How Trump Will Build on Biden’s Border Policy
President Joe Biden’s immigration policy concerning the border is not so different from President-elect Donald Trump’s first-term
President Joe Biden and Democrats ran a relatively progressive platform in 2020. The message was heavily focused on racial and social justice issues – starkly contrasting what the former president offered. But that began to change almost immediately after the election. The party that ran on holding rogue cops accountable, handed law enforcement tens of billions of dollars (with no accountability measures) in response to far-right sloganeering saying Democrats wanted to defund the police.
The Democrat response was to “re-fund the police”.
The shift in border policy also contrasted greatly with campaign promises. Biden, who promised to protect asylum, again shifted his agenda to appease far-right lie-riddled narratives. In placating conservatives, he validated their beliefs and emboldened them to push harder with more falsehoods. The narratives became so disjointed that many conservatives continue to believe that as many as 20 million immigrants entered the country in just a few years.
Taking measures to address far-right manufactured issues, rather than debunking them, only serves to normalize their racist and xenophobic beliefs. Leaving it to independent journalists like me to debunk what even the mainstream media refused to disprove only benefits those who spread the lies. Whether it’s a general xenophobic attitude within news organizations or simply a shrugging of the shoulders because far-right claims are outlandish, not addressing racist ideas and in many ways, validating them, only benefits those intent on harming others.
Complicity from various sectors of society always helps drive dangerous policies. The news media hype around Title 42 ending prompted Biden to deploy thousands of federal personnel to the border to assist with processing. The incoming “surge” that the news media beat to death never happened, as it rarely does. The corporate news media often leaves out key pieces of information that would tell them precisely why surges are unlikely.
In a partnership with Mexico, Mexican officials have been cracking down on immigrants traveling through the country to get to the United States. This is arguably the biggest factor for fewer migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump is already taking credit for these numbers. He claimed that he convinced Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum to agree “to stop Migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.”
But Mexico is already doing that.
Scheinbaum quickly clarified that the current policy to stop caravans headed to the U.S. through Mexico is a policy agreed to between the U.S. and Mexico under Biden and former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. In her clarification, she said Mexico would continue its current policy and suggested no changes to Mexico’s policy on immigration.
“In our conversation with President Trump, I explained to him the comprehensive strategy that Mexico has followed to address the migration phenomenon, respecting human rights,” Sheinbaum said on X (formerly Twitter). “Thanks to this, migrants and caravans are assisted before they reach the border. We reiterate that Mexico's position is not to close borders but to build bridges between governments and between peoples.”
Trump taking credit for Biden’s policies is only the beginning. Many of Biden’s policies open the door for Trump making his immigration agenda easier to fulfill. Biden’s executive orders restricting asylum claims and migrants being held for longer durations along with the use of open-air detention centers set precedents for Trump that will likely hold up in court.
A report from the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC) highlights many problems with Biden’s June 2024 “Securing the Border” asylum ban. The six-week report exposed “rampant due process and human rights violations” along with the inconsistent and confusing application of the new rule. The report goes into great detail about how the combined asylum bans under Biden create dangerous conditions for migrants.
“Combined with the disastrous May 2023 asylum ban (formally referred to as the “Circumvention of Lawful Pathways” Rule), these policies flout the U.S. government’s legal obligations to refugees by summarily deporting them to danger, stranding people seeking asylum in Mexico where they are vulnerable to severe harm, and, in some instances, compelling family separation,” reads the NIJC report.
With these restrictions, the Biden administration not only deported more than 1 million people but also repatriated about 3.5 million others. Those repatriations would not have been possible without the executive orders that created the expedited removal process that prohibited most migrants from claiming asylum or stating their credible fear case.
The use of open-air detention camps also sets a dangerous precedent. Because they are already in use, as the Trump administration will likely assert, expanding them is a matter of policy and funding. While not a lawyer, it seems clear how these cases will be argued showing how the Trump administration will use existing policy – that has only grown more inhumane since the inception of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) under Bill Clinton – to enact its barbaric plans.
In just the last year, we’ve heard of children with hypothermia, left without adequate food, water, or shelter due to being held in outdoor camps. There are reported cases of families being held in cages left outdoors for days as they’re processed. Under Biden, it’s likely their processing led to them being removed from the country and either dumped in Mexico to be targeted for gangs and cartels or repatriated back to their home countries.
An asylum seeker’s denial does not mean they don’t have a valid claim. In many cases, because of the asylum bans, they were never offered an opportunity to make their claims under the credible fear guidelines established in U.S. law. While Trump is threatening to deny migrants their right to due process or have their cases heard, we are sadly already there.
The restrictions on who can claim asylum will likely be used against migrants already in the country to support Trump’s mass deportation efforts. The guidelines set by the executive orders can be part of the argument the incoming administration can use to justify deporting migrants under protective executive orders that Trump will certainly reverse. This alone creates a dangerous environment, and Biden’s name will mentioned profusely as they impose their will on millions of immigrants in the United States.
Because if Biden did it, why complain when Trump does it? At least that’s what you can expect to hear a lot of.
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30 years ago it used to be that Republicans (right right on the world politics spectrum) turn the wheel right while Democrats (right on the world politics spectrum) simply stop it from turning (instead of turning it left). Nowadays it's turning right under Democrats and spinning out of control to the right under Republicans. I think we need to face the fact that US policy has been right wing (which is far right on the world politics spectrum) for a while now regardless of the party in power and that is not stopping anytime soon.
The opposition leaves their values on the curb to appear more right than the right. But the public and the media never pick up abolish police abolish prisons or even innocuous Medicare For All i.e abolish medical debt peonage, because they haven’t abandoned Bush and stopped shopping or Trump in white suburban enclaves all batting for Chevron and lower Middle East gas prices.