Trump's border intervention gives Biden the opportunity to switch from defense to offense

When President Biden agreed to bipartisan talks on border legislation last fall, Democratic strategists hoped a deal could take the issue off the table for his reelection campaign.

But with former President Donald J. Trump's collapse of the resulting bipartisan immigration deal this week, Mr. Biden instead got something else: someone to blame.

The crisis at the southwestern border has been one of the most vexing challenges of Biden's presidency, one that has defied his policy dictates and chipped away at his public support. With record numbers of migrants entering the country illegally, the president is under pressure from both Democrats and Republicans to take more action.

For three years, Biden has struggled to provide voters with a compelling answer to why the border has turned into such a crisis on his watch. He has avoided public discussion of the issue as much as possible, preferring to focus his messages on other priorities. But now that Trump's intervention has convinced Republicans in Congress to abandon the border deal they themselves had demanded, Biden finally has a chance to shift from defense to offense.

“The American people will know why it failed,” he said in a televised speech from the White House. “I will put this issue before the country, and voters will know that it is not just a moment in time – just as we were going to secure the border and fund these other programs, Trump and the MAGA Republicans said no. because they are afraid of Donald Trump.”

“Every day between now and November,” he added, “the American people will know that the only reason the border is not secure is Donald Trump and his MAGA Republican friends.”

Mr. Trump and his allies ridiculed the idea that Mr. Biden could deflect blame after three years of failing to secure the border.

“Joe Biden blamed President Trump for the border crisis that Biden himself created,” said Karoline Leavitt, spokeswoman for the former president. “This is a brazen, pathetic lie and the American people know the truth – President Trump's policies created the most secure border in American history, and it was Joe Biden who undid it.”

Even as Republicans followed the former president's lead and dismissed the deal as inadequate, they sought to make clear their position on the Biden administration's failures on immigration by calling Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of Homeland Security, to turn off. But the bid fell one vote short in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, an embarrassing setback for the Republican Party, which must now decide whether to try again in the coming weeks.

The border has been one of Biden's least favorite issues. Have illegal crossings has taken off considerably since he took officeFrom 73,944 reported in December 2020, just before he was inaugurated, to 302,034 last December, and governors and mayors as far away as New York and Illinois have sounded the alarm about the resulting burden on their communities.

Forty-five percent of Americans now consider the situation at the border “a crisis,” an increase of 8 percentage points from last spring, and another 30 percent consider the situation “very serious,” the report said. a poll from CBS News and YouGov last month. This is evident from a study published on Wednesday by PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist found that only 29 percent of Americans approve of Biden's leadership on the issue, with more Democrats and independents expressing concern.

From a purely political perspective, Mr. Biden would likely never outperform his challenger among voters who are committed to illegal immigration, Mr. Trump's signature issue since the days of leading crowds in 2016 while chanting “build the wall.” .

But in terms of reelection strategy, Democratic operatives argued that Mr. Biden needed to prevent immigration from undermining his support among swing voters upset by the wave of undocumented immigrants, without alienating progressives who are disappointed that he is not has done more to turn the tide. Trump-era policies.

It was a measure of how much the politics of the issue have changed in recent years that Mr. Biden embraced the bipartisan deal agreed to by Senators James Lankford, Republican of Oklahoma; Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut; and Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrat who became an independent from Arizona.

The legislation would have tightened rules for asylum seekers, expanded detention facilities, hired more border agents, sped up the process of returning ineligible migrants and even temporarily closed the border during peak travel times. But it did not include any of the signature provisions Democrats have long called for in comprehensive immigration legislation, such as a path to citizenship for those already here or protections for younger immigrants who enter the country as children.

Mr. Trump made clear that he saw the deal not as a solution but as a threat to his bid to regain office. “This bill is a great gift to Democrats and a death wish to the Republican Party,” he wrote on social media this week. “It takes the terrible job Democrats have done on immigration and the border, fires them, and puts it all squarely on the shoulders of Republicans. Don't be stupid!!!”

The White House wasted little time in reframing the issue as an obstructionist Mr. Trump intimidating Republicans into crafting a deal that has the support of conservative institutions, including the Border Patrol union that previously Mr. Trump has supported. “Will the GOP vote with the Border Patrol to secure the border, or with Donald Trump for more fentanyl?” the White House asked in a memo to reporters.

The change was welcome for Democrats as they look ahead to a close election.

“Until recently, borders were almost exclusively President Biden's problem,” said Geoffrey Garin, a Democratic pollster. “But now, by blocking strong, bipartisan border legislation, Republicans have made it their problem too.”

He added: “The fact that President Biden can now say that he was willing to sign and enforce the strongest border bill in history, but that Republicans blocked it at Trump's urging puts Biden in a much better position.” position than before in the immigration debate. ”

Margie Omero, another Democratic strategist, said voters would understand which side actually wanted to get something done. “Joe Biden and Democrats in Congress are working on solutions,” she said. “The Republican Party routinely stalls and scores political points in tackling our big challenges.”

However, Biden's critics doubt that he can shift the blame after so much time. They said that for much of his presidency, the president and his allies have resisted even admitting there was a crisis, only to switch gears and say there is and it is Mr. Trump's fault .

“On its face, it seems absurd to me,” said Mark S. Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and a leading voice for tougher policies. “Obviously Biden partisans are going to latch onto that and obviously Trump partisans are going to mock it. The question is whether people in the middle will buy it or not. I find it hard to believe that anyone would believe it. After three years?”

Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist, called it “a transparently cynical ploy” that won't work. “He must really think voters are stupid, trying to convince them that after three years of his policies, Republicans are somehow guilty,” Jennings said. “Nobody believes Joe Biden wants to 'get tough' on the border. Please. His government has been advocating for three years that the border is secure. What changed? Oh. It's election time.”

Elections are of course about stories. For three years, Republicans had a clear storyline when it came to the border: Mr. Biden deliberately or incompetently opened the floodgates. Now the president has a counter-narrative to offer — that whatever happened, at least he wanted to solve the problem and Mr. Trump did not. The next nine months will test which is more convincing.