From Trump’s Farce to Biden’s Wokeness: Leadership Failures at the Border
Chaotic Year Capped by Record Border Crossings
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The ongoing disaster that is American immigration policy reached a new nadir with news that authorities arrested more migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border this year than ever before.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents apprehended 1.7 million people crossing the southern border illegally during the fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30, 2021. That’s the highest number recorded since 1960, when the government started tracking the migrants.
It’s possible that increased recidivism inflated the numbers, but the influx is still enormous.
CBP detained migrants from more than 160 countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. More came from Mexico, followed by Central American countries, than anywhere else.
No American president in recent memory has managed to control the chaos, although Presidents Obama and Trump had lower numbers of apprehended migrants than all others since Richard Nixon.
President Biden’s attempt to control the surge with a more “humane” approach has, so far, failed miserably, and Republicans are pouncing.
Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo joined the fray in a tweet on Friday, Oct. 22, 2021. “What we are seeing at the southern border is a crisis,” Pompeo wrote on Twitter. “If the Biden Administration would’ve kept the policies we had in place, this would have never happened.”
Is Biden Responsible for the Huge Influx?
Any fair assessment of the surge in migration must lay much of the blame at the Oval Office.
Yes, the pandemic depressed migration in 2020 and led to the loss of millions of jobs. That spurred migration this year. Also, two hurricanes devastated parts of Honduras and Guatemala, undoubtedly encouraging people who lost their homes and livelihoods to head north.
But migrants would have been much less likely to attempt the hazardous journey were it not for Biden’s attempt to please everyone. It satisfied no one.
Starting the day he was inaugurated, Biden moved immediately to fulfill his promises of a softer touch on immigration, reversing many of Trump’s harsher policies on migrants.
In fact, he issued more executive orders or actions on immigration than on any other matter.
On January 20, 2021, before the inaugural parties even began, he ended the state of emergency on the border, imposed a 100-day deportation moratorium, stopped border wall construction, and fortified protections for “Dreamers.”
Soon thereafter, he moved to curtail former President Trump’s “remain in Mexico” asylum policy.
U.S. President Joe Biden, left, talks with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas before signing executive orders on immigration in the Oval Office on Feb. 2, 2021. (Doug Mills-Pool/Getty Images)
Biden’s moves could not have sent a clearer message throughout Latin America and beyond. What prospective migrants heard was that it was now easier not only to cross the border, but to then stay in the U.S., especially for families.
Republicans like Senator Lindsey Graham warned that Biden’s initiatives were “formulas for disaster that “will create massive future runs on the border.”
Biden’s weak defense was to falsely claim that the swell in migrants was only a seasonal blip. And White House press secretary Jen Psaki disingenuously refused to characterize the crisis as what it was, a crisis.
As the migrant numbers soared, especially those of unaccompanied minors, the Democratic administration broke the law repeatedly by keeping thousands of children in U.S. Border Patrol custody for more than three days.
Making matters worse, facilities built to hold hundreds of undocumented migrants held thousands.
What About Trump’s Role?
Trump’s rhetorical excesses and some of his more extreme moves certainly contributed to Biden’s knee-jerk overreaction.
The new president, of course, could have stopped the pendulum from swinging too far in the other direction. Biden didn’t. But Trump’s failures on immigration set the stage for the current crisis.
His racist comments about Mexicans began the process. Here’s Trump on July 5, 2015: The Mexican Government is forcing their most unwanted people into the United States. They are, in many cases, criminals, drug dealers, rapists, etc.”
He then promised, ad nauseam, to build a wall along the whole southern border and make Mexico pay for it. Neither happened.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump, left, flanked by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, during a visit to the border wall near Pharr, Texas, on June 30, 2021. Trump visited the area to address the surge in unauthorized border crossings they blame on Biden administration policies. (Sergio Flores/AFP/Getty Images)
The “Great Wall of Failure,” as it was dubbed by a Third Way editorial, upended Trump’s self-promoted reputation as a “master builder.”
By the time Trump’s term ended, the U.S. had built about 455 miles of barriers, precious little of which was actually a wall. However, only 49 miles of the barriers were built in places where there were none before. For perspective, the southern border stretches for 1,954 miles.
Trump’s inability to build his wall is especially striking because the GOP controlled both houses of Congress for the first two years of his term.
Sure, Senate Democrats employed the filibuster to stop funding for the wall, but he failed to galvanize support for it. In fact, like Trump himself, the wall never had majority support from the American people.
Trump also didn’t come close to fulfilling his promise to deport all immigrants who were in the U.S. illegally. In fact, deportations were lower during his four years in office than during either of Obama’s two terms.
Again, Trump faced opposition from cities and states whose leaders rejected his policies. But the buck has to stop somewhere.
Ironically, this failure may have saved Trump from his worst instincts. The massive deportation of 11 million people would have created a major humanitarian crisis in the U.S. and other countries, while severely depressing the economies of areas with large populations of undocumented immigrants.
Is the Crisis Getting Any Better?
Southwest border encounters peaked in July, but they have since remained near historical highs.
And the black eyes keep coming for the administration. Last month some 16,000 Haitian immigrants got stuck camping out in awful conditions under the bridge separating Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. Images of overworked and undermanned U.S. border patrol agents on horseback aggressively blocking and pursuing Haitians sparked outrage.
Recent White House moves, independent of whether they are the right thing to do, almost guarantee that the migrant problem will worsen.
The administration has continued to narrow the scope of who can be arrested and detained. On Oct. 12, 2021, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas directed all immigration and border agencies to stop mass worksite arrests of undocumented immigrants.
The move is intended to prevent unscrupulous employers from violating labor laws and using immigration enforcement as a threat to exploit workers. The worker protections are needed, but they reinforce the message that if undocumented immigrants manage to make it to their U.S. destinations, they are home free.
Less than two weeks earlier, Mayorkas announced new “Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law.” Pursuant to the guidelines, immigration officers can no longer detain and deport people simply because they are undocumented.
Given that many of those encountered are released into the U.S. pending undetermined court dates, is it any wonder that migrants are willing to risk their lives and their fortunes in their trek north, even though more than 70% of asylum applications are rejected?
Why Does the Crisis Have Special Relevance Now?
As Democrats struggle to reach a deal on their multi-trillion-dollar agenda, a joint survey of likely voters by two pollsters, one a Democrat, the other a Republican, raises serious questions about whether Democrats are addressing the right issues.
The survey, as cited by the Washington Post, finds that independent voters chose “economy/inflation/jobs” as their top concern, followed by “immigration and border security.”
Both took priority over COVID, and neither is a headliner in the budget reconciliation bill.
In other words, an ongoing border crisis could be catastrophic for Democrats who need independents to hold onto majorities on Capitol Hill in 2022.
Biden’s approval rating among independents has already cratered, plunging to only 34% in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll.
And the immigration crisis has the potential to get worse. According to estimates from Gallup, 42 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean want to move permanently to the U.S.
While they are not all coming at once, hundreds of thousands of apprehended undocumented immigrants are released into the U.S. every year.
Also, estimates indicate that only 68% of undocumented border crossers are apprehended. If accurate, another 550,000 people may have successfully entered the U.S. illegally without U.S. agents noticing.
Add those up and, conservatively, some 800,000 undocumented migrants are likely to have made it into the U.S. during fiscal 2021.
That’s more people than live in Seattle.
NOTE: After this article was filed, news broke that Democrats are scrambling at the eleventh hour to try and address immigration in the spending bill. It is not yet clear how ambitious the proposal will be or whether the bill will include immigration provisions at all.
Cover photo: U.S. Border Patrol agents watch as Haitian migrants cross the Rio Grande from Mexico into Del Rio, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2021, in a picture taken from Ciudad Acuña, Mexico. Fearing deportation from Mexico, migrants surged across the border to take their chances in the U.S. (John Moore/Getty Images)
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