Biden is clueless. Trump is nasty. So who will solve border crisis?
The legal wrangling this week over a Texas law that would grant state and local authorities the ability to arrest and deport people who’ve illegally crossed the border is illustrative of a simple fact: Under the Biden administration, illegal border crossings have skyrocketed.
As soon as he took office, President Joe Biden unraveled the majority of the measures former President Donald Trump had put in place to curb encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border. That has left border states like Texas struggling to handle the burdens that come with the flood of migrants entering the country illegally.
While border enforcement and deportations fall under federal jurisdiction, Texas officials have argued that Biden’s failures have left them with no other choice. They say the law is necessary to combat the “deadly consequences of the federal government’s inability or unwillingness to protect the border.”
It’s not just Texas and other border states that are pleading for more help. Cities around America are struggling to keep up with migrants who are seeking refuge in large numbers.
Chicago, for instance, has started to evict migrants, thousands of whom are in city-run shelters. New York, Denver and other cities are in similar situations.
And voters want solutions.
Stop the blame game and get something done
Americans are increasingly worried about what’s happening at the border, and immigration has skyrocketed to the top of voters’ concerns leading up to the 2024 presidential election.
While Biden has considered issuing an executive order to slow border crossings – a move he could make anytime he wanted – he seems content to do nothing. He’d rather blame Trump for allegedly sabotaging a bipartisan deal in the Senate that would have tightened border security and sent aid to Ukraine and Israel.
And Trump certainly doesn’t want Biden to get any sort of political win on migration ahead of the November election.
Even so, Biden fully owns the immigration mess, which has gotten much worse under his watch.
A new poll raises warnings for both Biden and Trump. The Immigration Hub, an organization that advocates for fair reform, last week released the results of a survey conducted by the Global Strategy Group.
The poll surveyed 1,200 likely voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It found that 43% say immigration is one of their top issues, second only to inflation.
The vast majority of voters say they support investing in more border security while also allowing for more pathways to citizenship for immigrants who’ve lived and worked in the United States for years.
That’s why 65% said they thought Congress should have passed the border bill that Republicans blocked.
In other words, these voters are open to compromise – something our elected officials don’t seem to understand anymore.
A replay of 2016 Trump rhetoric?
Trump is looking to harness Biden’s bungling of the border as a top campaign issue. And as he likes to do, he’s playing up the fear factor about who is entering the country illegally.
It sounds almost identical to his rhetoric leading up to the 2016 election.
Last weekend at a rally in Ohio, Trump referred to some migrants as “not people” and as “animals.” The news media and Democrats jumped all over the comments, but it should be noted that Trump was not talking about all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally.
He was rather speaking specifically about those who are violent and referenced the Venezuelan migrant charged in the brutal killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley.
Regardless of the often-vulgar language that Trump uses, he’s right that the Biden administration has no clue about who is entering the country illegally every day.
As this new poll illustrates, however, most people don’t see immigration or migrants in simplistic terms. Voters want nuanced solutions on border security and on pathways to citizenship.
And neither Trump nor Biden is offering that.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at USA TODAY. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X, formerly Twitter: @ Ingrid_Jacques