Since President Joe Biden took office, there have been two competing accounts of what is going on with the immigration process and the southern border. The first, via the Biden administration, is that everything is more or less under control — there has just been a slight uptick of migrants entering the country. The view from Texas, however, is that border security is compromised, millions of migrants are crossing the border illegally, and the immigration system is broken.
Unlike many political controversies, only one of these accounts is correct and doesn’t require a certain political ideology to be convincing. A close look at the statistics, a visit to the border, and a review of the policies in place demonstrate the chaos that has ensued since 2021.
After three years of basically ignoring the concerns at the Texas-Mexico border, Biden finally realized it was a problem. It certainly is to voters. A February Gallup poll suggests 28% of them think immigration is an important problem facing the United States.
Biden issued an executive order on June 4 that was an exercise in gaslighting and incompetence.
“President Biden believes we must secure our border,” the White House said in a statement announcing the order. “That is why today, he announced executive actions to bar migrants who cross our Southern border unlawfully from receiving asylum. These actions will be in effect when high levels of encounters at the Southern Border exceed our ability to deliver timely consequences, as is the case today. They will make it easier for immigration officers to remove those without a lawful basis to remain and reduce the burden on our Border Patrol agents.”
Biden doesn’t just suggest he’ll fix the border but says it was Congress’s problem all along. He’s just now intervening. Biden always had the power to make policy changes that affect the border. In fact, he did so at the very beginning of his tenure. These included ending former President Donald Trump‘s “Remain in Mexico” policy, halting border wall construction that Trump had begun, and no longer utilizing Title 42. Under Trump, migrants who entered illegally were, mostly, immediately deported — not so under the Biden administration.
It didn’t take long for border statistics to reflect Biden’s changes. Migrant crossings had risen a bit in 2019, but from 2009 to 2019, monthly migrant encounters stayed under 75,000, sometimes even below 50,000. In April 2020, under Trump, just 16,182 migrants were encountered that month. According to the Pew Research Center, December 2023 saw a record: 250,000.
In fact, since Biden’s tenure began, almost 8 million migrants have attempted to cross or crossed the southern border, and over half of them are currently in the U.S. This is more than the populations of 36 states.
The Biden administration’s border-related changes created a serious problem for the U.S. but most immediately for the state of Texas. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) had no patience for Biden’s “hollow” executive order, responding in a statement:
“Today’s announcement is nothing but a smokescreen for President Biden’s failed open border policies. This executive order will do nothing but further an invasion into our country, inviting thousands of unvetted illegal immigrants to cross the border every single day — the exact opposite of shutting down the border.”
Abbott went on to slam the way Biden “dismantled all of his predecessor’s successful border policies, encouraging millions of illegal immigrants — including dangerous criminals and terrorists — into our country.”
This doesn’t mean all migrants who come to the U.S., whether legally or illegally, are coming to wreak havoc. Most are not. But in fiscal 2023 alone, Border Patrol encountered 169 known or suspected terrorists attempting to cross the southern border, a record.
“From needless crimes committed against Americans by criminals who are taking advantage of these policies to the staggering fiscal and social burdens being imposed on cities and states, Americans are suffering the consequences,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) said in a statement in support of H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, which Democrats in the Senate have so far failed to pass.
The death of Laken Riley is one of those consequences.
Riley, a 22-year-old college student at Augusta University in Georgia, was murdered in February while on a run on the University of Georgia campus. Her alleged killer, Jose Ibarra, a migrant from Venezuela, came to the U.S. illegally in 2022 and had been arrested in 2023 in New York City. Riley’s father has said publicly he did not want his daughter’s death used politically, but such an example is hard to ignore. There are others, such as the story of Rachel Morin, a mother of five. An illegal migrant from El Salvador was charged in June with Morin’s rape and murder.
Even still, Abbott’s office claims illegal border crossings in Texas are down 74%, thanks to his Operation Lone Star, which he launched in 2021 with the Department of Public Safety to fortify the border with additional staff and deterrents and apprehend migrants. According to Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris, Texas has allocated more than $11 billion of taxpayer money for Operation Lone Star.
There are only two ways to enter the U.S.: legally, through a port of entry and with a valid asylum claim, or illegally. The Biden administration has managed to interfere with both, which is why his latest efforts to enforce order at the border seem like such a sham.
There are 2 million asylum cases pending right now. Illegal migrant encounters have surged. U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported that for fiscal 2022, there were a record 2.4 million migrant apprehensions at the border.
Enforcing immigration law falls outside the jurisdiction of the state of Texas. That’s CBP. This means that the Texas Department of Public Safety is limited in how it can handle migrants entering illegally, especially if there are children among the groups.
In February, while reporting for a local Texas paper, I went to the border and watched as both unfolded before me. In Eagle Pass, Texas, a slow, steady stream of migrants waited on a bridge at a legal port of entry to cross into the U.S.
Conversely, throughout the course of a day, I watched as a few migrants with children and one group of young people swam across the Rio Grande and tried to crawl through the concertina and razor wire that the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard members had put up as a deterrent.
Throughout my ride along with Christopher Olivarez, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Public Safety in the South Texas region, I saw two small groups of adults traveling with children, and they were not arrested. One older man and two elementary-aged children crawled through the sharp fencing with nothing but a gallon-sized plastic bag of belongings. Having traveled, the older man with gray-white hair said, all the way from Colombia, he was heading another 2,000 miles northeast, to New York.
Late in the day, I watched as a third group, with several young people in their early 20s and one 17-year-old, waded across the Rio Grande in a raft of sorts. They shivered from the cold but had no qualms about trying to squeeze through the wire, even as a member of the Texas National Guard explained, in Spanish, that they’d be arrested for trespassing if they crossed. They continued to try.
In 2023, the Texas legislature passed a law, S.B. 4, that would allow local law enforcement to arrest migrants for illegally crossing the border. It created national controversy even though it was obvious the law was more proof the state of Texas bears an undue burden to keep order at the border. The Biden administration, among other organizations, sued Texas to stop the law, claiming S.B. 4 is unconstitutional.
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Last July, the Department of Justice, at Biden’s direction, sued Abbott over his efforts to secure the border by deploying marine barriers on the Rio Grande — a common, dangerous crossing point for migrants where several have drowned.
At every turn, whenever Texas has tried to implement different tactics or laws to maintain order, the Biden administration tries to stop them. For the administration then to turn around and claim Biden is finally doing something Congress won’t do, as he has a history of suing Texas for trying to keep the border secure, is disingenuous at best and another example of how Biden has failed the border at worst.
Nicole Russell is an opinion columnist for USA Today. She lives in Texas with her four children.