Proving once again that the left irrationally hates everything President Trump did, even when it was a success, Joe Biden has vowed to undo much of the previous administration’s immigration policy.
Restoring President Obama’s approach to illegal immigration will only reignite the Obama-era border crisis — and re-enflame critics on the left who slammed Obama as the “deporter in chief.”
Even before the pandemic, the surge on the southern US border had eased dramatically, thanks to more than 400 measures Trump took and the message they sent — that America just can’t accept all who want in and, from now on, will act decisively to block illegal entrants.
Note that Trump’s biggest successes involved international agreements: “safe harbor” deals with three Central American nations that allowed for refugees to apply for US asylum without having to travel the length of Mexico and then cross illegally into the country, as well as an accord with Mexico to cut off caravans.
This ended the horror that had started under Obama — waves of families and unaccompanied minors overwhelming the US capacity to handle them at the border, a challenge that had, yes, Obama corralling the migrants in those infamous cages. And because judicial rulings made it impossible to detain illegal border-crossers as long as they put in for asylum, they were eventually released into the interior.
Trump’s practical moves actually left him deporting fewer migrants per year, on average, than Obama.
Now Biden, in a bid to appease his party’s extremists, promises to move swiftly in the opposite direction — not just ending work on Trump’s wall, but killing the policy of providing asylum-seekers with refuge outside the United States. He’s even banning deportations for at least 100 days.
As Border Patrol union boss Brandon Judd notes, such moves — particularly the return of “catch-and-release” (setting captured migrants free to await hearings they often fail to attend) — will only encourage more migrants. And chaos. “We’ve seen this movie already, and we expect a replay.”
The extremists won’t be satisfied until the borders are fully open, which makes a mockery of the process for legal immigration and citizenship.
Mr. Biden, why reignite a crisis that already has been solved?