Why Biden’s Border Policies Aren’t Working
WASHINGTON—Four months after President Biden switched strategies to stem illegal crossings at the southern border, the new plan isn’t working. Border crossings from Mexico into the U.S. are on the rise again after an unexpected drop in May and June, when the administration ended its use of the pandemic-era measure known as Title 42 and replaced it with a new set of policies it said would work as a better deterrent.
U.S. Border Patrol arrested roughly 182,000 people at the U.S.-Mexico border in August, a return to the same level of arrests it made the previous August under Title 42, according to people familiar with the data. The rising numbers continue to not only draw criticism from Republicans, as Biden runs for re-election, but also further inflame a political crisis within the Democratic Party.
Leaders of blue cities and states are blaming the White House for the strain that tens of thousands of newly arriving asylum seekers have put on them. About 63% of those surveyed in a recent Wall Street Journal poll said they disapproved of Biden’s actions in securing the border. The survey also showed a rise in those who named the border as a top issue since April.
The crux of Biden’s new strategy at the border is to dissuade migrants from crossing into the U.S. illegally by increasing the penalties for doing so—and by offering them newly created paths to move here legally. But that carrot-and-stick strategy has so far failed to gain traction.
Unprecedented numbers of migrants are heading for the U.S., data from across Latin America show, and simply too many people want to move here for the new legal paths to be able to accommodate them all. The resulting crush at the border has been so intense that the U.S. government
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