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Here’s a comprehensive look at Biden and the border

When Joe Biden became president he directed immigration officials to focus their arrest and removal efforts on criminals, national security threats, and recent border crossers. Here's the guidance DHS issued a few weeks after inauguration:

This didn't restrict the removal of illegal immigrants, which was far higher under Biden than Trump:

That's from David Bier, an immigration expert at the Cato Institute. He has a long examination of Biden's immigration record here, and it's worth reading. His conclusion is pretty close to my own:

  • Biden's record was far from perfect.
  • But the surge in immigration was mostly due to an ultra-hot labor market.
  • Biden increased enforcement in almost every possible category (arrests, removals, detention space, deportation flights, etc.).

Biden's record on the border is mixed, and he did a poor job of explaining what he was doing. That said, it's a lot like inflation: he got the blame for something that was set in motion by the pandemic a year before he took office. It was unlucky timing more than poor policy.

28 thoughts on “Here’s a comprehensive look at Biden and the border

  1. bobwoody

    I work in fraud risk and this is an age-old problem. You have no idea how bad things would be if you had no defenses. But all people see is the fraud that still got through, not realizing you stopped 99% of it before it could do any harm.

  2. wvmcl2

    "he did a poor job of explaining what he was doing"

    That's going to be pretty much the story of the Biden presidency, isn't it? He was in many ways an excellent president, but nobody knew it because he couldn't or wouldn't stand up and take credit.

    On the other hand, if there is one thing Trump is brilliant at, it's taking credit and parceling out blame.

    1. Art Eclectic

      It wouldn't have mattered how well he explained it. He was up against the right wing noise machine that terrified people with tales of Black men coming for their daughters and Hispanics coming to steal their cars, while woke drag queens are corrupting their sons and turning them trans. Not to mention schools teaching their grandchildren what REALLY happened and how we as a country are not always good people.

      You can't fight this well funded game of Ain't It Awful. But fret not, we'll be Great again within a week.

  3. MartinSerif

    The whole world came to realize that the US would give temporary residence to people who made it over the border and claimed asylum. Could this discovery have played a role in Biden's problem?

    1. memyselfandi

      Are you really this ind boggling stupid or are ou ust an utterly dishonroable worthless lying sack of excreent. ou read an article proving Biden increased how an illegals in the and like the utterly worthless piece of human scum you are you claim he opened the border.

  4. James B. Shearer

    Biden and the Democrats said Trump was too harsh on illegal immigrants. Naturally when there is a surge in illegal immigration after Biden is elected people will think Biden and the Democrats were responsible. Since they campaigned on relaxing enforcement.

    1. realrobmac

      "Since they campaigned on relaxing enforcement."

      No they didn't. And there is a difference between being publicly super mean to individuals and having a policy that actually reduced illegal immigration.

  5. skeptonomist

    Are people immigrating for asylum? According to Kevin the data indicate that they come in to fill jobs and keep wages down. Is keeping wages down a liberal objective?

    1. realrobmac

      It's a Republican objective. This is why the Republican immigrations policies are designed to be performatively mean and obnoxious to a few individuals, but to do nothing to actually reduce immigration. Everyone knows what will reduce immigration. Republicans will never ever in a million years allow this to happen.

    2. memyselfandi

      The best evidence out there is the net effect of illegal immigration increases wages. The effect of their increase in the supply of labor is more than offset by the increase in demand for goods and services they contribute.

      1. SnowballsChanceinHell

        I believe that people who make the argument that the "net effect of illegal immigration increases wages" should have all their property confiscated.

        The confiscated property should be sold and the proceeds placed in an investment account. After compounding for some number of years, the investment account would be distributed equally among all Americans.

        This is just, because the individual loss would be more than offset by the distributed proceeds.

  6. D_Ohrk_E1

    From all sides of the political world, criticism of Biden is rising. In the end, he upset everyone with solutions that had one foot in and one foot out.

  7. realrobmac

    "he did a poor job of explaining what he was doing"

    This pretty much sums up the entire Biden admin and explains why Trump was re-elected.

  8. James B. Shearer

    "... and he did a poor job of explaining what he was doing. ..."

    I suspect what Biden was doing was letting his aides set policy without much supervision from him. Making it hard for Biden to explain administration policy on immigration since it is doubtful he even knew what it was.

  9. Brett

    Hot labor market plus fiasco conditions in Venezuela and Cuba. Something like 10% of Cuba's population and a full quarter of Venezuela's population (over 10 million people) became refugees in the past couple years, and while most of them went into neighboring Latin American countries it's not surprising that a hot labor market drew many of them north.

    1. aldoushickman

      This. The only way to stop people from trying to come to the US is to make the US less appealing. When foreign countries collapse and the US has a great economy, it's obvious that people will try to come here.

      1. Batchman

        The only way to stop people from trying to come to the US is to make the US less appealing. When foreign countries collapse and the US has a great economy, it's obvious that people will try to come here.

        In that case, when Trump wrecks the economy he will be able to claim truthfully that he solved the illegal immigration problem.

  10. KJK

    I don't see charts for how many migrants (asylum seekers and those who successfully evaded the Boarder Patrol and ICE) entered the US during Biden's Administration. The general public doesn't really care how many are caught or turned away or the root causes for the influx, like they didn't seem to care that inflation was a world wide event and that the US recovery was world leading.

    Asylum seekers has cost NYC about $5 billion in the last 2 years plus a few $ billion spent by NYS. These are not politically sustaining numbers and the resentment by taxpayers was evident on Nov 5th. No amount of messaging by the Democrats would have helped politically, without a significant change in policy direction, which was not palatable to most progressives.

  11. SnowballsChanceinHell

    Kevin's position is such horseshit. You can compare the unemployment rate:

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE

    with the rate of migrant encounters at the border:

    https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/09/whats-happening-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-in-7-charts/

    And it is instantly clear that the relationship between unemployment and border crossing is affected by many, many intervening variables.

    In 1985 you have a 7% unemployment rate and 1.6 million border encounters.

    In 2017 you have a 4% unemployment rate and 300K encounters.

  12. OwnedByTwoCats

    The other thing affecting the debate is the unrelenting firehose of lies pushed by the mighty wurlitzer. Everybody sing the chorus with me "Biden opened the borders". Not true at all, but repeated ad nauseum until the people believed it.

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