President Joe Biden has said he ran for office “to restore the soul of the nation, rebuild the middle class, and unite the country.” With 2024 looming, it’s time to take stock of other promises he has made while campaigning and in office. This Washington Examiner series, Oath of Office, will investigate whether Biden has kept up his end of the bargain. Part Four will examine his pledge to improve the immigration system.
President Joe Biden’s third year in office was another letdown for immigration restrictionists troubled by the unending border crisis, as well as for immigrant rights groups that were left waiting for promises of change to come to fruition despite his taking 500 executive actions on immigration.
Biden vowed before taking office in January 2021 not only to reverse former President Donald Trump’s immigration policies but to leave his own mark. In 2023, he took a big step forward and finally ended the Title 42 expulsion policy at the border and surpassed his predecessor’s executive actions on immigration, but he will have to convince liberal voters in 2024 that he did enough, particularly after moving forward on building the border wall despite promising to cancel it.
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“In 2023, the Biden administration made extensive changes to the US immigration system through executive actions, but challenges at the U.S.-Mexico border have continued to dominate,” Kathleen Bush-Joseph, policy analyst of the U.S. immigration policy program at the Migration Policy Institute in Washington, wrote in an email.
An analysis conducted by MPI concluded that Biden has taken more than 500 executive actions on immigration since 2021, more than the existing record of 472 set during the entire Trump administration.
Biden took office with a bold promise of overhauling the immigration and border systems.
“President Biden will reform our long-broken and chaotic immigration system,” the White House said in a statement that outlined the president’s priorities. “President Biden’s strategy is centered on the basic premise that our country is safer, stronger, and more prosperous with a fair and orderly immigration system that welcomes immigrants, keeps families together, and allows people across the country — both newly arrived immigrants and people who have lived here for generations — to more fully contribute to our country.”
Biden has rescinded the Trump administration’s so-called Muslim ban, which restricted the admissions of immigrants from seven countries, halted and later permanently canceled billions of dollars in funding for more than 300 miles of border wall projects, attempted to pause all deportations for 100 days but was blocked in court, and created a task force to work to unite hundreds of immigrant children who had yet to be reunited with a parent since being separated by immigration officials in 2018.
Eric Ruark, director of research at Washington-based NumbersUSA, noted that Biden has followed through on ending policies to make immigrants seeking asylum wait in Mexico rather than be released into the country.
“Biden during the 2020 campaign did promise to roll-back enforcement provisions put in place by President Trump, most notably Remain in Mexico,” Ruark, whose organization supports a reduction in overall immigration levels, said in an email. “He followed through on that.”
But Biden walked back his promise that “there will not be another foot of wall constructed” along the southern border with plans announced this past fall to waive two dozen federal laws that would allow a barrier in Texas to be erected swiftly. Biden also approved filling in more than 100 gaps in fencing projects up and down the southern border.
The Department of Homeland Security dropped a notice in the Federal Register in October that disclosed its plans to take up 10 projects to install tall slatted barriers and roads in about 20 miles of the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas.
“Looks like this is a promise broken. There’s no easy way to describe this other than a flip-flop from President Biden,” Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) said in an interview on MSNBC on Oct. 5. “He said in the 2020 campaign that he would not build another foot of Trump’s border wall.”
But the limited wins for Democrats over the past three years have not been enough to distract the public from the crisis at the southern border, particularly since polling shows that voters have grown more concerned about it.
A RealClearPolitics average of polling conducted between Oct. 16 and Dec. 5 found 63% of U.S. residents disapproved of Biden’s approach to immigration versus 34% who approved. His approval numbers on the border have dropped from 57% when he took office.
“Certainly, President Biden did not campaign on opening up the border to record levels of illegal immigration but that result should have been, and no doubt was, anticipated by those who were advising Biden on policy,” Ruark continued. “The border crisis is not due to incompetence or the advent of external circumstances beyond the president’s control. It was brought about by willful and deliberate actions.”
For three years, the Biden administration has touted its intention of setting up ways for immigrants to seek asylum while still outside the United States, but it has opened fewer than a handful of facilities thousands of miles from the U.S. where immigrants can meet with U.S. officials about ways to be admitted into the country without having to journey to the border. Illegal immigration continues at high levels.
Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to resolve problems in Central America that prompt many to flee to the U.S., but her engagement has not led to change.
In January, the Department of Homeland Security announced the expansion of a parole program that required immigrants from top-sending countries Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to seek refuge from outside the U.S., not at the border. In the initial couple of months afterward, the DHS reported a decline in immigrants from those countries, but illegal immigration quickly started ticking back up as immigrants realized the Biden administration was not deporting people from those countries despite its warning that it would.
Biden planned to end Title 42 as soon as the coronavirus was no longer a serious threat to the country, but he was delayed in doing so multiple times.
“The administration in May ended the pandemic-era Title 42 policy that allowed for rapid expulsions of migrants, and replaced it with a system of incentives for arriving at ports of entry and through parole programs, and disincentives for arriving without authorization,” Bush-Joseph said. “This system restricts access to asylum for many migrants, and the administration has increased removals of those deemed ineligible for protection, including by starting deportation flights to Venezuela.”
Other legal challenges have plagued the White House. In mid-2022, the Biden administration finalized regulations meant to protect former President Barack Obama‘s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program from future legal problems and protect children brought into the country illegally from deportation absent a legislative fix.
House Republicans have fought the White House on any attempt to codify the program, leaving it in limbo and unresolved.
When it comes to overhauling the immigration system through Congress, Biden has not made progress. The White House-backed Democratic bill, the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021, includes an “earned road map” to citizenship for 11 million non-U.S. citizens illegally residing in the country. The bill states that it will “improve the immigration courts,” expand family case management programs, and reduce immigration court backlogs, which top 2.2 million cases. It has not made it through the House or Senate.
Republicans who took control of the House in January were focused on legislation to quell the crisis as opposed to coming to the table to negotiate over major immigration reforms. The House passed a major border security bill, but Democrats in the Senate refused to take it up.
In the coming year, possibly his last in office, the White House can expect more of the same at the border in terms of the global displacement impacting the Western Hemisphere, Bush-Joseph said.
“Therefore, it will be important for officials to continue to streamline and modernize immigration processes to the extent possible through executive action,” Bush-Joseph said. “Increased coordination with state and local governments, as well as nonprofit organizations will also be necessary to tackle reception issues at the border and in the interior.”
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Ruark said Biden’s hopes of moving meaningful legislation through Congress are dead and that it’s his own fault.
“The unprecedented catastrophe at the southern border has lost the president solid allies across the aisle who likely would have been willing to work with him if he had put even minimal effort into stopping illegal immigration and enforcing existing immigration law,” Ruark said. “What President Biden should do in 2024 is to take immediate action to secure the border. He already has that authority and it is his duty under our constitutional system.”
