Displaying yet further mental decline, President Joe Biden delivered a shockingly weak and disingenuous speech on immigration Tuesday, then stumbled through reporters’ questions. At one point, he forgot the name of the terrorist group that attacked Israel on Oct. 7; a helpful journalist reminded him it was “Hamas.”
Judging by the preceding speech, Biden apparently hopes voters suffer even worse amnesia about the crisis he created at our southern border.
For those who need a reminder, 73,994 migrants were arrested for illegally crossing the southern border the month before Biden took office. Then, on his first day as president, Biden issued more executive orders on immigration than any president before him. These included a 100-day moratorium on all deportations, an end to the popular and successful “Remain in Mexico” program, and the creation of a new loophole that exempted unaccompanied children — and most families — from a Title 42 ban on entering the country illegally.
These decisions, made unilaterally by Biden using his executive authority without input from Republicans, had an immediate and deeply damaging impact. The number of migrants arrested for illegally crossing the border spiked to 101,099 in February and has continued to rise ever since.
That same month, acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Tae Johnson, directed by Biden, announced that ICE would no longer seek to deport migrants whose only offense was being in the country illegally. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas later issued a new memo making this policy commitment to non-deportation permanent.
In the month after the Johnson memo, illegal crossings rose again to 173,277, more than at any time during the 2019 border crisis caused by the election of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and then solved by “Remain in Mexico.” Illegal border crossings have since continued their upward spiral, hitting 200,162 in July 2021, 241,136 in May 2022, and now a record high of more than 300,000 in December 2023.
Why are so many migrants coming? The New York Times, which is not a publication that ever deliberately publishes anything that might help the Republican Party, explained, “They are certain that once they make it to the United States they will be able to stay. Forever. And by and large, they are not wrong.” Migrants know they can check in and never have to check out because that is the policy of non-deportation Biden implemented through Johnson and Mayorkas.
This non-deportation doctrine is not in statute. Federal law says the exact opposite, that Biden must deport migrants who are in the country illegally. But our president claims he has prosecutorial discretion not to track migrants down and kick them out. He claims Congress has not appropriated the proper funds to do so, even though his administration has repeatedly asked for less money for detention of migrants and interior enforcement of immigration law.
At first, Biden denied the border crisis existed. “The truth of the matter is nothing has changed,” Biden said, blaming the weather for a supposedly temporary uptick. “It happens every single year.”
When that talking point crumbled under the onslaught of migrants, Mayorkas continued to insist there was no crisis and the border was secure. In countless interviews and more than a half dozen times before Congress, Mayorkas has either denied a crisis exists or insisted that the border is secure. It’s nonsense and everyone knows it.
Now that Democratic mayors and governors around the country are begging Biden for money to pay for the upkeep of migrants flooding their communities, Biden has changed his tune. He admits that since just this January, there is a crisis on the border, but insists against all the evidence that it is the fault of — you guessed it — former President Donald Trump and the Republican Party.
“Every day between now and November,” Biden said Tuesday, “the American people are going to know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”
Only someone with no memory — someone who can’t recall that the Oct. 7 attack on Israel was done by Hamas — could believe such rubbish or make such an outlandish claim.
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Most voters have functional brains and know where the blame lies. That is why Biden has a historically low 18-point approval rating on his handling of immigration, and it is why voters trust Trump more on the issue by over 20 points.
Biden doesn’t need a new law to solve the border crisis. All he needs to do is reverse his executive orders and enforce the law. Until he does that, voters have every right to hold him accountable for his massive maladministration.