The border crisis has been a catastrophe for President Joe Biden, and his administration knows it. So, it’s doing its best to deflect the blame onto — who else? — former President Donald Trump.
“Tragically, former President Trump slashed our international assistance to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. Slashed the resources that we were contributing to address the root causes of a rate of irregular migration,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said on Thursday, after it was reported that border agents encountered more than 212,000 migrants in July.
Mayorkas went on to claim Biden has ended “the cruel policies of the past administration,” even though Biden’s border officials are detaining migrant children in abysmal conditions just like Trump’s did. Even by Biden’s standards, this is incredibly dishonest spin by Mayorkas. Biden, not Trump, bears responsibility for the migration surge, because it was he who announced to the whole world that he’d be much more welcoming and flexible than his predecessor. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have responded to his invitation, not Trump’s.
Biden is also the reason our immigration officials have failed to contain this crisis. He was the one who repealed several Trump-era policies that made it easier to quell migration. National Review’s Rich Lowry took a much closer look at many of the policies that helped Trump get control of the border — I’d encourage you to read it here. But two of the most important policies that Biden undid are a) the “Remain in Mexico” policy that required migrants seeking asylum to stay in Mexico until their claims could be heard and b) Trump’s repeal of “catch and release,” a policy that effectively allows migrants to settle within the United States regardless of whether they’ve been granted legal permission to do so.
Ironically, Biden has already had to reinstate at least one Trump-era policy: an emergency authorization that allows border officials to fast-track the deportation of migrant families who do not have strong claims to asylum. How long before he’s forced to admit Trump was right about some of the other policies too?
The Biden administration knows things are spiraling out of control. Mayorkas admitted as much during a secretly recorded conversation with border agents, telling them the crisis is “unsustainable.”
“A couple of days ago, I was down in Mexico, and I said, ‘Look, you know, if, if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose,” he said, according to audio of the meeting obtained by Fox News. “We can’t continue like this, our people in the field can’t continue, and our system isn’t built for it.”
Mayorkas is right: The border is a disaster, and one that will keep getting worse unless serious action is taken to get it under control. Trump, for all his faults, figured out how to do just that. He’s not the one to blame — Biden is.
