Who is right on border crisis, Biden or Republicans?
Biden, Republican border battle includes president's controversial $4 billion funding request
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Who is responsible for the border crisis?
Republicans claim that the Biden administration caused it by rolling back Trump-era border security measures, and the administration blames the Republicans for not supporting Biden’s $4 billion border security funding request and his immigration reform bill.
The situation at the border is very bad. Illegal border crossing apprehensions have increased during Biden’s presidency from 458,088 in fiscal 2020 to 2,378,944 in fiscal 2022. And there were 1.2 million gotaways. Gotaways are illegal crossers who are detected but not apprehended.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Are the Republicans right that the administration’s rollback of Trump’s border security measures caused the increase in illegal crossings? This certainly was a contributing factor, but it’s not the entire explanation.
US President Joe Biden speaks with a member of the US Border Patrol as they walk along the US-Mexico border fence in El Paso, Texas, on January 8, 2023. (JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Image)
Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols program
Under the Migrant Protection Protocols or MPP program, individuals who arrive at the southern border and ask for asylum can be sent back to Mexico to wait for their asylum hearings instead of being allowed to wait in the United States.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}This discourages migrants who do not have good asylum claims and are just trying to get into the United States. The Biden administration’s restricted use of the program virtually eliminated this deterrent value.
When Biden became president on January 20, 2021, he ordered his administration to stop sending asylum seekers back to Mexico to wait for their hearings and to start winding down the program. By March, the MPP refugee camp in Mexico had been emptied out and nearly everyone in it had been released into the United States.
Then, on June 1, 2021, the administration terminated the program.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The states of Texas and Missouri successfully challenged the termination in federal court. On August 15, 2021, a federal judge issued an injunction ordering the administration to start the MPP program again and execute it in good faith.
The administration resumed the program but limited it almost exclusively to young men from Nicaragua, Venezuela and Cuba.
A year later, a federal judge lifted the injunction, and the administration resumed its efforts to terminate the program.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Trump’s Title 42 order
The administration has not been able to rescind the Title 42 order yet, but it has never fully complied with it.
People surround a car as it arrives carrying food donations at a makeshift camp for migrants seeking asylum in the United States at the border crossing Friday, March 12, 2021, in Tijuana, Mexico. The Biden administration hopes to relieve the strain of thousands of unaccompanied children coming to the southern border by terminating a 2018 Trump-era order that discouraged potential family sponsors from coming forward to house the children. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)
It did expel 1,071,075 migrants in fiscal 2021, and 1,103,966 in fiscal 2022. But the expelled migrants have mainly been single adults.
A recent report from the DHS Inspector General indicates that most of the illegal crossers who were not expelled under Title 42 were released into the interior of the country.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The administration released nearly 1.35 million undocumented migrants – and there were 1.2 million gotaways. This means that more than 2.5 million undocumented migrants were able to enter the United States during the first two years of the Biden administration!
If that many undocumented migrants are able to enter the country during the last two years of the Biden presidency, it will increase the population of undocumented migrants in the United States by almost 50 percent.
This discourages migrants who do not have good asylum claims and are just trying to get into the United States. The Biden administration’s restricted use of the program virtually eliminated this deterrent value.
And if the number of illegal crossings increases when Title 42 is terminated...
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The administration’s $4 billion funding request
The Republicans opposed this request because they realized that the main reason for wanting the additional funds was to get more personnel and other resources for processing and releasing the much larger number of undocumented migrants that is expected when Title 42 is terminated.
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"I don’t see why they need more money when you have an open border," said Sen. John Kennedy, [R-La.] "I mean, do they need to hire more people to say, ‘Right this way; come on in?’"
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Biden’s immigration reform bill
The Heritage Foundation has called Biden’s bill, the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, the "most radical piece of immigration legislation ever introduced."
It would establish an extremely large legalization program. Legalization would be available for undocumented entering the U.S. before January 1, 2021; Dreamers; TPS holders; and immigrant farm workers. And legalization programs attract illegal crossers who try to establish eligibility with false claims. This is why Republicans insist on a secure border before they will support legalization programs.
The bill also authorizes additional funding for the development and implementation of a strategy to manage and secure the southern border between ports of entry. This is a long-term solution that may never produce an effective strategy, and it isn’t possible to predict how long it would take to implement it.
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It also would fund Biden’s $4 billion plan to address the root causes of migration in Central America. Similar Central American plans have not reduced or controlled migration in the past.
Conclusion
The administration caused the border crisis by winding down the border security policies of the previous administration and establishing its own policies that encouraged illegal crossings, especially its practice of releasing most of the migrants who were not expelled under Title 42.
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