Joe Biden is fond of blaming the border crisis on Donald Trump.
“The president inherited a mess because of what the last administration did. We inherited a mess. And, you know, Republicans in Congress made it worse by blocking comprehensive immigration reform,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in the runup to Biden’s controlled photo op visit to Texas in January.
That isn’t stopping him from taking a page from Trump’s border security playbook for himself.
According to Politico, the Biden administration is planning to send 1,500 more active-duty troops temporarily to the southern border to assist agents ahead of an expected influx of migrants seeking asylum, three U.S. officials said Tuesday.
The move comes as Title 42, the public health law that permits the U.S. to deny asylum and migrations claims for public health reasons, is set to expire on May 11. This is expected to produce a surge of immigrants to the border.
There’s no sign of Democratic pushback thus far. The Senate’s top appropriator on defense, Jon Tester (D-Mont.), said he wouldn’t object to the move as an emergency measure. He added that the news highlights the need to fully fund the Department of Homeland Security.
“We need a secure border, if that’s what we need to do now, do it,” Tester said. “The real issue here is that we have to empower the Department of Homeland Security, and Customs and Border Protection to do that job.”
Things have certainly changed in five years.
Back in 2018, Trump ordered the Defense Department to deploy thousands of active duty troops, citing a need to counter a caravan of several thousand Central American migrants heading for the United States.
Trump’s move was met with derision. As The Hill reported, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee dismissed Trump’s decision as “unwise, unproductive” and likely a political show.
“Your decision to rush thousands of our troops to the border at this time seems politically motivated and fails to implement reasonable and appropriate steps to address the true nature of the problem,” Sen. Jack Reed (R.I.) wrote in a letter to the president.
Reed said that, while he supports border security, he believes the best way to achieve such a goal is through “comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform and effectively allocating our national security dollars.”
That was then. This is now.
Biden’s taken heat for his inattention to the border crisis. This may sit well with progressives, but as the 2024 presidential election looms, it’s a sticking point with most voters. A 2022 Pew Research poll found that the majority of Americans view increased border security as important.
Though the additional troops will fill “critical capability gaps,” including detection and monitoring, data entry and warehouse support, according to an official, the move is well-timed as a political maneuver.
The Senate Armed Services Committee’s ranking member, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), said Biden might now be “reading the polls.”
It’s not the best reason to beef up personnel at the border, but considering this is happening on Biden’s watch, we’ll take what we can get.
