Then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was reportedly warned during his 2020 campaign that his preferred immigration policies would lead to “chaos” on the southern border. But he ignored that advice and instead listened to the most radical elements of his party. He dismantled the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to detain and deport illegal immigrants and created a political crisis that would undermine his own presidency and the campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris. Of the many abject aspects of his term in the Oval Office, this was one that stands out.
But the lessons do not seem to have been learned by his party. Despite years of evidence that soft-on-crime policies do not work, House Democrats have drafted new legislation doubling down on Biden’s appalling immigration policy. The Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act, introduced by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and more than 120 other Democrats last week, would end the federal government’s capacity to enforce immigration law and would bring another era of chaotic mass migration.
During his first month in office, Biden issued almost 100 executive actions to weaken border security. He ended former President Donald Trump’s successful Remain in Mexico policy. He issued a memo drastically narrowing what illegal immigrants could be targeted for deportation. He ordered that construction of the border wall be stopped. He ended the enforcement of Title 42 on children crossing the southern border illegally.
The results were swift and dramatic. The number of migrants caught illegally crossing the border more than doubled between January and March, and reached a peak of more than 300,000 in December 2023. In total, the foreign-born population increased by a record 8 million under Biden. It is estimated that approximately 6 million of the migrants had no legal authorization to enter the country. Border communities and then Democratic-run sanctuary cities were overrun by illegal immigrants whose needs for food, shelter, healthcare, housing, and education overwhelmed communities across the country.
It was not until January 2024 that Biden finally cut a secret deal with Mexico in which he agreed not to announce any changes to immigration policy until after Mexico’s June election. In exchange, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador bused migrants heading to the United States back to southern Mexico. This lowered illegal border crossings to about 100,000 a month, which still overloaded DHS detention capacity and caused the release of thousands of illegal immigrants into the country.
It took Trump’s election in 2024 and his detention and deportation efforts once in office to secure the border. His success has been nothing short of historic. DHS announced this week that for the seventh consecutive month, no illegal immigrants apprehended on the southern border were released into the country — none. It is a feat that has never been achieved since records have been kept.
Democrats do not think this is a success, however. They want more migrants from alien cultures, and they do not view border security as a goal or priority. Jayapal’s legislation would ban the mandatory detention of illegal immigrants, prohibit the detention of any illegal immigrant with children, create a presumption of release for any migrant who claimed to be fearful of returning to their own country, and end the use of private detention facilities even when federal facilities are full.
These policies would weaken domestic enforcement of immigration laws below even the sorry state created by the Biden administration. Without the capacity to detain migrants, DHS would be incapable of deporting anyone. That, of course, is Jayapal’s goal.
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Responding to Jayapal’s claims of DHS overcrowding, department Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said, “[Immigration and Customs Enforcement] has higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons,” and that in addition to being fed each day, detainees are given “the best healthcare many aliens have received in their entire lives.”
House Democrats had a front-row seat on the humanitarian and political catastrophe unleashed by their former leader. Yet they are now proposing legislation that would make those failures permanent. The Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act would be a blow to the dignity of America. It would all but eliminate DHS’s ability to detain or deport anyone, guaranteeing a return to chaos at the border and in cities everywhere. Democrats say they want to see the law enforced, but then they make it impossible. Instead of learning from Biden’s mistakes, Democrats are doubling down on policies that would erase America’s capacity to control its own borders.