What Biden Should Do at the Border

By Daniel Di Martino

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

 

Earlier this month, the Senate failed to pass a bipartisan border deal. There are many lessons to be learned from the deal’s failure. But if America is to gain control over its border and halt the influx of millions of illegal immigrants, our leaders must recognize that the primary cause of the border crisis is not a failure to enforce America’s immigration laws, but rather that the laws themselves are flawed. Still, President Biden can do more to secure the border without Congress.

 

President Biden faces millions of attempts to cross the southern border each year. The perception that the Biden administration welcomes illegal crossings, combined with an unprecedented number of job openings and economic stagnation in other countries, fuels our border crisis.

 

For decades, Republicans have argued that strict enforcement of immigration laws by the president would deter illegal immigration and secure the border. This belief persists, with the GOP attributing the current border crisis to President Biden. To some extent, this view is correct. President Biden has not utilized his expedited removal authority as extensively as his predecessors. But it is also true that today’s illegal immigrants differ from those in the past and that people around the world have figured out how to exploit our flawed laws.

 

Misconceptions are worsened by former president Trump’s claim that he would “shut down” the border if reelected, as he claims to have done before. The truth is that during the 2019 border crisis, nearly 1 million illegal immigrants were released by the Trump administration — more than in any year of President Obama’s tenure. This inconsistency highlights that the issue is rooted in our laws rather than presidential actions.

 

The Refugee Act of 1980 allows anyone, regardless of their method of entry into the United States, to apply for asylum, entitling them to a hearing before an immigration judge. With over 3 million people awaiting their court dates and only about 700 judges available, most migrants receive hearing dates years in the future, effectively allowing entry into the United States based on dubious claims of fear of torture or persecution in their home countries.

 

President Biden needs to deal with that reality. He can start by placing every migrant encountered on the southern border into expedited removal proceedings rather than issuing Notices to Appear or paroling them for operational reasons. By doing this, he can subject every migrant to a “credible-fear interview” which, if failed, leads to immediate deportation. Only about half of all those interviewed pass this test of the credibility of their claims, so Biden could use this to significantly reduce successful illegal migration. This will require resources which the president should try to obtain through a national-emergency declaration — just as Trump did — now that Congress won’t appropriate money.

 

This won’t be enough, of course, because he won’t receive enough resources to interview every migrant without congressional action. That’s why he must also pressure the countries facilitating illegal immigration into the U.S. to act.

 

Illegal immigrants are now arriving from all over the world. Whereas Mexicans once constituted the vast majority of border crossers, followed by Central Americans, we now see a significant influx from countries across the globe. Deporting someone to Mexico is legally simpler and less costly than deporting someone to Mauritania or India, and some countries refuse to accept deported migrants. This has become a new challenge, with, to take one example, Venezuela’s dictator leveraging it to pressure the Biden administration into easing sanctions.

 

Most illegal immigrants coming from outside the Western Hemisphere, about 60,000 per month now, fly to Ecuador in South America and then traverse through South and Central America to get here. Ecuador is the only country in the region where most non-Latin Americans can travel without a visa. Biden already pressured Mexico to require visas for Venezuelans, a move that drastically reduced border encounters. This reduction was only temporary, because Venezuelans can walk to the U.S., but Asian and African illegal immigrants do not have the same opportunity. Ecuador is suffering a terrible crisis with gangs and would love some security assistance; President Biden should offer America’s help in exchange for some visa requirements.

 

Finally, the border crisis is having terrible repercussions for cities across America, as seen in New York City’s shelter system, where some immigrants have caused havoc and committed crimes for which our own laws also allow them to be released rather than arrested and deported. All sensible minds must conclude that sanctuary-city policies have failed and put Americans and non-citizens alike at risk. The president should push ICE to ramp up deportations of criminals and pressure Democratic local officials to exempt criminals from sanctuary policies.

 

None of these measures will fully secure the border, but they will significantly help and put Biden in a position to once again request that Mexico accept reinstating Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy for some border crossers.

 

Biden should pursue all options in his power to solve the border crisis so that he may persuade Republicans in Congress that he is acting in good faith. Perhaps then, Republicans will recognize that, in the case of illegal immigration, ultimately the law itself is the problem, and the solution is congressional action.