Biden Didn't Cause the Border Crisis by Being too Lax on Enforcement

Particularly since the election, a conventional wisdom has emerged that President Biden caused a border crisis by being lax on enforcement. My Cato Institute colleague David Bier, a leading immigration and border policy expert, has an excellent piece explaining why that conventional wisdom is largely wrong. Here is his summary of his main points:

The main takeaways are:

• Illegal immigration had already increased to a 21-year high by December 2020 before Biden came into office.
• Biden immediately started increasing expulsions from his first day in office.
• Biden tripled interior detention and increased border detention 12-fold.
• Biden increased air removal flights by 55 percent over 2020 levels.
• Biden negotiated broader expulsion deals with foreign countries than Trump.
• Biden got many foreign countries to carry out crackdowns on illegal and legal migration.
• Biden removed or expelled 3.3 million border crossers—3 times as many as Trump.
• Biden even managed to remove a similar percentage of crossers as Trump’s 4 years.

Despite Biden’s historic crackdown:

• Expulsions did not deter migrants, even among demographics universally expelled.
• Evasions of Border Patrol increased as rapidly as Border Patrol arrests, implying that releases did not cause the crisis and that many people did not want Border Patrol to catch them but were undeterred by the threat.
• Releases occurred not because Biden cut removals but because migration grew faster than the administration could increase them.
• As a result, releases only occurred among specific demographic groups and in specific areas where removals were logistically complicated.
• Biden could not easily remove groups to Mexico, like families, children, and immigrants from distant countries who were arrested in record numbers.

The actual causes of the increases in illegal immigration were:

• Unprecedented labor demand, which incentivized and funded migration from around the world: From February 2021 to August 2024, there were more open jobs each month than in any month before Biden’s term began. During this time, economies worldwide were recovering far less quickly than the United States. As labor demand subsided in 2024, immigration fell.
• Unprecedented access to information about migration through the Internet and social media: Internet access rose rapidly from 2018 to 2021, nearly doubling in Central America and reaching unprecedented highs in South America. Social media platforms gave people step-by-step instructions on migrating and connected them directly with smugglers. This opened migration from around the world—which contributed to the number of releases.
• Novel and perverse enforcement policies: The Title 42 expulsion policy incentivized repeat crossings by returning people to Mexico, where they could immediately attempt to re-enter the United States. Title 42 also cut off access to asylum, incentivizing more Border Patrol evasions.
• Novel and perverse legal migration policies: Title 42 and related pandemic restrictions not only banned asylum for people who crossed illegally but also prohibited legal entries by asylum seekers, including demographic groups that had traditionally always entered legally, like Haitians, Cubans, and Mexican families. Biden eventually increased legal entries by these groups and others, limiting the crisis’s extent and ultimately contributing to its end.

The rest of the article substantiates these points in detail. I agree with almost everything David says. As he and I explained in a November 2023 USA Today article, the best way to address border issues is to make legal migration easier. Unfortunately, as we described in the same piece, the Biden administration undermined its own otherwise laudable efforts to do just that, because of bureaucratic constraints and arbitrary numerical limits on parole programs that expand legal migration.

I would add two points to David’s analysis. First, in addition to the “pull” factor of the hot US labor market (emphasized by Bier), there was also the “push” provided by intensifying poverty, violence, and repression in countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, and Haiti. Both played a role in increasing illegal migration over the last several years.

Second, it is notable that Biden’s many restrictionist measures – documented by Bier – did little to increase his popularity. At the very least, this weakens the claim that such policies are obvious political winners for Democrats. I would not go to the opposite extreme of saying that the policy I prefer – near-total open borders – would be popular, either. But, as Bier and I have long argued, making legal migration easier can reduce chaos at the border, and thereby reduce the political backlash such chaos creates.

For those who care, Bier and I were both highly critical of Biden’s use of Title 42 restrictions (which extended a policy first adopted by Trump) and “Trump-lite” asylum policies at the time. These policies were legally dubious, caused great harm, and largely failed even to achieve Biden’s political goals. Sometimes, harmful, counterproductive, and unjust policies can boost politicians’ popularity. In this instance, they failed even to do that.

In a previous post on this issue, I commented on a related piece by Alex Nowrasteh, who also works on immigration policy at Cato.

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