President Joe Biden is proving impervious to calls for stronger enforcement measures at the southern border, even as record numbers of migrants have crossed since he took office.
The Biden administration is ending the Migrant Protection Protocols, better known as “Remain in Mexico,” a program initiated under then-President Donald Trump in 2019 that required non-Mexican migrants to wait for their asylum hearings in Mexico rather than in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security says it will end the program quickly now that it has a judge’s blessing.
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“Individuals are no longer being newly enrolled into MPP, and individuals currently in MPP in Mexico will be disenrolled when they return for their next scheduled court date. Individuals disenrolled from MPP will continue their removal proceedings in the United States,” reads a statement from DHS. “As Secretary Mayorkas has said, MPP has endemic flaws, imposes unjustifiable human costs, and pulls resources and personnel away from other priority efforts to secure our border.”
DHS says it will continue enforcing immigration laws, including the COVID-19-related Title 42 order it was forced to keep by a district court judge, and that anyone encountered at the southern border who cannot establish a legal basis to stay in the country will be removed or expelled.
But that’s a far cry from what the Republican governors of Texas and Arizona say. Govs. Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Doug Ducey (R-AZ), along with many GOP House members, have decried what they say is Biden’s lack of border enforcement since very early in his term.
Since Biden took office, a record-breaking 3 million migrant arrests have been recorded at the U.S.-Mexico border.
“[The end of Remain in Mexico] means thousands more migrants coming to the U.S.,” said Lora Ries, former DHS deputy chief of staff and director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center. “The Biden administration paints all of them as asylum-seekers, and in doing so, they’re encouraging asylum fraud.”
Abbott and Ducey made headlines this spring and summer for sending busloads of volunteer migrants to Washington, D.C., which led the district’s Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser, to call for help from the National Guard. The Department of Defense has denied that request, just as the administration ignored requests for help from border cities and states.
All three leaders have been criticized for their role in handling immigration, with a group called Sanctuary DMV leading protests and complaints about Bowser’s response.
“The migrant families affected feel stranded and neglected by their treatment from the DC government due to the lack of communication and services from staff,” reads a statement from the group.
Meanwhile, advocates descended on four Texas cities last weekend to protest how Abbott has spent billions of dollars mobilizing thousands of state troopers and military to the Mexican border in the past year.
Biden may be wary of attracting similar attention if he takes action to secure the border. His former boss, Barack Obama, was attacked as “deporter in chief” by the National Council of La Raza in 2014 after he refused to attempt to stop deportations via executive order.
Five years later, Biden’s Philadelphia campaign headquarters was “occupied” by anti-deportation activists who again pointed to Obama-era policies and called on Biden to end all deportations.
The percentage of people who say they want immigration levels to decrease has gone up since Biden took office, though there is a sizable partisan split. A Gallup poll found that 69% of Republicans want U.S. immigration levels decreased, compared to just 17% of Democrats and 33% of independents.
Biden has shown hesitancy about loosening border enforcement in office. In one example, he initially opposed raising the refugee cap for fiscal year 2022 to 125,000 people but later bowed to public pressure.
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Biden hasn’t visited the border since taking office and doesn’t speak about the issue often unless asked about it by reporters. This is likely in an effort to stay in the good graces of his party, argues Ries.
“Biden has made the political calculation that he’d rather be beat up by the Right than by the Left,” she said. “He doesn’t want to be labeled the deporter in chief.”
