Much will be written about Joe Biden in the coming weeks, months, and years, as the 46th president’s first and only term in office winds down, but no policy issue has defined the last four years more than immigration.
In the final days of the Biden Administration, White House communications director Ben LaBolt wrote a memo encouraging administration staffers to sprint to the finish line to fortify Biden’s agenda ahead of inauguration day.
“A presidency is not measured just in weeks, months, or four-year terms alone — rather its impact is evaluated for years and decades to come,” LaBolt wrote.
When it comes to the immigration issue, four years was more than enough time to judge Biden’s border policies as among the worst of any leader in American history. It all started during Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign when he invited foreign nationals to “surge the border,” and vowed to undo the Trump Administration’s effective border security measures. That was one promise Biden made sure to keep.
From its first day in office, the Biden Administration set out to dismantle the Trump Administration’s policies and open the floodgates at the southern border. Upon taking office, the administration immediately halted construction of the border wall, suspended deportations, and sent a bill to Congress that would have granted amnesty to millions of illegal aliens. Perhaps the worst move Biden made during his time in office was appointing Alejandro Mayorkas to lead the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
A committed ideologue, Mayorkas was a gift to the anti-border movement. For the first time, anti-border activists had one of their own in charge of the agency tasked with securing the border. The ensuing results were both tragic and predictable. In his first year at DHS, Mayorkas released new guidelines essentially halting deportations of illegal aliens unless he deemed them a national security or public safety threat.
That same year, Mayorkas participated in a despicable smear campaign against his own Border Patrol agents after misleading photos circulated by activists were used to falsely accuse agents of whipping Haitian migrants attempting to cross the border. By announcing its refusal to enforce immigration law while demonizing law enforcement, the Biden Administration had engaged in a full-frontal assault on its own country’s security. It was one of the greatest betrayals of the U.S. by its government in the nation’s history.
These policies led to more than 10 million illegal border crossings, which included a historic number of individuals who were on the terrorist watch list. It led to a record number of deaths amongst foreign nationals who attempted to cross the border and it caused the preventable deaths of American citizens. One such citizen was Laken Riley, a 22-year-old Georgia nursing student, who was brutally murdered by an illegal alien who had previously been released into the country by the administration. During his 2024 State of the Union Address, Biden butchered Riley’s name and then apologized for referring to her killer as an “illegal.”
Ultimately, the wholly preventable deaths of Riley and all the other Americans and foreign nationals who died because of Joe Biden’s anti-border policies will define this administration’s legacy. The premiere responsibility of the federal government — the main reason for its existence — is to protect the U.S. from public safety and national security threats and to ensure the continuation of its status as a sovereign nation. Not only did the Biden Administration refuse to protect America’s sovereignty, it actively sabotaged it. Eventually, the American people caught on.
Spooked by opinion polls showing the nation fed up with its lawless border policies, the Biden Administration sharpened its rhetoric, and even issued an executive order intended to placate the voters ahead of the 2024 presidential election. While this executive order was full of flaws and loopholes, illegal border crossings have come down from historic highs. Biden Administration officials spent years blaming Congress and a supposedly broken immigration system for the surge in illegal immigration that occurred under its watch, but their late action proved they had the tools to get the crisis under control the whole time and chose not to use any of them until the eve of a presidential election. The American people saw this executive order as a desperate political tactic instead of a genuine attempt to restore the country’s sovereignty, and they sought accountability at the ballot box. Voters threw this administration out of office and overwhelmingly re-elected Donald Trump in large part because they were fed up with Biden’s destructive border policies. (RELATED: DAVIS: Joe Biden’s Culture of Lawlessness Allows Release Of Illegal Migrant Breach Suspects)
The Biden Administration was ultimately undone by its hubris, believing that it could somehow flood the U.S. with illegal aliens without the American people noticing. In doing so, they left a trail of victims in their wake while permanently discrediting the anti-borders movement. Biden and his allies may claim that history will vindicate their time in office, but they will never be able to restore the lives that have been lost and the families that have been destroyed as a direct result of their immigration policies.
William J. Davis is a communications associate for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.
This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
