But one of Biden’s most active areas of policymaking has become one of his biggest vulnerabilities to reelection. The president’s management of the southern border and immigration is his worst-rated issue in polls, and record numbers of illegal crossings have galvanized Republicans, undermined the president’s push for Ukraine aid and played to the perceived strengths of Trump, the GOP front-runner.
Several of the Biden administration’s signature initiatives intended to make the immigration system fairer and more orderly have stalled out or remained too limited to significantly curb illegal entries and reduce chaos at the border, according to analysts, and current and former administration officials.
“This is the area where the gap between the president and Trump is the widest, and where the country seems to have least confidence in the president,” said Muzaffar Chishti, an MPI senior fellow and one of the report’s authors.
Last month 249,785 illegal crossings were recorded along the U.S.-Mexico border, the highest monthly total ever, and Biden officials acknowledge the majority of the migrants were released into the United States with pending claims for protection. The latest influx has worsened strains on New York, Chicago, Denver and other cities whose Democratic mayors are pleading for more federal aid to shelter and assist the newcomers, including the thousands of migrants sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R).
The political pressure on Biden has been growing, with Trump saying the issue won’t be fixed until he reclaims the White House and Abbott testing the president — and federal law — by seizing a public park along the border and denying access to U.S. agents.
Biden and leading Democrats indicate they’re willing to accept restrictions to the asylum system and other enforcement measures that were almost unthinkable for the party at the beginning of the president’s term. But Trump and top Republicans have cast doubt in recent days on a potential deal — which would enact several measures sought by GOP leaders — with some lawmakers suggesting the changes could help drive down illegal crossings and benefit Biden.
In a statement Friday, Biden said the bipartisan Senate bill “would be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.”
Those measures include a potential expansion of the government’s powers to deport or expel border-crossers as well as tighter limits on the president’s ability to use executive parole authority to waive in migrants without visas.
Biden said the changes would give him an emergency authority to “shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed” and said he would “use it the day I sign the bill into law.”
Such statements risk further alienating some Democrats who see efforts to stiffen enforcement as too similar to the Trump-era approach Biden campaigned against, leaving the president in a political squeeze.
Biden’s desire to secure funding for Ukraine and Israel is a key reason he is entertaining the idea of major policy changes on the border backed by Republicans, but the political and logistical challenges he faces have forced him to consider new options, said Theresa Cardinal Brown, a former federal immigration official who is now a senior policy adviser on the issue at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.
“What is happening at the border right now is just unsustainable,” she said. “I do think…
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