David J. Bier
David J. Bier
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.
Would Trump Have Stopped the Crisis?
President Joe Biden’s inability to remove everyone Border Patrol arrested was the result of logistical obstacles to removals, not a policy against removals. The logistical obstacles related primarily to non-Mexican families and children that Mexico would not accept unless they had shelter space for them and immigrants from outside Mexico and northern Central America.
Trump might say that he would have handled the logistical problems with families, children, and immigrants from distant countries better than Biden. Still, no administration has removed a majority of families and children for an entire fiscal year for as far back as we have records. As of December 2021, the government had still failed to remove most of the families and children who arrived in 2013 and every year after. It is not that they were not removed in that year. They were never removed. In 2021, Biden was still removing a much higher percentage of families and children than Trump in 2019, yet the border crisis continued anyway.
Again, the difficulties with removals of non-Mexicans and non-Central Americans were not unique to Biden. Every administration struggled to promptly remove a majority of non-Mexican, non-northern Central American border crossers, even when the flows were much lower than under Biden.
Biden wasn’t just dealing with the highest Border Patrol arrests ever. He was dealing with the most geographically diverse flows ever. Obviously, Border Patrol could not prepare for this situation as it had never occurred before. There were more of these immigrants arrested each year in 2021, 2022, and 2023 than were ever arrested in Border Patrol’s history. Nonetheless, Biden was still removing a higher number than in 2019. He was even removing a higher percentage of these crossers in 2021 when the crisis began than in 2019. » Read More
https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-part-3-would-trump-have-stopped-biden-border-crisis