Joe Biden Is Not the Victim of the Border Crisis

By Noah Rothman

Monday, January 08, 2024

 

NBC News has found the angle that renders Joe Biden not the executor of a crisis at the border that has spiraled out of control under his watch but a victim of it:

Biden is so bereft of “options” for dealing with the crisis-level surge of migrants crossing the southern border that he had no choice but to sidle up to Mexico, asking for the approximate level of cooperation from Mexican authorities that was provided during the pandemic.

 

As NBC reported, when asked to enthusiastically support Biden’s preferred border policies, Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador made some demands of his own: $20 billion in assistance for Mexico and its neighbors, an end to the blockade of Cuba, lifting all sanctions on Venezuela, and the extension of work and residency permits to no fewer than 10 million illegal immigrants already inside the U.S. The unfeasibility of López Obrador’s demands explains a flourish in NBC News’ reporting, in which its journalists pointedly reminded readers that the Mexican government “would prefer that President Joe Biden win re-election in November,” and the border crisis only complicates that objective. It’s all rather unseemly.

 

And yet, it turns out that Biden was not as bereft of “options” as NBC implied. Less than a week after the White House leaned on Mexico City to preempt more border crossings on its side of the Rio Grande, a show of good faith by Mexican authorities has led to a decline in apprehensions along the border by about 75 percent. Arrests were down to 2,500 last week compared with more than 10,000 in late December. “In the Border Patrol’s busiest area, arrests totaled 13,800 during the seven-day period ending Friday,” the Associated Press reported, “down 29% from 19,400 two weeks earlier, according to Tucson, Arizona, sector chief John Modlin.”

 

The shocking discovery that robust border enforcement results in fewer border crossers follows the revelation that increasing deportation efforts deters would-be illegal migrants. That’s what was gleaned following the Biden administration’s reluctant concession to its critics last October when it once again began to expedite the removal of some of the tens of thousands of Venezuelans who made the trek north over the last two years. “Border Patrol agents apprehended 29,637 migrants from Venezuela who entered the U.S. without authorization last month,” CBS reported in the wake of that decision, “a 46% drop from September, when unlawful crossings by Venezuelans soared to 54,833, a monthly record high.”

 

Biden has “options.” But if he wanted more, he might look to how his predecessor arrested a surge of migrants across the southern border in 2019 — efforts that were disparaged by the activists on whom Biden relies as a source of political support. “What the numbers show is that the United States’ threats and bullying of other countries have been effective in getting other countries to increase their enforcement efforts,” said human rights activist Maureen Meyer with discernible contempt. She noted, however, that border enforcement does not address the “pull factors” that draw migrants to the U.S.

 

Indeed, the Biden White House has placed excessive emphasis on addressing the “root causes” of migration to the U.S. from South and Latin America, Vice President Kamala Harris’s failure to show anything for her work notwithstanding. But the focus on “root causes” appears to have come at the expense of the Biden administration’s approach to mitigating immigration’s “push factors.” Foremost among those factors is the deterrent to illegal migration represented by the certainty that would-be border crosses will not succeed in reaching their destination, and that, if they do, they will find themselves facing expedited deportation.

 

The illegal migrant crisis is a fiendish problem. As negotiations in Congress over reforms to U.S. asylum law suggest, increased enforcement alone will not remedy it. But enforcement goes a long way toward ensuring that the crisis does not get measurably worse by the day. Increasing the pressures on America’s neighbors to do what needs to be done was always an “option” for Biden. He just lacked the incentive.