Upon taking office, President Joe Biden acted immediately to implement policies described by the Brookings Institution as the most progressive of any president.
On Biden’s very first day in office, he halted deportations, suspended the “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers, and stopped construction of the border wall. He then signed executive orders reversing Trump’s immigration policies. Biden also ended the Title 42 policy employed by the Trump administration during the pandemic to turn migrants away for health reasons. The Biden administration then reinstated the “catch and release” policy allowing the vast majority of illegals who cross the border to be released into the United States.
By September 2021, they announced illegal immigrants would no longer be deported simply for being in the United States illegally. Additionally, according to some reports, the Biden administration worked with Mexico’s immigration service to facilitate illegal immigrant border crossings.
The end result, predictably, has been catastrophic – the number of illegal aliens crossing the border is skyrocketing on Biden’s watch. During the Trump administration, U.S. Border Patrol encounters of illegals at the southern border fluctuated with 303,619 apprehensions in 2017, 396,579 in 2018, 851,508 in 2019, and 400,651 in 2020. After Biden dismantled much of Trump’s border policies, the migrants encountered at our southern border exploded in 2021 to over 1.6 million, beating the previous record set in 2000. 2022 encounters of illegals at the border blew away the previous year’s record with a total of 2.4 million illegals and other migrants apprehended. 2023 set yet another record with a total of over 3.2 million illegal alien encounters nationwide.
President Biden refuses to accept any responsibility for the disaster he and his administration created at the border. Early in his term, Biden blamed Trump for the border debacle, claiming the Trump administration failed to “share” critical information during the presidential transition. Thereafter, President Biden pressed the claim that Trump and MAGA Republicans are to blame for the border crisis, claiming Trump and the GOP “gutted” the U.S. Immigration System.
As Biden’s disastrous administration continued hobbling along, his 2024 re-election plan became clear: blame Trump for his border crisis. By February 2024, President Biden vowed to “remind” the American people “every day” that President Trump and his MAGA friends are responsible for the lack of border security.
Even SkyNews in Australia isn’t buying it. Watch:
When the United States Senate passed a combined Ukraine aid package and so-called “border security” bill early in February of this year, Biden claimed he needed the authority the bill would provide:
It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.
The bill’s “border security” provisions are controversial to say the least. They include provisions which would grant exclusive jurisdiction for the uber-liberal DC District Courts over judicial review of any decision or action arising under the new law. Plus extensive new procedures for handling asylum seekers and granting the secretary of Homeland Security with emergency power, in his “sole and unreviewable discretion” (see pg. 208 of the bill) to “summarily remove” any “alien,” provided over a 7 day period more than 5,000 aliens per day are encountered (not counting (1) unaccompanied alien children or (2) any alien an immigration officer deems “should be excepted” from the emergency authority, among others) or more than 8,500 aliens are encountered in a single day. Thus, the provisions of the Senate bill would allow just under 1.8 million illegal entries (5,000 per day) without requiring the DHS secretary to do a thing.
Biden falsely touted this bill, which would allow up to 1.8 million illegals to enter the country yearly without requiring the federal government to take any action to stem the tide, as the “toughest reforms to secure the border ever”. In truth, the Senate border bill was an absolute mess.
This analysis by The Heritage Foundation reveals the fact the Senate border bill was a border security disaster, not any kind of solution. As is customarily the case, Biden faced no criticism at all from the media for his hyperbole about the bill.
The simple fact of the matter is the humanitarian, national security, and border crisis ongoing at this nation’s southern border now for the last 3 years is completely, totally the fault of President Biden and his inept administration. The Biden administration already blatantly ignores federal immigration law and its obligations to enforce it. The failure of the Biden administration’s leadership to enforce federal immigration law led to the impeachment of DHS Secretary Mayorkas earlier this month. The so-called Senate “border security bill” would have allowed millions of illegals to cross the border yearly without requiring the federal government to do a thing. It would have solved nothing and everyone, most of all the leadership of the Biden administration, knows it.
The efforts by President Biden to deflect blame for his border disaster onto President Trump and Republicans is yet another of the typically vile, false attacks Biden levels on a regular basis. Do not let President Biden or his enablers in the legacy media fool you. The border crisis is Biden’s responsibility and his alone.
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Daniel R. Street is an attorney with over 25 years of litigation experience. He is the author of the Fake News Exposed about Trump book series.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.