Among the campaign pledges Biden made leading up to the 2020 election was that he would unite Americans as president. He managed to do just that on Tuesday when he signed his own border legislation with an executive order. It's a move that has drawn criticism from his own party as well as Republicans.
Biden's EO has several key components:
- It bars migrants who cross the southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum unless they meet certain exemptions.
- It makes it easier for immigration officers to remove individuals who do not have a legal basis to remain in the United States.
- It emphasizes the need for Congress to address the root causes of immigration such as poverty, violence and political instability in an effort to reduce the number of migrants seeking to under the U.S.
The executive order specifies that the term "southern border" includes not just the entirety of the U.S. land border with Mexico, but also all maritime borders in five states (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida) and two territories (Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico).
House Republicans estimate that between illegal crossings and known "got-aways" more than 10 million immigrants have entered the country during Biden's presidency.
Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Nebraska) said the president's executive order is not only too little too late, but it also smacks of election-year politics – and won't fool Americans.
"It's just a naked political ploy in an election year. When Joe Biden took office in his first hundred days, he issued 94 executive actions to undo all the Trump-era policies that helped President Trump bring those illegal crossings to a 45-year low," Ricketts said on Washington Watch Wednesday.
Soon after taking office, Biden stopped deportations, the remain-in-Mexico policy, internal enforcement, construction of the wall and more.
"This sent a message to the whole world that our southern border is open," Ricketts explained. "The 10 million people who have tried to enter the country illegally has happened since Joe Biden opened our border and all the things that go along with that … the human trafficking, the drug trafficking, the fentanyl becoming a leading killer of young people in our country," Ricketts told show host Tony Perkins.
The EO will temporarily shut down asylum requests once the average number of daily encounters at official ports of entry reaches 2,500. The focus on official ports means migrants who avoid them will not be eligible for asylum.
Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, points out that number isn't realistic.
"We get close to a million a year at that level – and it does not include the 1,400 people who make the appointment using the app and come across through legal ports of entry even though they're illegal aliens," Mehlman tells AFN. "That actually gets us up to about 3,900 a day.
"If you show up at a port of entry and say you want to file an asylum claim, that does not count against the 2,500 cap."
Biden whacked Trump EO on his first day
Biden revoked Trump Executive Order 13768, which addressed the border situation in 2017, on his first day on office. His own EO addressing the border comes just five months before Election Day at the end of his first term.
Leaders of the largely Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus said in a joint statement that it found Biden's EO to be "deeply concerning."
It "severely limits" access to asylum with measures that "impede progress and harm migrants fleeing violence and persecution, who would otherwise present a credible and meritorious case for asylum. Enforcement-only strategies have repeatedly proven ineffective and only create more chaos at the border," the group wrote.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington), chair of the Progressive Caucus, said on CNN that what Biden "is doing, and I have been clear with the White House for months, that this is not the right way to go because … it's not going to solve the situation at the border. The only way to do that is to actually create more legal pathways to modernize our immigration system, to make sure we are getting resources for immigration judges and asylum officers and Border Patrol folks."
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, said Biden's EO will only lead to more illegal border crossings. "It does not in any way address the border crisis he created," Abbott told Fox News.
After years of blaming Republicans for not allowing him to offer any possible fixes to the southern border, the EO makes Biden look silly, Ricketts said.
"It's absolutely exposing the fact that the president could have done something all along," he said. "Joe Biden has the same tools available to him that President Trump had when he brought these crossings to a 45-year low. Joe Biden just chose not to use them. They don't want to use them. It was the Democrats' policy to have an open border. They wanted waves and waves of people to come here illegally.
"Now he's seeing that in an election year, Americans don't like it."
Similarly, FAIR's Mehlman detects election-year politics behind the EO.
"He obviously recognizes that he's in deep trouble with the American public over [the border crisis] and he's trying to put a good face on it," he offers. "But these are just half-measures – not even half-measures from what we've seen at the border …. Just because you have signed an executive order doesn't mean that all the damage that has been done [has now been] undone.
"It seems like this is more geared toward making the American public believe that he wants to do enforcement than actually doing the kind of enforcement that is necessary," Mehlman concludes.
Polling says border still a hot topic
Respondents to a Gallup poll released on April 30 named immigration as the top problem in the U.S. for a third-straight month. The border crisis led the way at 27%, far exceeding its closest chasers – the economy (17%) and inflation (13%).
Ricketts said he hears more about the border and inflation than any other topics from his Nebraska constituents.
"Frankly, Americans are not going to be fooled by this stupid gesture on his part," he said. "They're not going to be fooled by this last-minute weak attempt – and frankly, I think they're going to hold him accountable for it."
