Experts argue that President Biden’s reversal of many Trump-era immigration policies has exacerbated the ongoing border crisis.
Specifically, ending policies like Remain in Mexico and asylum agreements with Mexico encouraged more illegal border crossings.
Without those deterrents in place, like forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico rather than being released into the US, critics say migrants are more incentivized to make fraudulent asylum claims simply to gain entry.
Polls show the president receives low marks for his handling of immigration.
While the administration defends its more humanitarian approach, border security experts contend the magnitude and rapid nature of Biden’s executive actions have undermined security and sovereignty at the southern border.
“By ending Remain in Mexico, encouraging asylum fraud, and mass paroling illegal aliens, Biden has provided entry to millions of inadmissible aliens,” Lora Ries, the Director of the Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, said. “By mass releasing them instead of following the mandatory detention statutes, Biden has allowed the millions to remain in the U.S. longer, knowing it is much harder to deport those who are not in detention.”
“By every measure, Biden took a secure border and intentionally unsecured it,” Ries said. “His policies have resulted in historic numbers of: inadmissible alien encounters and releases, terror watchlist hits, unaccompanied alien children, migrant deaths, border search and rescues, and American drug deaths, largely from fentanyl coming from Mexico.”
“The magnitude of what he did created chaos at the border,” Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center visiting fellow Mark Morgan said.
“We should encourage everyone to seek relief in that first safer country rather than coordinate with the cartels and risk your life and your safety and your finances to then forum shop and try to get to the United States,” Morgan said.
“It deterred those individuals from risking their life and their financial well-being because they knew they were not going to be released in the United States,” Morgan said.
“The Remain in Mexico program didn’t deny anybody asylum,” Morgan said. “They simply said that you’re going to wait in Mexico while you’re going through asylum. We’re not going to release you in the United States to never be heard from again.”
“Preventing asylum fraud includes requiring aliens to apply for protection in the first safe country in which they enter, not country shop to come to the U.S., and returning them to that first safe country,” Ries said. “It also includes fully implementing Remain in Mexico (and Canada), while getting back to the traditional U.S. Refugee Admissions process, where foreigners apply for refugee protection overseas, providing adjudicators better proximity to applicants’ documents and histories, and more time to thoroughly investigate and vet applicants.”
“America has open borders and has lost its sovereignty. We face serious national security threats, particularly from the 1.8 million known gotaways who evaded the Border Patrol during this Administration,” Ries said. “Americans have lost precious lives and public safety from the cartels, gangs, criminals, and drugs that have crossed the border.”
