President Joe Biden’s second year in office was another letdown for immigration restrictionists troubled by the burgeoning border crisis, as well as for immigrant rights groups who were left waiting for promises of change to come to fruition.
Biden took office having vowed to reverse President Donald Trump’s immigration policies but largely failed to deliver in his first year and second year.
Despite failing to give the Democratic base the policy changes that they wanted, the Biden administration also overlooked Republicans’ calls to bring illegal immigration numbers at the border back down to normal levels. Federal law enforcement encountered more illegal immigrants during Biden’s first 20 months in office than former boss Barack Obama’s eight years.
Biden’s problems nearly mirrored those of 2021 as he struggled to follow through on vows to rescind former Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program for asylum-seekers, end the practice of using pandemic public health authority Title 42 to expel illegal immigrants at the border, and resolve problems in Central America that prompt many to flee to the United States.
BIDEN SLAMMED BY FELLOW DEMOCRAT FOR NOT FIXING THE BORDER CRISIS
On Capitol Hill, Congress again failed to pass any immigration reform to replace decades-old policies that both Republicans and Democrats agree need fixing. Proposals to provide a pathway to citizenship for certain illegal immigrants, including those in the Build Back Better Act, never cleared the Senate at the start of the year. Smaller attempts to get piecemeal bills through also failed.
Republicans focused messaging on the southern border, while Democrats remained quiet despite having called lower illegal immigration numbers under Trump in 2019 a “humanitarian and national security crisis.”
The historic surge in arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border that defined Biden’s first year in office only grew, blowing past the fiscal 2021 record.
“We had record illegal immigration into the United States last year,” said Daniel Di Martino, an immigration analyst for the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute think tank. “That is very concerning.”
Further complicating the federal response was the part of the border that people were now crossing and the growing share of immigrants from countries historically not seen in such high volume. Remotely located south-central Texas became the epicenter of the border crisis as opposed to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas or Tucson, Arizona, where previous surges have been accompanied by a plethora of nonprofit groups, police, and resources to respond.
Migration by way of the southern border has long been dominated by citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. In fiscal 2021, 1 in 5 people were from countries other than those four — a record high, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection. This past year, more than half of the 2.77 million were from countries other than those four.
“War. Natural disaster. Looming famine. Economic restructuring. These were crucial elements driving what we saw as the major migration trends of 2022,” said Julian Hattem, editor of the Migration Policy Institute’s publication.
Under pandemic policy Title 42, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended border officials send back to Mexico every illegal immigrant encountered. Asylum-seekers were not allowed to seek help at the ports of entry where cars, planes, and boats are inspected, which led many to cross the border illegally.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas exempted Ukrainians, allowing them to seek asylum at the ports, and went a step further, changing the conditions under which they were allowed in. Under the Biden administration’s new humanitarian parole category, immigrants paroled in were not recognized legally as refugees, but they would be allowed to remain in the U.S.
“It was a successful program in that it was much quicker, at least for Ukrainians, instead of admitting more people as refugees or asylum-seekers,” said Di Martino. “These are people who don’t necessarily qualify as refugees. … It’s basically an open door to as many migrants as the administration wants. And I think that all of this is a problem. What we see is that the executive is doing all of it where the legislative is not.”
Venezuela was one of three countries, in addition to Cuba and Nicaragua, with an uptick of citizens fleeing authoritarian regimes back home and heading to the U.S. border. Citizens from these three countries could not be repatriated because the receiving countries would not cooperate.
In the spring, Mexico barred citizens from certain countries like Venezuela from entering Mexico without a visa, making it more difficult for Venezuelans to get to the U.S.
In April, the Biden administration announced it would end Title 42 — a move that alarmed Republicans and some Democrats for how illegal immigrants would have to be let in and detained despite not having the facilities to hold everyone safely.
The announcement triggered action from Arizona and Texas leaders. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) said his state would provide free transportation for immigrants released into Texas border towns to travel to Washington so that the Democratic-run city could experience some of what border states have faced with thousands of immigrants released on their streets daily.
Arizona joined Texas in offering bus rides north to such cities as Chicago, New York, and Washington. Democratic mayors declared emergencies and unsuccessfully tried to call in the National Guard. Of the more than 1 million people released into the U.S. under Biden, fewer than 30,000 have taken the buses, and all others were released and traveled on their own.
In May, a federal judge ordered the federal government to keep Title 42 in place. Illegal immigration did not drop.
In June, Biden and 20 other world leaders signed a compact to address the migration crisis. Later that month, more than 50 immigrants were found dead in the back of a locked truck in San Antonio. The driver, a smuggler paid tens of thousands of dollars to transport the immigrants from the border north, had abandoned them in high heat.
Arizona in August began installing massive shipping containers along parts of its border in an attempt to prevent illegal immigration in those areas — a move the Justice Department challenged in court this month.
By the fall, Biden had added other countries to the list of those allowed to seek relief at the ports. It provided initial relief in illegal crossings from each country but has not brought down the overall number of immigrants encountered.
More than 100,000 unaccompanied children were apprehended after coming over the border alone — far beyond the 68,000 in Obama’s crisis year 2014. A record-high 98 illegal immigrants arrested by Border Patrol were identified as known or suspected terrorists, according to the FBI’s database.
In October, encounters of illegal immigrants hit the highest level ever recorded, surpassing 277,000 nationwide. With Title 42 again slated to end as early as December, the border could finish the year in a more challenging place than it started.
“The Biden administration is becoming increasingly reliant on temporary tools … to manage the border in the absence of reform to the overall border management framework,” said Hannah Tyler, an immigration research analyst at the Bipartisan Policy Institute in Washington, who wrote a report on the issue in November. “This means the process at the border is becoming a patchwork, made up of decades-old policies that no longer reflect the reality of migration at our southwest border.”
Nearly 2 million cases sit before approximately 500 U.S. immigration courts, hurting the government’s ability to swiftly hold illegal immigrants accountable for entering illegally. Court dates are six to eight years down the road, according to Mayorkas.
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The Department of Homeland Security has given asylum officers authority to decide asylum claims, a decision that has long been the responsibility of judges. Tyler warned these piecemeal fixes were, in fact, not resolving the situation in a way that would prevent future issues of the same nature.
