The Immigration Game
The Biden Administration continues to mislead the public and play games with national security
On January 20th, 2021 President Biden was sworn in as President of the United States. His first actions included issuing 17 Executive Orders (EOs) on that day and at least 52 EOs in his first 100 days - more than the previous 3 Presidents and four times as many as the George W Bush administration in its first 100 days.
Those initial orders, issued on Day One of his Presidency and invariably reflecting the President’s highest priorities - included four orders to reverse Trump Administration policies on immigration and the border. The EOs halted the building of the border wall (which was infamously followed up by selling the border wall construction materials at a steep discount, just weeks before approving a new start to wall construction), undid Trump Administration expansions on enforcement of immigration laws, and rescinded the former Administration’s barring of entry into the US from seven countries known to harbor terrorists.
On February 2nd, 2021, President Biden signed three more EOs on immigration, that again reversed or rescinded previous policies: that required illegal immigrants who receive public benefits to pay them back, that increased protection for people that cross illegally but then request asylum, and reversed justification for separation of children at the border. Two days later, two more Executive Orders protected LGBTQ refugees and expanded refugee acceptance programs while rolling back additional vetting processes the Trump Administration had put in place. On February 24th, another EO revoked the curtailing of legal immigration due to the COVID pandemic - while much of the country was not yet vaccinated and immigrants were not required to take the vaccination.
Finally, on April 16th the last Executive Order on immigration in President Biden’s first 100 days reversed a Trump policy to limit refugee relocations and set a date to begin flying new refugees all over the country.
These Orders and other factors have created a huge sea change at the US Southern Border. According to the House Committee on Homeland Security, the President’s policies created the “Worst Year at America’s Borders - Ever” in Fiscal Year 2023, which ended this past September 30th. Encounters at the Southwest border doubled since the last pre-pandemic year (2019) and are up 40% since FY2021. During the Biden Administration, there have been (now) 8 million encounters at our borders with at least 1.6M known “getaways.” In FY2023, 169 people on the known terror watch list and over 35 thousand aliens with criminal convictions, including 178 MS-13 gang members, were apprehended trying to cross. Indeed, the numbers are staggering, from the Economist in January:
And yet, for the first three years of the Biden administration, we’ve been told repeatedly that the border is closed and secure. This is a montage produced by the Free Beacon in September, 2022:
When the Biden Administration released their FY23 Budget for review by Congress, the fact sheet claimed:
President Biden has taken historic steps to secure our border and rebuild a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system that was gutted by the previous Administration. Over the past two years, the Biden-Harris Administration has secured more resources for border security than any of the presidents who preceded him, deployed the most agents ever—more than 23,000—to address the situation at the border, prevented record levels of illicit fentanyl from entering our country, and brought together world leaders on a framework to deal with changing migration patterns that are impacting the entire Western Hemisphere. The Administration has also put in place new measures to enhance security at the border and reduce the number of individuals crossing unlawfully between ports of entry while expanding and expediting legal pathways for orderly migration for individuals from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The President also outlined new consequences for those who fail to use these new legal pathways.
In order to show the folly of the Administration’s policies and public statements, Republican Governors in Texas and Florida made one of the most well-calculated political moves of the 21st century: flooded with illegal migrants for which they could not provide proper housing and resources, they began shipping illegal migrants that had overwhelmed their states to so-called sanctuary states and cities. As this policy began to take effect in the late summer, the Biden Administration soon began to sing a different tune. They began rebuilding the border wall which they had hastily stopped, with a spurious claim that the President was required by law to do so. It’s quite dizzying to watch another Administration policy reverse course - an amazing magic trick where he has the power to stop building the wall in 2021, but then when the policy is an utter and complete failure, be forced by a law from 2019 to restart it in 2023. This President (as we’ve seen of others) follows the law when he sees fit, and doesn’t when he doesn't.
Which brings us to the current kerfuffle over the dead on arrival spending bill for Emergency Defense or Immigration Reform or Border Security or whatever buzzword they think will sell it next. This is the same Frankenstein bill that President Biden demanded from Congress in October after his feckless visit to Israel in the aftermath of the October 7th terrorist attacks. The bill includes at least $60B for Ukraine - that’s 150% of the entire Ukraine national budget ($40B) and would bring our total spending to $180B+ in the last two years for Ukraine. At $90B per year average, that would be more than the annual budget for the following federal departments: the Department of Education ($81B) the EPA ($77B), the Department of the Interior ($71B), the Army Corps of Engineers ($68B), the State Department ($57B), the GSA ($46B), the Department of Justice ($39B), the Department of Labor ($22B), USAID ($18B), NASA ($17B), and many others. The bill also includes approximately $15B for Israel, although ammunition is freely flowing to Israel and they appear to be in no need of money from the US.
The rest of the bill is being secretly negotiated and has not been released to the public to date. That has not stopped the President from both claiming he can do nothing to improve the situation at the border until this law has passed and that he would sign it immediately. According to many, he already has the authority he needs to shut the border. From the NY Post:
Then there’s Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the president authority to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens.”
If that sounds familiar, it’s because it’s similar to but broader than Title 42 — it’s not limited to public health emergencies.
That section was the basis for travel restrictions Trump implemented on certain nationals of terrorist hotspots and countries hostile to the United States.
In 2018, the Supreme Court rejected advocates’ challenges to those restrictions, finding Section 212(f) “exudes deference to the President in every clause.”
So this is just another case of the President and his Administration misleading the people about both the facts and the law of the case. The President is using this false stance to force Congress to give him his Ukraine war money in exchange for his Administration reversing their dereliction of duty to preserve, protect and defend the United States, and to defend the country from foreign invasion.
If the President and his Democratic allies in Congress were serious about reforming immigration, they would separate any deal on it from funding for Ukraine and Israel and force an up or down vote before the next election.
But no such law is needed to secure the border. The President simply needs to reverse his bad immigration policies made through Executive Order and invoke the Immigration and Naturalization Act to stop illegal crossings.
Mr. President, we implore you. You’ve already made an about-face concerning the facts on the ground on our border, it’s time you come clean too about your authority and take action for the American people. You have the authority and the moral imperative to take action now. It might be the best move you can make to get re-elected in the fall.