Analysis

For many in the immigrant justice movement, the inauguration of President Joe Biden in 2021 signaled a moment of hope and possibility after four years of a Trump administration that was defined by its cruelty to migrants. Though Biden started his presidential term by rolling back a number of Trump’s cruel immigration policies (while dragging his feet on others) and implementing some modest interior enforcement reforms, over the course of three years his administration has moved increasingly right on these issues.

Under the Biden administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention has returned to pre‑pandemic levels and surveillance has skyrocketed. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has experimented with open air detention of migrants along the border. During the same time the administration opened or expanded detention centers and refused to close facilities even at the recommendation of Biden’s own government. At every opportunity Biden has made clear his intent to keep the border inaccessible and to criminally prosecute, detain, surveil, and deport more people.

In recent negotiations for a supplemental funding package, Biden clarified that he sees migrant lives as expendable bargaining chips, and that he is much closer to the previous administration on immigration policy than he indicated on the campaign trail. In these negotiations, he willingly offered to curtail his parole authority and declared that he would shut down the border “right now.” Not only has he broken promises, but the President has moved to the right and dug his heels into a cruel deterrence and punishment approach to migration that simply does not work.

Following Congress’s failure to pass the negotiated supplemental funding package, reports indicate that Biden may issue executive orders or regulations that would try to achieve some of the policy goals negotiated for that bill, including making it harder for asylum seekers to pass the first stage of the asylum process, and arbitrarily turning away many asylum seekers at the border before even making it to that first stage. In a recent trip to the border, Biden shockingly invited Trump to join him in lobbying congress to pass the failed supplemental bill and he did so again during his fourth State of the Union address in March. Finally, in March Biden signed into law a Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations bill, negotiated through backdoor meetings with Republican leadership, that increased ICE detention and surveillance funding to levels not seen in the agency’s history, enough to detain an average daily population (ADP) of nearly 42,000 people.

Rather than making progress towards keeping his promise of a more humane immigration system, on the whole, the President has not only regressed on all of our policy demands but has increasingly conceded ground to the most extreme anti-immigrant corners of government and society, and in the process, has moved the starting point for future negotiations further to the right. If the President continues down this path it will cement his legacy of co-signing a rightwing agenda on migration. Biden has failed to live up to his promises. We demand that the President immediately reverse course and advance a pro-immigrant vision that upholds the dignity of all people.