By Jonathan J. Cooper —
The Associated Press
Almost immediately after entering the Oval Office on his first day as president, Democrat Joe Biden began to reverse the immigration policies of his predecessor, Republican Donald Trump, which he had criticized during the 2020 election campaign as harsh. and inhumane.
Now, a few months before a possible repetition of their duel in the November election, much has changed.
Biden is pushing Congress to impose restrictions on asylum that would have been unthinkable when he took office.
He is doing so under pressure not only from Republicans but also from Democrats, including mayors of cities thousands of miles from the border that are feeling the effects of asylum seekers arriving in the United States in record numbers.
Workers prepare a tent to welcome immigrants in a Chicago parking lot on February 1. Erin Hooley / AP
Immigration has come to the electoral forefront as one of the biggest potential problems for the president.
To address it, Biden has supported an ambitious bipartisan measure being negotiated by the Senate that would expand his authority to place strict new limits on border crossings.
“If that bill were law today, I would close the border right now and fix it quickly,” Biden said last weekend.
The future of the bill is uncertain, because Republicans in the House are against it and Trump has shown his opposition, but Biden's Democratic allies are beginning to lose patience.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs recently asked the president to call the National Guard to the border, and when he refused, she did it herself at the state's expense.
“All Arizonans should know that we are taking meaningful steps to keep them safe, even when the federal government refuses to do so,” he said.
The arrival of asylum seekers has strained social services in cities such as New York, Chicago and Denver, which are struggling to accommodate thousands of migrants without housing or work permits.
Images of people with nowhere to go and camping on public roads have dominated local news.
Up to nine Democratic governors last week sent a letter to Biden and congressional leaders asking them to act “to resolve what has become a humanitarian crisis.”
The governors of Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and New Mexico said their states and cities are spending billions to respond to this event, but
are overwhelmed by the record pace of new immigrant arrivals.
Members of the Texas Department of Public Safety help guide migrants to the processing area after they cross the Rio Grande from Mexico on January 3, 2024. Eric Gay / AP
They asked for money to help with their immediate needs and a commitment to work toward modernizing immigration laws.
“Our national immigration system is outdated and unprepared to respond to this unprecedented global migration,” the governors wrote.
Trump, for his part, is eager to reignite the passions that the border fueled during his successful 2016 campaign, when his promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico became perhaps his main political banner.
“It has been a message that has resonated not only among Republicans or Democrats, but throughout the country, because now even those liberal cities, those blue cities, are saying that we can no longer handle the crisis and give us help,” said Corey. Lewandowski, Trump's first campaign manager in 2016.
“It is a fundamental change in the way of thinking in the last eight years on the subject,” he added.
Trump lamented over the weekend that his message on the border didn't resonate when he ran for re-election in 2020. He argued it was because he had done such a good job controlling the border that "it took him out of the game," although at the time voters were largely focused on COVID-19 had diminished employment prospects for immigrants.
“We literally couldn't put it in a speech,” Trump said at a campaign rally Saturday in Las Vegas.
“No one wanted to hear about the border.
We didn't have any border problems.
But now we can talk about the border
because it has never, ever been worse than now,” he added.
As president, Trump separated children from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to deter people from crossing in a policy that was called inhumane by world leaders, U.S. lawmakers and even Pope Francis.
When he ran for office the first time he referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists and criminals” and this campaign has gone further, saying that migrants are
“destroying the blood of our country
. ”
In the end, the total deportations were higher under President Barack Obama's first term, who enacted enforcement priorities similar to Biden's, than under Trump.
That was due in part to a lack of cooperation from many cities and states whose leaders opposed Trump's immigration policies.
Former President Donald Trump greets supporters in Nashua, New Hampshire, on Jan. 23, 2024. Associated Press
By the end of the Trump Administration, the United States had completed more than 450 miles (720 kilometers) of barrier along the 2,000-mile (3,145-kilometer) border, but only 80 were newly constructed.
An agreement on immigration in Congress that had been brewing for weeks is falling apart largely because Trump resists giving Biden a victory in this area, an issue that he wants to abide by as his own in his attempt to return to the White House,
and his supporters in the House have aligned themselves with that idea.
White House spokesman Angelo Fernández Hernández said House Republicans, led by Mike Johnson, are blocking Biden's efforts to improve border security.
“It is time for Johnson and the House Republican Party to join the president and work together in the interest of the majority of the American people,” Fernández noted.
Frustration among voters has increased
Wayne Bowens, a 72-year-old retired real estate agent in Scottsdale, Arizona, said he is disgusted by both Biden's and Trump's recent border moves.
Biden is only changing his tune because he's worried about losing, he said, and Trump hopes to block the Senate deal to help him win.
“Ukraine, Israel.
People are dying.
And yet other people are thinking,
'How many votes can I get if I do this right?'
explained Bowens, a Republican who doesn't like the two main candidates, but who will probably vote for Trump unless a viable third candidate emerges.
“It has become a very unpleasant world,” he concluded.
Immigration remains a top concern for voters in the 2024 election. An AP-NORC poll earlier this month found that those expressing concern about immigration rose to 35% from 27% last year. .
The majority of Republicans, 55%, said the government should focus on immigration in 2024, while 22% of Democrats consider it a priority.
This figure is higher than 45% and 14%, respectively, in December 2022.
Arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico reached an all-time high in December since monthly figures have been published.
A migrant walks near the wall that separates Arizona and Mexico. Gregory Bull / AP
The Border Patrol counted just under 250,000 arrests on the border with Mexico in December, 31% more than the 191,000 in November and 13% more than the 222,000 in December 2022, the previous all-time high.
The situation at the border makes Biden vulnerable with two groups of voters he will need to win:
Latinos and college-educated white Republican women
, said Mike Madrid, a California-based Republican strategist who has worked to defeat Trump and He has a book about Latino voters coming out this summer.
Biden has no choice but to adopt stricter border security and restrict asylum, even though it will anger progressives in his base, Madrid said.
“It's his biggest problem,” he said, “and it's his biggest opportunity, because I think if he can put Republicans on the defensive, he'll be in a very favorable position to win re-election.”