Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told the “Washington Watch” program CIS has documented an enormous reversal of the Biden years, when the U.S.-Mexico border was swung open like a gate to let illegals enter.
“It's night and day,” he advised. “It's the sharpest contrast in policy on anything I've ever seen, in any area of policy, not even just on immigration.”
How bad was it? During the four-year Biden administration, he said, the U.S. Border Patrol put handcuffs on about six million newly-arriving illegal aliens only to let them go under orders to do so.
A previous AFN story, which quoted immigration watchdog FAIR, said 18 million illegal aliens were living inside the U.S. when Donald Trump began his second term.
Figures from the Trump administration claim 675,000 illegal aliens have been deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement 1 ½ years into Trump's second term. Another 1.5 million illegals have self-deported, meaning they voluntarily left on their own.
President Biden’s open-border policy was so blatant and obvious, Krikorian complained, that Border Patrol agents acted more like Walmart greeters than federal immigration agents.
Even though his word picture was meant as a joke, the Border Patrol's union did complain its agents had shifted from an enforcement role to a babysitting job of transporting and processing foreigners when they stepped onto U.S. soil.
An internal Border Patrol memo from September 2023 ordered agents in Eagle Pass, Texas to help with processing, which left no one in uniform to patrol the border.
That memo was shared with a Washington Times reporter by an angry agent.
Describing a development announced this week, Krikorian told show host Jody Hice the State Department has worked out agreements with 20 nations to accept illegal immigrants in the U.S. who have deportation orders. A “third-country” agreement is necessary when foreigners refuse to return to their own country of origin.
Before that international cooperation, Krikorian explained, foreigners whose home nations refused to accept them had to be released into the U.S.
“It was ridiculous,” he said.
Regarding a more sensitive subject, which is illegal aliens working a job and raising a family, Krikorian acknowledged they are just “regular people” who pose no safety threat to the public.
“They just have no right to be here,” he bluntly stated.
ICE agents arresting illegal aliens picking crops and working home construction created backlash from business owners who have shared their frustration with the same business-friendly White House that previously set a goal of 3,000 deportations a day.
“We can’t let our farmers not have anybody,” Trump, echoing those complaints, told CNBC last year.
That kind of talk by President Trump likely angers his base, which was promised mass deportations, and Krikorian said self-deportations happen only when there are no more jobs for illegals to take.
“The way you get self-deportation to ramp up is to make it impossible for illegal immigrants – as impossible as you can – to get jobs, to get bank accounts,” he stressed.
