Joe Biden Flip-Flopped on Immigration and Embraced Trump’s Tactics
In the January 2025 issue of Reason, we’re giving performance reviews of Joe Biden’s presidency. Click here to read the other entries.
When Joe Biden described his vision for the U.S. immigration system in 2020, the presidential candidate painted himself as the antidote to Donald Trump’s cruel restrictionism. “Trump has waged an unrelenting assault on our values and our history as a nation of immigrants,” Biden’s campaign website charged. He promised to “take urgent action to undo Trump’s damage.”
In some ways he did that. On his first day in office, Biden rescinded Trump policies restricting the entry of people from several Muslim-majority and African countries and revoked the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement priorities, which had dramatically expanded the pool of immigrants prioritized for deportation. Biden sent Congress a comprehensive immigration bill, which included a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and retention measures for foreign STEM graduates of U.S. universities, among other sensible measures.
Since those early days—and even in those early days—Biden’s commitment to a kinder, gentler immigration system has wavered. Faced with a chaotic Mexican border, his administration has repeatedly reverted to the very tactics he lambasted Trump for using.
Biden maintained Trump’s legacy by renewing the pandemic-era Title 42 order, which allowed U.S. border agents to expel migrants quickly without letting them seek asylum. In 2023, the administration waived federal laws to allow border wall construction in South Texas, despite campaign trail promises of “not another foot.” Biden revived many aspects of a Trump-era “transit ban,” which barred migrants from applying for asylum in the U.S. if they didn’t do so in another country before reaching the border. And Biden, who once charged that Trump was “fighting tooth & nail to deny those fleeing dangerous situations their right to seek asylum,” did just that in June when he significantly restricted access to the asylum proce
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