the House and Senate, it didn’t go anywhere.
When the Covid Emergency was coming to an end which was also going to end Title 42, a rule that President Biden made more use of than Trump did, the Biden administration enacted the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule which enacted strict asylum bans. This rule was brought to court and initially blocked. It has since been working its way through appeals.
Throughout his Presidency, Biden increased detention capabilities, increased ICE deportation capabilities, hired more Border Patrol agents than the previous administration, improved border technology and monitoring of migrants within the US.
Overall President Biden took over 120 actions to reduce migration and work towards a shutdown border. You can read through the list here (also the source of the graphs used in this article):
https://www.cato.org/blog/list-120-biden-actions-help-try-shut-border
Let’s take a look at how those actions worked out:
Republicans complain about Biden paroling low-risk migrants into the US. Biden actually increased the amount of detention centers and created some temporary facilities to deal with the high level of migration. The bipartisan border bill would have increased funding for ICE to increase the detention and deportation capabilities. Overall, President Biden has detained more migrants than Trump did:
Republicans suggest that a high number of migrants coming to the US know they don’t qualify for asylum and are simply claiming it to get into the country. Despite this, Republicans killed the bipartisan border bill that would have both made initial asylum screening more stringent and staffed up the asylum system to clear out the backlog which would deport migrants faster.
Even without that bill, under Biden more migrants are deported after the initial screening than were under Trump and the immigration court system deported more migrants than ever before in US history:
Another accusation of Republicans is that migrants released into the US are lost in the system and stay here illegally. This ignores the fact that Trump also released migrants into the US and that Trump deported a lower percentage of migrants than Biden.
It is also an inaccurate statement. Over 90% of migrants show up to their court hearings. And under President Biden, electronic monitoring of migrants was greatly increased:
Lastly let’s discuss how Republicans keep repeating that we should bring back Remain in Mexico despite Mexico no longer agreeing to it.
Remain in Mexico didn’t work as well as Republicans think. It exposed migrants to significant human rights issues such as abuse, rape, torture, even abduction and extortion. And the Department of Homeland Security found that 1/3rd of migrants sent to Mexico to remain there simply crossed the border again.
Biden’s Circumvention of Lawful Pathways was meant to create a better solution than Remain in Mexico and since then Biden has worked out agreements to have Mexico better enforce immigration in their country. Here are the results of that agreement:
The fact of the matter is that the border has been a focus of President Biden since before he took office and he introduced a bill immediately to tackle the issue.
When that bill wasn’t taken up, Congress failed to enact any new reforms, and Title 42 ended, Biden enacted a strict asylum rule to tackle the problem on his own.
And now Biden and the Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, both worked with a bipartisan group of Senators to write up legislation that would better tackle border issues, only to have Trump tell Republicans to kill it, and Republicans obliged.
Now the Republican led House of Representatives is in the middle of its third recess in four months instead of working on the problem they claim is a crisis, a catastrophe, a national security risk, and an invasion.
Who are the ones actually ignoring the issue?
