A new poll revealed that the majority of Americans disapprove of how President Joe Biden and his administration are handling the crisis at the southern border.
According to a new Quinnipiac poll, only 29% of Americans approve of how Biden is handling the “situation at the Mexican border.” Another 55% of Americans disapprove of his handling.
This response from the American public comes in spite of the fact that Biden has a 48% overall approval rating.
Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said that Biden is facing the same problems at the southern border that former President Donald Trump faced, though Malloy fails to mention that traffic at the border has increased significantly since Biden was inaugurated.
“Though he gets generally positive numbers on his domestic strides as he nears his first 100 days in office, the president is confronting the same political quagmire south of the border that bedeviled his predecessor,” Malloy said. “The border with Mexico, and the people trying to cross it, loom as a familiar crisis.”
The U.S.-Mexico border is experiencing the highest migration surge since 2001. According to enforcement statistics from Customs and Border Protection (CBP), as of March 2021, CBP agents interacted with 551,614 migrants. In the entire fiscal year of 2020, the U.S.-Mexico border saw 405,036 migrants cross the border.
In the month of March, CBP agents also saw a dramatic uptick in drug trafficking over the southern border. CBP data claims that there were 4,089 pounds of drugs being smuggled over the border in March. In comparison, over the past six months, the second-highest amount of drugs apprehended was 2,979 pounds.
Biden campaigned on ending the construction of Trump’s border wall and opening the southern border for increased migration. According to the Washington Times, the administration is now backtracking on its promises to halt construction of the border wall. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the administration is now considering filling the “gaps in the wall” at the border, despite aggressively condemning the notion of a border wall under Trump.
The administration refuses to say the word “crisis” and has instead dubbed what is happening at the border a “challenge.”
Biden’s approach to the border “challenge” appears to be throwing cash at the problem. According to Business Insider, Biden is spending $86.9 million on hotel rooms for migrants. The administration has unveiled further spending plans in its “discretionary funding request” submitted Friday, April 9. The funding request seeks $1.5 trillion — billion of which will be used to house and resettle migrants.
The loudest criticism of the Biden administration’s failure on the immigration crisis is Biden and Vice President, border czar Kamala Harris’s unwillingness to visit the border. Following the criticism, Harris announced that she plans to visit Guatemala and Mexico to trace the “root causes” of the immigration crisis, though she has no plans to travel to the U.S.-Mexico border.