President seeks new border metrics for success
Policy is break with Trump measure
WASHINGTON - When it came time this week for the Biden administration to release April enforcement data showing illegal migration at a 20-year high, U.S. Customs and Border Protection slipped the news in an afterhours newsrelease. There was no public briefing, no questions from reporters and little evident urgency.
It was a departure from the Trump administration approach. President Donald Trump treated CBP monthly enforcement data as a stock index for his Homeland Security team’s performance, and the calculus was simple: Higher border enforcement numbers were bad; lower numbers were good.
Nearly four months into President Joe Biden’s term, and as his administration settles into a new normal of superlative border numbers, he and his top officials are looking to break with Trump’s measurement standards, even as immigration ranks as one of their worst-polling issues.
U.S. agents are making about 6,000 arrests and detentions along the Mexico border each day, a level of law enforcement intensity that has no recent precedent. Family groups and children needing care remain a major challenge for CBP, while growing numbers of adult migrants are trying to sneak past them and evade capture. Border state lawmakers from both parties fault the White House for doing too little.
Rather than attempting to drive down migration through more stringent enforcement, Biden officials in recent weeks have been seeking to change the perception that high border numbers equate to a crisis, a failure, or even something manifestly negative.
“Apprehensions don’t tell the full story, and getting to zero is not a measure of success,” Tyler Moran, one of Biden’s top immigration policy advisers, said in an interview. She and other Biden officials have urged patience with their policies and plans to address the “root causes” driving Central American emigration, while blaming the Trump administration for handing them an immigration system with a myopic focus on keeping border numbers low.
“We’re moving toward a fair, orderly and humane system,” Moran added. “We’re increasing and improving legal migration, and deterring irregular migration. We have put in place a number of policies creating legal pathways to migrate and seek protection, and we see that as a metric of success.”
The president’s Republican critics have seized on the border influx to hammer Biden and redirect attention from his better-rated handling of the pandemic and the economy. Biden officials steadfastly have refused to characterize the surge in crossings as a crisis, and in recent weeks, they have largely overcome the one thing that met that definition - the scenes of children and teens without parents jam-packed into Border Patrol tents.
Six weeks ago, the administration had more than 5,700 unaccompanied minors in CBP facilities ill-suited for teens and children, but after opening 14 emergency shelter sites run by the Department of Health and Human Services, the number of minors in Border Patrol custody has dropped more than 90%.
The change has allowed Biden officials to pivot from a defensive posture to a confident tone.