Why Biden is ‘toughening up’ on the border

With “Securing Our Borders” signs behind him, President Joe Biden announced this afternoon that he’d sign an executive order to shut down asylum requests at the southern border once the average number of daily encounters hits 2,500. The action is set to come into effect midnight tonight, meaning requests will be shut down until the daily encounter number declines to 1,500.

Here’s the math: since April 2020, when the Border Patrol recorded around 16,000 encounters (one of the lowest monthly totals in decades), the monthly number of encounters has surpassed 200,000 on at least ten separate occasions. If asylum requests are frozen when encounters reach 2,500, that means a maximum of 77,500 accepted asylum requests per month. That number translates to around five times more crossings than that low April 2020 number and close to three times fewer crossings than the 200,000 number. Seeing the policy as a success is an issue of perspective and application. What’s for certain, however, is that it is set to authorize a ton of deportations now.

Whatever we think about whether this is too much or too little, the more interesting question is, why now?

Last month, The Spectator reported that the White House appeared to be preparing for a policy shift following news regarding two high-level border-related senior personnel moves: bringing in Marcela Escobari and eyeing Blas Nuñez-Neto. Since personnel is policy, we followed up with Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas at an event hosted by the Economic Club. “No, I think that personnel changes are something of regular order in any organization,” he said.  

Of course, these weren’t “of regular order.” Joe Biden understands that toughening or, say, appearing tougher on the border is no longer about policy. It’s an electoral necessity, considering that immigration has consistently been named a top issue by Americans. 

In February, an irritated Joe Biden had signaled to the National Governors Association that executive actions were being considered to deal with the border crisis. “Over time, our laws and our resources haven’t kept up with our immigration system, and it’s broken,” Biden exclaimed before blaming “petty politics” and his attorneys for the lack of progress on this front. 

Despite all the talk, the administration went silent shortly after. Partly informed, no doubt, by a record-breaking downtick in border crossings in December, urgency dissipated. Yet as it became clear that a decrease in month-to-month crossings was not altering public opinion, pushes for changes in policy intensified. 

The reality is that with illegal border crossings beating records, averaging 2 million per year under Biden, voters are not thinking about relative improvements. They are assessing comparative advantages, looking at Trump’s record and promises. Just as the Trump campaign determined that moderating on abortion was electorally convenient, Biden’s advisors seem to have reached a conclusion here: it’s time to toughen up a bit and double-down on blaming Trump. 

“MAGA Republicans and Trump killed the bipartisan bill — that was endorsed by the Border Patrol union,” read a White House press release that circulated before the president took the stage. “Even Republicans said it was ‘appalling,’ the ‘height of stupidity’ ‘immoral’ and ‘tragic’ that the bill was being killed for Trump’s own political purposes.”

From the podium, Biden said that Trump killed “the strongest border security agreement in decades” in what he describes as “a cynical, extremely cynical political move and a complete disservice to the American people.”

Some might think it’s a little late for the change. Still, all reasonable political analysts have to agree that, with the current conditions in mind, this is a solid strategy. If the election is seen as a battle between opening and closing the borders, the latter group wins. Placing all the blame on Trump and taking a few steps to secure the border may be sneaky, considering that Biden could have refused to nullify Trump-era orders or signed some earlier. But sneaky people can sometimes do smart things. This is one of them.