Biden has only himself to blame for border fiasco

Faced with an obvious political crisis — a recent CBS News poll found that 70% of respondents disapproved of President Joe Biden’s border policies — the White House and Democrats have reached the pinnacle of desperation: They’re trying to pin blame for the immigration fiasco on House Republicans. This is preposterous.

It’s true that many GOP House members have expressed antipathy for a proposed compromise on border policy being negotiated in the Senate as part of an effort to pass the president’s proposal for aid to Ukraine and Israel. It’s also true that Donald Trump hopes to exploit the border issue in the upcoming campaign and is thus urging Republicans to blow up any potential deal under the belief that it would help Biden politically.

But none of that matters. Biden doesn’t need any Republican support at all in order to take effective steps to clean up the border mess. He has the executive power to do so on his own — but he refuses to exercise it.

The Biden administration has taken dozens of actions — through executive orders and otherwise — that have encouraged migrants to crash our southern border. For instance, the White House at one point imposed a moratorium on deportations and immigration enforcement. It has expanded asylum eligibility, creating an incentive for immigrants to enter the country illegally. It has released thousands of migrants into the hinterlands without any means of ensuring they will show up for asylum hearings, which could be years down the road. It has gone to court to scuttle efforts by border states dealing with the problem themselves.