Biden and Trump Visit the Border, Spar over Immigration Policy

FAIR Take | March 2024

Last Thursday, both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump visited the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas. That’s where the similarities end though. Trump visited Eagle Pass – long a battleground in the border crisis – while Biden headed to Brownsville – which has seen a precipitous drop in crossings thanks to Texas’ efforts. Biden was flanked by recently impeached Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Trump was joined by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and president of the Border Patrol union, Brandon Judd.

The visits come as the country faces record numbers of illegal crossings and the most encounters at the southwest border in history. Under Biden, more than 10 million illegal aliens have now been encountered nationwide, including at least 1.8 million “gotaways” who have evaded Border Patrol to enter the country. Both annual and monthly encounter records were shattered in the previous year, even as DHS removed fewer illegal aliens and the immigration court case backlog continued to climb.

In comments at the border, Biden sought to deflect blame for the border crisis. Instead of announcing new executive actions to secure the border that had been floated recently, Biden returned to pointing the finger at Congress. He again claimed that the recently failed Senate “border security” deal was needed: “The U.S. Senate need [sic] to reconsider this bill and those senators who oppose it need to set politics aside and pass it on the merits, not on whether it’s going to benefit one party or another party.” The Senate border bill, however, would in fact codify record levels of illegal immigration and would have required asylum seekers to be released rather than detained. It was also packed full of giveaways to open-borders advocates, such as an additional 50,000 green cards every year and billions in funding for non-profit groups facilitating mass illegal immigration.

For his part, Trump continued to hammer the Biden Administration’s handling of the border. He honed in specifically on the issue of migrant crime and the case of murdered Georgia student Laken Riley, one of several tragic incidents in recent days. Comparing the border crisis to a war, Trump placed the blame squarely on the current president: “This is a Biden invasion over the past three years.” Union leader Judd reinforced those statements, saying, “Border patrol agents are upset that we cannot get the proper policy that is necessary to protect human life, to protect American citizens, to protect the people that are crossing the border illegally…We can’t do that because President Biden’s policies continue to invite people to cross”…”

Despite claims to the contrary, the border crisis is entirely of the Biden Administration’s own making. Since his first week in office, Biden has pushed an open-borders agenda, immediately stopping wall construction, opting for mass catch-and-release of illegal aliens, and ending the Migrant Protection Protocols requiring asylum claimants to remain in Mexico while their cases are pending. Mayorkas followed up on these efforts by establishing unlawful parole programs allowing in hundreds of thousands of otherwise inadmissible illegal aliens; crippling interior enforcement in a series of memoranda severely limiting officers in making arrests and executing deportations; and transforming Immigration and Customs Enforcement into a social services provider in an attempt to abolish the agency.

Facing a flood of illegal immigration and a complete lack of enforcement, Americans are increasingly alarmed about today’s border crisis. According to one recent poll, just 26 percent of Americans approve of Biden’s immigration policies. Even among members of his own party, a bare majority, just 54 percent, approved of Biden’s handling of immigration. With American communities across the country facing unprecedented influxes of illegal aliens, those trends only seem poised to continue.

As FAIR has long advocated, action to secure our borders and enforce our immigration laws is urgently needed. Nearly a year ago, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, a comprehensive package that would reverse the Biden Administration’s damaging policies and make real policy reforms to end the border crisis. Since then, the Democratic-controlled Senate has refused to consider the bill, and more than 2.5 million more illegal aliens have been encountered at our borders. The status quo is clearly unsustainable and continued failure to act in the face of this humanitarian disaster is unconscionable. The American people cannot afford to wait any longer.

To learn more about H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, and how you can get involved, visit FAIR’s activist toolkit here.