After more than two years of vacillating between pretending there is no border crisis and claiming that if there is, it is due to President Trump’s policies, President Biden has reinstated a Trump-era policy to deal with the crisis at the border.
On Wednesday, one day before the termination of Title 42, Biden reinstated a rule that prohibits immigrants from even applying for asylum in the United States unless they also applied for asylum in other countries they traveled through.
So, if an immigrant from South America traveled through Mexico on his way to the United States, but did not seek asylum in Mexico, he would be disqualified from being considered for asylum here. Before using Title 42 under the Covid “pandemic,” this rule helped manage the overwhelming number of illegal immigrants who could cross the border and then demand to be considered for asylum.
Biden attacked Trump over that rule during the 2020 presidential race, saying, “This is the first president in the history of the United States of America that anybody seeking asylum has to do it in another country,” adding, “That’s never happened before in America.” But now Biden has made himself the second president in the history of the United States of America to have this policy. And as CBS News reports, this comes from the man who “campaigned on restoring access to the U.S. asylum system after numerous Trump administration rules made it more difficult for migrants to secure refuge on American soil.”
This officially counts as yet another broken campaign promise from the man who ran “for the soul of America.” After more than two years, the border is in worse shape than ever. The reality is that under Biden’s presidency, the United States is facing the highest levels of illegal immigration in the history of the United States.
Given that Biden has announced that he is running for reelection, his failure to secure the border is sure to be a campaign issue in 2024. So, perhaps a reversal of Biden’s bad policy in favor of a Trump-era policy that actually slowed the flow of illegal immigrants is nothing more than the panicked scrambling of a weak president desperately seeking to hang on to his power.
But this move not only smacks of hypocrisy, it is also evidence of ineptitude. After all, Trump’s use of the same rule was struck down in a federal court after being challenged by Biden’s own party. His reinstatement of a rule that his party had declared unconstitutional and for which he personally attacked Trump is an admission that (1) Trump’s rule was at least somewhat effective and (2) that it was constitutional. It is also an evidence that Biden’s border policies are a train-wreck in motion.
But whether or not Biden can sell this lame attempt at whitewashing his failure at the border remains to be seen. Even liberal media don’t seem to be buying it. The CBS News article cited above runs under the headline, “U.S. finalizes asylum restriction to ramp up border deportations once Title 42 lapses” and states:
The rule also represents a major pivot by President Biden, a Democrat who campaigned on restoring access to the U.S. asylum system after numerous Trump administration rules made it more difficult for migrants to secure refuge on American soil. In fact, the regulation published Wednesday resembles a Trump-era policy struck down in federal court that Mr. Biden decried in 2020.
If upheld, the Biden administration’s rule will cement a growing bipartisan rejection of the asylum laws that Congress enacted in 1980 to conform with international treaties designed to prevent nations from turning away refugees to places where they could be persecuted, as the U.S. did to some Jews fleeing Nazi Germany.
That is a fairly damning indictment of Biden’s policy shift coming from a media outlet that is essentially part of the publishing arm of the Democrat party. It not very often that a liberal media outlet invokes Nazi Germany while describing the policies of Democrats. And that is not the only jab the article takes at Biden. The article also states:
The restriction is the centerpiece of the Biden administration’s attempt to blunt a potentially historic increase in the number of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border when the Title 42 expulsions are discontinued at midnight on Thursday. Unauthorized border arrivals have already spiked, with Border Patrol averaging more than 8,700 daily migrant apprehensions during a three-day period this past week, an increase from the 5,200 average in March.
And:
Biden administration officials have said the asylum restriction was not their first or second “preference,” but have justified the move by citing the record levels of migrant apprehensions reported by U.S. border agents over the past two years. Without the rule, the administration has said, the number of migrants crossing the southern border each day could soar to 13,000 after Title 42’s end.
Since recent polls show that large numbers of voters consider the border a major issue, Biden’s failures and backpedaling will likely add to his poor expectation of being able to win a fair election in 2024.
