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- [00:00]
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- [02:04]
Isaac Saul
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode we're doing something a little different. It's a special Friday edition and I am here to make the case that yes, President Biden really did make a mess of immigration. It's just me today, so I'm just gonna jump right in and get started. It is a political truism that every party's excesses tend to come back around in ways they don't expect and often don't want. For instance, conservatives opposed the Biden administration's executive excesses when he pursued policies they did not support, like using an irrelevant emergency law to justify directing the executive branch to forgive student loans. To push back. Conservatives sued the Biden administration, saying they violated a legal theory known as the major questions doctrine. The Supreme Court agreed, saying the doctrine constrained Biden from implementing programs without congressional approval. Now, that same legal theory could be the thing that undoes much of the Trump administration's executive overreach. During the Biden administration, Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the Democrat from New York, was one of several Democrats who wanted President Biden to ignore a lower court order that would have reduced the availability of a popular abortion medication. A few months later, Ocasio Cortez and Democrats were easily framed as hypocrites for going apoplectic over the Trump administration's seeming indifference to federal court decisions. Sometimes the unintended consequence is less direct, but even more impactful, one could argue. No law is having a bigger influence on immigration issues in the US today than the Refugee act of 1980, which allows migrants who make it into the US to claim asylum based on well founded fears of persecution. That act, it passed Congress unanimously in large part as amends for America's refusal to accept Jewish refugees during the Holocaust. Today, it might be the number one reason our immigration system is overwhelmed and beset by chaos. So to just say that clearly the actions of American administrations and politicians during the Holocaust led to the Refugee act of 1980, which is now having this huge impact on our immigration system today. Every administration and every party's actions, even their words, reverberate in ways that are often predictable for people outside the Beltway, but not for those making the decisions. As President, Biden countered Trump's legacy by signaling in word and deed that the United States was much more open to migrants. Now we are witnessing the repercussions of President Biden's decisions. So with that, I want to start by establishing that there was actually a problem. I think some Americans, particularly on the left, still don't quite grasp what happened during Biden's time in office. Customs and Border Protection the CBP recorded an all time high in migrant encounters at the southern border under Biden, just shy of 11 million during his first four years in office, and many were repeat crossers. In December of 2023, at the height of the migrant crisis, CBP recorded nearly 302,000 migrant encounters at the border. For comparison, last month the CBP recorded just under 7,200 encounters. That's the lowest monthly total to date data on known releases and gotaways during the Biden administration suggests that about 5 million of the immigrants who crossed illegally are still here. That is more people than the populations of half the states in America. It also does not account for the estimated 1.4 million migrants. Biden helped gain legal entry into the country through a massive expansion of parole, which allows migrants to receive temporary legal status, which we'll talk about more later. This level of immigration, especially illegal, was unprecedented, quite literally. It was the largest immigration surge in the history of the United States, a country that has had many waves of immigration throughout its history. This surge pushed federal agencies to the brink, and it strained even major cities with massive budgets like New York. While stories of small towns being overwhelmed by the crisis were sometimes exaggerated, there is no doubt some places across America were not prepared for such an influx and indelibly changed. As we're learning now, it is quite difficult to deport people who entered the country illegally en masse. That's something Democrats should remember the next time they are in power. Stemming the flow of migration across the southern border actually helps you manage the whole system long term, and it reduces the need for future administrations with different tolerances to detain or deport people in ways you may find inhumane. The surge of illegal crossings under Biden has also helped turn all kinds of immigrants into pariahs under the second Trump administration. Americans have felt these changes in their neighborhoods and cities. They've seen the stories on the news. I don't just mean stories that exaggerate the prevalence of crime because, yes, immigrants are less likely to commit crimes. I mean stories about schools being overwhelmed or how social services programs are being flooded with new applicants. Chalking up this flagging sentiment toward immigrants solely as latent xenophobia misses these points. It also offends and disregards the people who are impacted, laying the foundation for Trump to implement aggressive immigration policies and keep public approval for them, even as he violates people's rights and forfeits due process, which we've seen some of during this term. We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [08:09]
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- [08:38]
Ollie Advertiser
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- [09:31]
Isaac Saul
So if we can accept that immigration was a serious problem under the Biden administration, the next step is actually making the case that Biden's policies were at fault, which I would like to do in tangled fashion. I'll share some caveats and counterpoints to the arguments establishing Biden's responsibility, but I'll make the case with three main points. Number one, Biden ran on a more relaxed immigration enforcement agenda, which sent a signal to all migrants that it was okay to come. Two, he spent a good chunk of his early presidency undoing many of Trump's policies that had been effective on the border. And three, he introduced the Humanitarian Parole Program alongside the CBP1 app, which used executive power to help over a million migrants enter the country legally. So let's start with the first thing he ran on a more relaxed immigration enforcement agenda. All throughout the 2020 campaign, Biden ran on promises that he would use a, quote, carrot and stick approach to undo many of Trump's draconian immigration policies. He promised to restore our role as a safe haven for refugees and asylum seekers. He pledged to immediately stop the border wall construction, stop family separation, stop prolonged detentions or deportations of, quote, peaceable hard working migrants, end quote. And he said he would send a bill to Congress that would create a road map to citizenship for 11 million undocumented individuals. While this messaging was supported by millions of Americans, it was also, in no uncertain terms, viewed as an invitation by many migrants. If Biden wasn't going to deport peaceful, hardworking migrants, migrants could reasonably believe that they could stay in the United States even if they entered illegally, by claiming asylum and peacefully seeking work. And in Many cases, they were correct. On top of that, Biden promised to fully reinstate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, also known as daca, meaning migrants who had come to the US illegally as children could live and work here without fearing deportation. This also was a welcoming signal to migrants, sending the message that this administration would favor programs that would protect new child arrivals. It's worth plainly stating here that the result of Biden's campaign rhetoric and policies was predictable and also predicted Border officials warned in 2020 that if Biden undid bilateral agreements with Mexico and signaled to migrants that they might now have an easier time getting into the US Immigration would surge and overwhelm the system like it did late in Trump's first term. Indeed, some reports have shown that smugglers use the perception of more lenient immigration policies to pitch migrants on paying for passage to the United States. Taken together, Biden's posturing and policies opened the door to more legal and illegal immigration. The second thing he undid many of Trump's effective policies. Biden was not a simple victim of circumstance either. In fact, he took 605 immigration related executive actions compared to 472 in Trump's first term. That's according to an analysis by the Migration Policy Institute. Now one might be impressed if the bulk of these actions had comprised some kind of overarching strategy of their own to not just successfully revoke but replace the Trump era policies that Democrats found too hardline and inhumane. But Biden and Democrats failed to do so. First, it should be obvious to us now that a doctrine centered on overturning the previous president's policies is bound to fail. It will get pinballed through the courts and in the case of immigration, pile confusion onto a system with real human consequences that both sides agree already has enormous operational inefficiencies. Even in 2020, immigration experts foresaw the struggle Biden would face carrying out this immigration quote, unquote counter revolution. Second, Trump's policies, even the most controversial ones, they undeniably correlated with lower illegal crossings. Without replacing those policies with long term alternatives or proving those policies weren't causal, the numbers were bound to surge. Indeed, in 2021, one month into his term, Biden fulfilled his promise to end Trump's 2019 Migrant Protection Protocols, or MPP, also known as the Remain in Mexico policy, which had sent some 60,000 migrants back across the border to await their immigration proceedings. Over the next two months, an influx of migrants forced HHS to open emergency intake centers around the country. During the pandemic to provide shelter to thousands of families and unaccompanied children at the border. A catch and bus system transported processed and released migrants into the US Interior, regardless of their asylum status. While MPP might have had legitimate human rights concerns, Biden failed to see that it took on a real problem of prospective migrants illegally entering the U.S. many of whom remain here until their cases are determined or indefinitely. Using one of the many legal loopholes that apply once a person crosses the border In May of 2023, Biden's CDC lifted what was arguably the most effective method used by the government to expel unauthorized migrants under both administrations, Title 42, a statute invoked by Trump that enabled border agents to quickly turn migrants away during a public health emergency without allowing them access to asylum. For three years, Biden kept Title 42 in place to Democrats dismay, leaning on it for a significant share of expulsions. Upon ending it, Biden issued a less effective, less enforceable alternative, a quote unquote final rule that was created to restrict restrict the number of asylum seekers by capping the daily average of asylum requests at 2,500. While I'm a fan of this rule's marginal improvement on Title 42's limited due process allowance, it rests on fragile legal ground, and it puts a huge administrative burden on agents already over capacity. And later that year, in December 2023, border encounters exceeded 300,000 in a single month. That surge, I'll say, though, was not just because of the end of Title 42. We'll be right back after this quick break.
- [15:41]
Intercom Advertiser
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- [16:10]
Ollie Advertiser
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- [16:40]
John Lowell
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- [17:06]
Isaac Saul
And that brings us to my last point. Biden used Parole on the Unlike any president before him, one of the most significant actions Biden took on immigration was vastly expanding parole. Parole is a statutory provision that gives the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to permit certain individuals on a case by case basis to enter and remain in the United States. Some variations of parole, like the Parole in Place program, allow immigrants physically in the US Illegally to apply for temporary legal status without leaving the country. In the past, parole programs were used narrowly and typically for urgent humanitarian reasons. For example, PIP was used for the family members or spouses of a US Military service member. And limited country specific parole programs admitted Vietnamese people during and after the Vietnam War and more recently with Ukrainians and Afghans. However, Biden dramatically expanded parole programs through the Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, the CHNV parole program. Up to 30,000 nationals from those countries were allowed entry into the US per month, with a sponsor for a two year parole period and with nonprofits popping up to readily supply those sponsors, the program would facilitate entry for over 530,000 migrants. And even more impactfully, Biden created the CBP1 app that allowed more people to directly apply for asylum on their phones, a system that ultimately granted parole for over 900,000 people in total, including Afghan and Ukrainians resettled through parole. Over 1 million migrants were paroled during Biden's presidency. While resettling Afghan and Ukrainian refugees has bipartisan Support, CHNV and CBP1 were particularly controversial. The CHNV program may not have been legal. A Texas lawsuit alleged the executive abused the parole power and failed to show that each applicant's case fell under the Immigration and Nationality Act's urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit requirement. While the court found Texas had no standing to sue, it provided no ruling on the Executive's interpretation of the ina, leaving open questions on the legality of the CHNV process that had allowed family members, faith groups, employers, and friends to corroborate applicants accounts. As for the CBP1 app, it was criticized for the strain it put on border resources. Migrants seeking entry through the app were scheduled to have parole interviews with border officers, meaning that already overwhelmed border agents would have more to do if the app became popular and it certainly did. An analysis by the Centers for Immigration Studies suggested that the use of the CBP1 app caused a spike in border encounters and strain resources along the border. Since the parole program also relied entirely on executive authority, it was also tenuous. Predictably, President Trump has now ended that program, meaning tens of thousands of migrants across the country are being ordered to leave immediately. All right, it wouldn't be a fair Tangle podcast here and monologue from me without addressing some of the counter arguments that are out there. So few things in politics are black and white, and Biden is obviously not solely responsible for his term's immigration crisis. This has been a problem to various degrees throughout American history. There are some counter arguments against the idea that he's even primarily responsible. And a piece like this is not complete without addressing those arguments, which I'm going to do now by grouping them into three main buckets. One, there's an argument that Biden faced an unprecedented surge of labor demand and migration due to the pandemic and the economic conditions it created. Two, there's an argument that Trump intentionally tanked a bipartisan immigration immigration deal that could have passed Congress and helped address the issue. And three, Trump's immigration policies were inhumane and Biden's reform did more good than bad. So I want to take them one by one. First, let's talk about the unprecedented situation that's out of his control. I think the most complete defense of Biden came from the libertarian Cato Institute, which ran a four part series making the case that Biden did not hey.
- [21:17]
John Lowell
Everybody, this is John, executive Producer for Tangle. We hope you enjoyed this preview of our latest Friday edition. If you are not currently a newsletter subscriber or a premium podcast subscriber and you are enjoying this content and would like to finish it, you can go to readtangle.com and sign up for a newsletter subscription. Or you can sign up for a podcast subscription or a bundled subscription which gets you both the podcast and the newsletter and unlocks the rest of this episode as well as ad free daily podcasts, more Friday editions, Sunday editions, bonus content, interviews and so much more. Most importantly, we just want to say thank you so much for your support. We're working hard to bring you much more content and more offerings, so stay tuned. Isaac and Ari will be here for the Sunday podcast and I will join you for the daily podcast on Monday. For the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off. Have a fantastic weekend y'all. Peace.
- [22:20]
Isaac Saul
Thank you for listening to this Tangle Media production. Our Executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Lowell. Today's episode was edited and engineered by John Lawrence. Our editorial staff is led by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman with Senior Editor Will Kbach and Associate Editors Hunter Caspersen, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lindsey Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by John Law. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website@readtangle.com.