President Joe Biden paints himself as the antithesis of former President Donald Trump. But every now and then he borrows a Trump move.
Biden is rolling out a much-telegraphed executive order on immigration to limit the number of migrants streaming across the southwest border. Immigration is one of Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities, with Trump’s approval rating on the issue about 15 percentage points higher than Biden’s. Border crossings have dropped sharply in 2024. But Biden still struggles on the issue because of record crossings in 2023 and immigration rhetoric that’s far milder than Trump’s.
Some analysts think the 2024 presidential race will turn into an “immigration election,” with the issue topping inflation and abortion as a top voter motivator in the handful of swing states likely to determine the outcome. Even if it doesn’t, Biden’s trust deficit on the issue clearly requires him to do something.
So Biden has unveiled a new order that will sharply limit the number of migrants entering the United States along the southwest border. The order raises the standard for entry into the United States when the pace of crossings is unusually high. The idea is to create a disincentive for migrants to come in the first place, since there will be a greater chance of getting turned away.
“This can significantly impact migrant flows by changing the calculus for incoming migrants,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters on June 4. “They’re going to be much less likely to pay thousands of dollars to smugglers to get them to the border.”
A congressional bill backed by Democrats earlier this year would have allowed the government to shut down the border once migrant encounters averaged 4,000 per day for seven days and required a border shutdown once crossings averaged 5,000 per day.
Republicans killed that immigration bill in February, even though the GOP tends to favor tougher immigration measures than Democrats do. Some Republicans, including the likely presidential nominee, Trump, felt they’d get more political leverage on the issue by withholding legal authority and leaving Biden to muddle along this year. Democrats, for their part, might not have backed a tough immigration bill if it weren't an election year in which their favored incumbent needs to look tough on the issue.
Such is the maddening political nihilism that prevents a rational solution to a solvable problem.
The Biden order has different thresholds than the congressional legislation that failed to pass. The Biden order raises the requirements for entry when the seven-day average hits 2,500 migrant encounters. It's already higher than that, so the order will go into effect right away. That should lead to fewer entries, more expulsions, and, the Biden team hopes, fewer people heading for the border overall.
President Joe Biden talks with the US Border Patrol and local officials as he looks over the southern border, Feb. 29, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas, along the Rio Grande. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) ·ASSOCIATED PRESS
Biden has said many times he doesn’t think the president has the legal authority to shut down the border without legislation giving him the power. We’ll find out. Immigration advocates seem certain to challenge Biden’s order in court, much as they challenged Trump on many immigration orders.
When running for president in 2020, Biden vowed a more humane immigration policy than Trump, who launched his first presidential campaign in 2015 by railing against migrants he claimed were “rapists” and “criminals.” Trump began construction of a border wall, separated migrant children from their families, put restrictions on the asylum process, and tried many other ways of keeping migrants out.
Last last year, Trump said immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country," a phrase reminiscent of Hitler's description of German Jews prior to the Holocaust. Trump is proposing even more aggressive immigration policies if he wins in 2024, such as raids to find undocumented migrants and “the largest deportation operation in American history.”
Trump got help from a COVID-era emergency measure that went into effect in 2020 and sharply limited who could enter the United States. That remained in effect when Biden became president, keeping migration numbers low during his first two years in office. But the emergency limit expired in May of 2023, and border crossings surged during the rest of the year, peaking at 302,000 border encounters in December 2023, the most ever.
Migrants spread throughout the country, overwhelming cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles and prompting Democratic mayors to beg Biden for help. Electoral necessity has now forced the issue, compelling Biden to issue an order he doesn’t seem to think will hold up in court.
Little noticed, meanwhile, is a surprise drop in migration this year, mainly because Mexico has worked behind the scenes with the United States to interdict more of these voyagers before they make it to the US border. Border encounters in April were 41% lower than in December. That alone may not help Biden on the issue, however, since it’s not really visible to voters who see most of their migrants on cable news and hear conservative commentators saying the siege continues.
Biden’s new migration order is a kind of Trump lite. “I will never demonize immigrants," Biden said at the White House on June 4. "I will never refer to immigrants as poisoning the blood of our country. I’ll never separate children from their families at the border. I’ll not ban people from this country because of their religious beliefs."
Those are meaningful distinctions, but making the case to voters might be tricky for Biden just five months from Election Day. Biden's messaging doesn’t even reach a lot of voters, and unlike Trump, Biden seems unlikely to brag about keeping migrants out. If that's what voters want to hear, Biden needs to find an effective way of telling them.
