Dueling Border Visits Cap Immigration Crisis Under Biden
President Joe Biden is going to the border on Thursday…and so is former President Donald Trump.
“Biden’s Next Steps on Immigration,” fretted David Leonhardt for the New York Times on Monday. “The president has come to recognize that the surge of undocumented immigration is a threat to his re-election.”
Biden is the president, after all, and a president has significant authority to shape immigration policy even without new legislation.
Biden himself has been aggressive about using this authority — albeit to loosen immigration policy rather than tighten it.
At times, Biden administration officials have tried to downplay or even deny that their policies have contributed to the migration increase. Yet the officials’ recent actions suggest that they may not even believe their own denials.”
Biden’s latest action on the border crisis suggests that he too may be having grave doubts about the immigration strategies of the Biden Administration.
In a surprising move over three years into his first term as President, Mr. Biden announced that he would be visiting the border on Thursday.
“How Biden’s border trip came together,” explained Monica Alba, Mike Memoli, and Allie Raffa for NBC News on Monday.
“President Joe Biden had been considering a trip to the southern border for weeks as a way to amplify his efforts to remind Americans that Republicans derailed a bipartisan border deal he was prepared to sign into law, according to two senior administration officials,” began the trio. “The timing of Biden’s second visit to the border since taking office — one week before he is scheduled to deliver the State of the Union address — is an attempt by the White House to maximize the political impact of the trip, the officials said.”
Unfortunately for senior officials in the White House, President Biden’s Thursday visit to the border has been complicated by a factor far beyond the President’s control: Donald Trump.
“President Biden to visit the southern border on the same day as Donald Trump,” trumpeted Joey Garrison for USA Today.
President Biden is almost certainly feeling great pressure from within the Democratic Party on the subject of the border crisis.
A chorus of liberal lawmakers has been growing across the country who, in the words of a Fox News host, “feel abandoned by the Biden Administration, and are encouraging both sides to come together to find a solution.”
“Because, yes, we need to stop it from happening the way it’s happening,” said the overwhelmed Eagle Pass Mayor, a Democrat, in a tone of abject desperation. “It’s not humanely right.”
“I mean come on, 6, 8 million people crossing in the past two years,” said Eagle Pass’s Mayor. “It’s getting out of hand, we are having our checkpoints closed, I don’t know, for God’s sake, I don’t know how many people already passed…”
“Biden Admin Rolls Out Record-Shattering Border Report in Friday Afternoon News Dump,” reported Bob Price for Breitbart on January 27, 2024.
“The report, released on Friday afternoon, shows that Border Patrol agents along the southwest border with Mexico apprehended 249,785 migrants who illegally crossed the border in December between ports of entry,” revealed Price. “This is up by 12 percent from the 222,018 migrants apprehended one year ago and more than 11 percent compared to the Biden-era record of 224,370 set in May 2022.”
Conservative media outlets aren’t the only ones criticizing the Biden Administration on the subject of immigration.
“America’s Immigration Reckoning Has Arrived,” wrote Fernanda Santos for The Atlantic, hardly a right-wing media outlet.
“To answer the question of why so many children — why so many people, period — continue to risk so much to leave their countries and come to a place not only that is foreign to them, but where they may well be unwelcome, demands a confrontation with the recent past,” began Santos. “What I saw then — and what we’re seeing today on the southern border and in cities including New York, where more than 100,000 migrants arrived in the past year — are reverberations of a long, violent history that implicates the United States for its meddling in Central America.”
Progressives might not consider President Joe Biden the architect of the South and Central American immigration crisis, but swing voters in particular blame him for the current situation at the border.
“Biden Faces Blame for Border Crisis, Swing-State Voter Poll Shows,” revealed Josh Wingrove and Gregory Korte for Bloomberg last week.
“Six in 10 swing-state voters say President Joe Biden bears responsibility for a surge in migrants at the US-Mexico border, a downbeat signal for his reelection prospects as Republicans largely avoid blame on the issue, a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll found.”
“Biden again trails Donald Trump in each of seven swing states in the monthly survey, and lags Trump 42% to 48% across all those states in a head-to-head match-up,” they noted. “The former president’s lead grows to 9 percentage points when third-party candidates are included.”
This latest crisis has Biden’s chances for reelection looking more tenuous.
“Democrats risk a new progressive rebellion as Biden embraces border deal,” warned Ursula Perano and Nicholas Wu for Politico on January 31, 2024. “Progressives are frustrated with President Joe Biden for embracing the bipartisan border security deal that’s emerging in the Senate. And they’re starting to rage against it more loudly.”
And while progressives are raging at Biden for moving to the center, moderate Democrats are complaining that he isn’t being moderate enough.
“Why Can’t Biden Move to the Center?” asked Ruy Teixeira for The Liberal Patriot. “Why can’t Biden move to the center decisively, thereby enhancing his chances of beating Trump this November? You’d think something like this would be in order now, given how dreadful the polls currently look for Biden.”
“Morning Consult data show that, as the economy has declined somewhat as voters’ main issue in these states, immigration has moved up by a similar amount and is now voters’ second most important issue in five of the seven states,” worried Teixeira. “And Trump is preferred over Biden by wide margins on the immigration issue in each of these states: by 24 points in North Carolina, by 23 points in Nevada, by 22 points in Wisconsin, by 20 points in Arizona, Georgia, and Pennsylvania, and by 16 points in Michigan.”
Michigan has become a major battleground state in recent years.
“Trump holds narrow lead of Biden in Michigan ahead of state’s primaries: poll,” wrote Ryan King for the New York Post on February 26, 2024.
“Trump is averaging a 5.1 percentage-point lead over Biden in Michigan, according to the latest RealClearPolitics aggregate of polls,” King continued. “Michigan is set to hold both its Republican and Democratic presidential primaries on Tuesday, with the state GOP organizing a caucus to take place Saturday.”
What will Tuesday’s Michigan primary reveal?
Will Biden’s border visit make the crisis better or worse?
And how will Donald Trump’s presence impact what is already shaping up to be a media circus?
(contributing writer, Brooke Bell)