Biden is trying to reverse immigration policy

If President Biden moves forward with a plan to block people who enter the United States illegally from seeking asylum, it will likely face a swift legal challenge, just as an effort by his predecessor was blocked by the courts in 2018.

Politically, such a setback may not even matter.

According to Mr. Biden, simply issuing an executive action just before his State of the Union address on March 7 could strengthen his re-election campaign by demonstrating that he is unilaterally trying to secure the line over Republican opposition.

The president’s aides have seized on Republican lawmakers’ decision last month to end a bipartisan border measure. Polls show that Americans are very concerned about the number of people crossing from Mexico after fleeing gangs, torture and economic problems in Central and South America.

“Folks, doing nothing is not an option,” Biden told the nation’s governors at a meeting at the White House on Friday, suggesting they would pressure lawmakers to revive the border law in the coming days.

But if they don’t, Biden is betting he can appeal to voters concerned about immigration by calling on his executive authority to show he is willing, in his own words, to “close the border.” amid a wave of immigration. migration.

The plan under consideration would mirror the bipartisan bill that Republicans defeated in Congress. But even the White House acknowledges that executive action — even if it survives legal challenges — might not provide the kind of money and resources for controlling the border that Mr. Biden had wanted Congress to approve.

Still, the strategy represents a dramatic shift in American politics. Former President Donald J. Trump and Republicans fanned the flames of fear and uncertainty around the border over the past decade, while Democrats positioned themselves as the defenders of persecuted people who deserved a chance at the American dream.

That dynamic has changed in recent years as Biden has struggled to contain record numbers of people trying to enter the United States from Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras and countries in Africa and Asia.

As many of those immigrants flowed into Democratic-run cities like New York, Denver and Chicago — driven in part by the Republican governor in Texas — Democrats began demanding stricter controls at the border. Many Democrats in Congress, even some who have long been advocates for immigration, have echoed these requests.

The White House has called on Republicans to lift the restrictions they have been demanding for years. Mr. Biden’s aides have characterized the move as craven politics and a gift to Mr. Trump, whose years-long assault on the asylum system has been a centerpiece of his political identity and his presidency.

After the failure of the bipartisan immigration bill, which would have allowed for tough restrictions at the border and provided billions of dollars for agents and asylum processing, Mr. Biden’s team has debated whether he can exercise executive power use to achieve something similar.

Even if such a move appeals to many in his party, the president still faces progressive Democrats and a group of immigration activists who are furious that he is willing to embrace some of the same types of restrictive policies that Mr. Trump and his allies were pushing for four years when he was president.

They argue that Mr. Biden’s willingness to halt asylum policies while so many people are trying to come to the United States is a fundamental violation of the country’s decades-long commitment to being a place of refuge for those seeking towards safety and a better life.

The executive action being considered could undermine the Biden campaign’s efforts to appeal to some of his liberal base. And it ignores efforts to increase legal immigration, which has been a goal of Democratic politicians.

So far, Mr. Biden appears willing to defy these concerns in the interest of strong action on the border.

At the same time, it is not clear that the executive action he is considering will convince voters that he will be tougher on the border than Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump’s advisers do not believe Mr. Biden can override the former president, who helped defeat the bipartisan measure last month by saying it was not tough enough. They argue that voters who believe in rejecting immigrants will vote for Trump, not what the advisers see as a faded version of Trump’s policies.

In fact, the former president’s allies on Capitol Hill have begun a political campaign aimed at using the border situation to their political advantage.

Speaker Mike Johnson, whose opposition to the bipartisan border bill helped kill it, accused Mr. Biden this week of not being serious about solving a problem for which Republicans say he was responsible.

“Americans have lost confidence in this president and will not be fooled by election year gimmicks that do not actually secure the border,” Johnson said in a statement. “Nor will they forget that the president caused this catastrophe and has so far refused to use his executive power to resolve it.”

White House officials said this week that no decision had been made on whether the president would issue the executive action. But if an announcement comes soon, it would signal that Mr. Biden and his team recognize how central the issue of migration is to the campaign.