Immigration Under Biden
Residents of Eagle Pass, Texas, saw something interesting happening in their city: billionaire Elon Musk made a surprise visit on Sept. 28, filming himself walking under an overpass, but he wasn’t there to sell electric cars or promote X. In his video, Musk says that he came to Eagle Pass to experience the sudden migrant surge that has strained border towns. Tony Gonzales, a Republican representing Texas’s 23rd district in the House of Representatives, also appeared in the video to talk about the dire situation of Eagle Pass. Since Biden took office, illegal immigration has spiked to record levels, creating humanitarian consequences across the United States. An insecure border endangers and burdens Americans. Policymakers should work to enforce our laws to keep our country safe and devise new measures to better secure the border.
Thousands of people are moving toward the southern border, and upwards of 9,000 individuals are crossing daily (New York Times), marking a sharp increase compared to previous months. Border towns such as Eagle Pass are overwhelmed, with many declaring an emergency. Eagle Pass has needed to shut down a bridge to reassign agents to help process all the migrants, a move that would cost them $15,000 a day in losses (New York Post). In the fiscal year of 2023, the Federal Government has allocated $800 million to immigration relief, which doesn’t come close to meeting the needs of cities like New York that take in thousands of migrants (Relief Web).
On Oct. 5, the Biden administration, who promised to abandon all Trump-Era immigration policies, decided to reinstate the border wall policy and construct a 20-mile-long barrier to curb immigration. The Department of Homeland Security explained, “There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States to prevent unlawful entries into the United States” (Wall Street Journal). Biden’s abandonment of many Trump-Era policies led to his immigration fiasco.
When Donald Trump assumed office, he also had to deal with high levels of illegal immigration. He established the Migrant Protection Protocols, which required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while the U.S. courts processed applications. After its introduction, “more than 60,000 illegal immigrants were returned to Mexico over a 13-month period” (Heritage Foundation).
During COVID-19, Trump established Title 42, which allowed the U.S. to turn away migrants coming from areas with high disease. Besides COVID-19, recent outbreaks of tuberculosis and polio have occurred in many sanctuary cities that took in large numbers of migrants. New York City’s tuberculosis rate is more than double the national rate, while the rest of the state saw its first polio case since 1990 (New York Post).
While Trump’s policies drew criticism for separating families and violating migrants’ civil rights, he curbed migrant encounters at the border significantly and increased apprehensions of illegal immigrants (Pew Research). But Biden set out to overturn many of Trump’s policies. In a tweet from 2020, Biden called the Migrant Protections Protocols “dangerous, inhumane, and…against everything we stand for as a nation of immigrants” (X). He promised that he “[would] end it.” The Biden Administration formally terminated the Migrant Protections Protocols on June 1, 2021. There may be a potential correlation between this happening and the fact that the highest recorded amount of migrant encounters at the border ever occurred in 2021. The record was broken again the following year amidst talks of granting migrants from countries like Venezuela and Haiti legal status (NBC).
Some might argue that Biden granting temporary legal status was an attempt to help alleviate the border, but with a little critical thinking, that would only add more pressure. The Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkasm announced that nearly 500,000 Venezuelans would receive temporary legal status (PBS). The concept of having legal status, even if temporary, would mean that people could cross illegally with no consequences and receive protection from the government for breaking our border laws. This would incentivize more people to come in illegally in hopes of staying in the country legally. Biden, however, is making the right move by resuming deportation flights back to Venezuela, which would work to demonstrate that those who break the rules will face consequences. He should further broadcast that message to discourage illegal immigration.
If he doesn’t, Biden would further exacerbate humanitarian issues. Cartels are smuggling drugs in record amounts across the border, especially fentanyl. The Drug Enforcement Agency last year “...seized enough fentanyl to kill every American — more than 50 million fentanyl-laced pills and over 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder” (CBS). Human trafficking has also skyrocketed. Almost 150,000 unaccompanied migrant children entered the U.S., with 122,000 taken into custody, smashing the previous record of 69,000 (CBS); studies “estimate that 60% of Latin American children who set out to cross the border alone or with smugglers have been caught by the cartels and are being abused in child pornography or drug trafficking” (Texas Public Policy Foundation).
Right now, one of the prominent issues with illegal immigration is the unfairness to immigrants from other countries who cannot cross the border into the United States because they live in Europe, Africa, or Asia. Because of limited resources and space, the government can only take in a finite amount of immigrants. The immigrants crossing the border illegally then would disproportionately fill up the limited number of spots. At the same time, other immigrants who don’t have that option would have to wait years and possibly decades to immigrate lawfully. To promote fair, safe, and legal immigration, Biden should continue his newly adopted policies, such as constructing barriers and continued deportation.
However, some argue that tighter immigration would make it harder for migrants to leave inhabitable environments like violence-ridden towns or extreme poverty. The United States should work toward taking in migrants, but again, it has finite resources that would not support the thousands of people all over the world living in horrible conditions and that want to come. There must be a system that takes in people from around the world.
An insecure border endangers and burdens Americans. Restricting legal immigration isn’t a solution. A growing economy and technological advances will require a larger workforce that immigrants can fulfill. Instead, the government should focus on admitting a diverse group of immigrants who want to work hard and contribute to our society while staying within its allocated resources.
By LEO ZHANG ‘25
