If you only got your news from CNN, you’d think voters’ top concern with the southern border was that the Biden administration wasn’t letting migrants into the country fast enough.
That’s the only conclusion one could draw from a New Year’s Eve article by “immigration policy and politics” reporter Priscilla Alvarez on President Joe Biden’s immigration record.
Alvarez does admit there has been a “record number of border arrests” since Biden became president, but she only recognizes this in the context of Republicans continuing “to seize” on the issue. Of course, she never bothers to quote an actual Republican in her article, but she does find the space for one official Biden spokesman, two anonymous Biden administration sources, and then two leftist activists whose only criticism of Biden is that he hasn’t dismantled President Donald Trump’s border enforcement policies fast enough.
“The Biden campaign promised to welcome people with dignity, and instead we have returned to Trump policies,” Justice Action Center founder Karen Tumlin told CNN. “This is not the change millions sought when Biden was elected.”
Did voters elect Biden to dismantle Trump’s successful border policies? Recent polling doesn’t seem to suggest so.
According to a
Harvard University poll
in November, not only do more than 80% of voters say they believe illegal immigration is a serious problem, but 65% of voters specifically blame Biden’s executive orders undoing Trump’s border policies for encouraging more illegal immigration.
Asked if “people who cross the border with Mexico illegally should be turned back to Mexico” (as was Trump’s policy) or “released into the US with a court date” (which is Biden’s policy), 71% of voters chose the Trump policy.
The
November CBS poll
tells a similar story. Not only did 64% of voters say they disapproved of Biden’s handling on immigration, but when CBS followed up and asked if Biden was being “too tough, not tough enough, or just right,” 57% of all voters, and 53% of Hispanic voters, said he wasn’t being tough enough.
If CNN wants to know why its ratings are so low, maybe it should send its “immigration reporter” out to talk to everyday people and not just left-wing activists in Washington, D.C.
