Donald Trump has been hammering Joe Biden on the border crisis for more than a year, and the president has yet to come up with an answer for it.
The latest Decision Desk poll finds Trump topping Biden 46-26 as better able to deal with the border crisis. Since the border is the second-most important issue facing the country behind the economy, according to almost all the polls, Trump is using the border as a club to pound the president into submission, especially in the half-dozen states that will decide the election.
Trump leads in six of seven key battleground states, and immigration is one of the biggest reasons. So it’s not surprising that Biden would dig into his bag of optical illusions and come up with something that, on the surface, appears to be a significant upgrade to border security.
In fact, it’s a continuation of the smoke and mirrors that Biden has been using since he woke up and realized that his dismal record on the border could cost him a second term.
Today, the president will announce several changes to our border policy. The one that will receive the most media attention is the change in asylum rules that will allow for easier and quicker deportation for some illegal aliens.
The illegals that the administration will more quickly send home would already be ineligible for asylum given that they have criminal records or are deemed a “national security risk.” But instead of sending them home after the interview phase of the process, Biden is proposing that the illegals who are criminals or potential terrorists be sent home after the initial screening phase.
Big whoop, right? Even worse, the burden of determining who stays and who goes falls on overworked, underpaid border patrol officers on the frontlines of the crisis instead of asylum officers. This is likely to slow the process down, but not enough to make a big difference.
“This is a problem that I believe there are levers that the administration could pull and we’re encouraging the Biden administration to look at all of those since Republicans want to apparently complain about it and do nothing,” Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) told Politico on Tuesday.
Progressives, however, have criticized the possible adoption of previously floated executive orders that would clamp down on immigration or restrict asylum. They’ve called for Biden to use his presidential power to protect undocumented people who have long resided in the United States.
“These enforcement-only actions make people feel good for about a half a second, but they don’t actually do anything to fix the problem. It didn’t work under Donald Trump when he tried to shut down the border,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on Wednesday.
Rep. Jayapal does not want to “fix the problem.” In fact, her idea of “fixng the problem” is to have no illegal aliens at all and just fling open the border in a “come one, come all” free-for-all.
“Obviously I’m not an adviser to the president,” Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell told Politico Wednesday. “But if I were, I’d say you should do something to the maximum extent of your ability.”
The number of asylum seekers at the border has fallen in recent months. But that, too, is an optical illusion. There are other avenues that migrants can use to find their way into the U.S. legally while awaiting a determination of their asylum status.
Politico is reporting that the drastic changes to asylum procedures won’t happen until at least June. That’s when it’s expected that Biden will use Trump-era policies to deny asylum to many illegals.
It will also stir up a hornet’s nest of opposition on the left.