Biden's border crackdown: too little, too late?

Apparently, there's a migrant crisis on the US-Mexican border, said the Las Vegas Review-Journal. And apparently, Joe Biden has the authority to do something about it. "Who knew?"  During Biden's tenure, some eight million people have crossed the border illegally. Only now is he taking urgent action.

Last week he issued an executive order designed to slash the number of people illegally crossing into the US. Under the rule, new arrivals (bar a few exceptions, such as unaccompanied minors) will automatically lose the right to claim asylum once illegal crossings exceed a daily average of 2,500 over a week, so making it easy for the authorities to deport them. The border will only reopen to asylum seekers after the number of illegal crossings drops below 1,500 per day. As illegal crossings are currently above the 2,500 threshold – as they have been for more than three years – the restriction took immediate effect.

It's too little, too late, said Andrew Arthur in the New York Post. When Biden came into office, he encouraged an influx by dismantling many of Donald Trump's effective border measures, such as the "Remain in Mexico" policy, which required certain asylum seekers to return to Mexico while their claims were adjudicated. Now, behind in the polls and eager to placate public concerns, he has rushed out this measure. Yet the 2,500 daily limit is "laughable". Combined with other programmes, it would still allow for the entry of "more than 1.5 million people a year, higher than almost any other point in history".

Biden's executive order is unlikely to survive legal challenges, said Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. Trump sought to enact a similar ban in 2018, only to be blocked by federal courts that ruled it a violation of asylum laws. But it has served a political purpose, by drawing attention to the dishonest tactics of his Republican opponents. Biden explained that he has had to resort to an executive order because the GOP sabotaged a tough bipartisan border security plan earlier this year. Trump told Republicans to block it because he didn't want Biden to secure a legislative "win".

Now that his executive order has come under legal fire, Biden may be tempted to launch a fresh effort this summer to get immigration reforms through congress. He'll take any opportunity to highlight his good-faith efforts to address the border and Republicans' jaw-dropping hypocrisy".