A New York Times examination of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s actions on immigration found that he and his closest advisers ignored early warnings about a border surge and rejected policies that might have eased a crisis that engulfed much of the Biden administration.
Their decisions created an opening for Donald J. Trump to win back the White House and adopt a more aggressive approach to immigration, The Times review found.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Mr. Biden blamed Republicans for blocking efforts to address the border crisis. “When it became clear Congress wouldn’t act, Biden took decisive action on his own,” the statement said.
Before Mr. Biden took office, advisers warned that his approach could lead to “chaos” at the border.
In August 2020, while Mr. Biden was still campaigning against President Trump in part by promising a more welcoming approach on immigration, his policy advisers wrote a memo warning that his proposals, coupled with pent-up migration demand under the Trump administration and economic hardship from the Covid pandemic, could lead to a huge increase in border crossings.
“A potential surge could create chaos and a humanitarian crisis, overwhelm processing capacities and imperil the agenda of the new administration,” the advisers wrote. They suggested a range of steps Mr. Biden could take as president to head off that surge, such as making it easier to quickly reject asylum claims. Mr. Biden and his inner circle ignored that advice.
The Biden team misread the politics of immigration.
As border encounters surged at the start of the Biden administration, policy advisers continued to push the White House to focus more on border enforcement and deterring migrants.
But top aides to Mr. Biden worried that doing so would alienate Latino and progressive voters, former administration officials said. And they believed that the crisis was not a significant concern for people outside of border states. Both assumptions proved to be wrong.
“They were a little too sensitive to criticisms from the left,” said Cecilia Muñoz, who helped shape immigration policy in the Obama administration and oversaw domestic and economic policy for the Biden transition team.
Instead of focusing on enforcement, Mr. Biden clung to the positions he had outlined during the campaign, which revolved around a rejection of Mr. Trump’s policies. Only in the second half of his administration, after Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas began sending large numbers of migrants to cities like Washington, New York and Denver, did Mr. Biden begin trying aggressive new policies to address the problem, culminating in his decision last year to close the border.
The White House rejected pleas to help Democratic cities cope with migrants.
Soon after Mr. Biden took office, as border crossings began to spike, policy advisers in his administration argued for the federal government to transport migrants to their final destinations, in coordination with local officials. Proponents said that such a plan would relieve pressure on border communities, as well as northern cities struggling to manage the flow of migrants.
The idea was similar to the busing campaign that Mr. Abbott started in 2022, but with the goal of helping, not straining, cities that were receiving migrants.
Mr. Biden’s top aides rejected the proposal, saying that it would make the problem worse by encouraging more migrants. Other aides argued that Congress had not authorized it. In hindsight, such an effort “would have made a profound difference,” according to Mike Johnston, the Democratic mayor of Denver.
Mr. Biden kept waiting for Congress to act — a strategy that failed.
Mr. Biden considered acting unilaterally to reduce border crossings as early as 2022, according to Ron Klain, his chief of staff at the time. But he held off because Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, at the time a Democrat, was in talks with Republicans about an immigration bill. Those discussions did not lead to an agreement.
In 2023, lawmakers restarted talks about a border bill. The deliberations again collapsed. Senator James Lankford, the lead Republican negotiator, blamed the Biden administration for dragging its feet. “We don’t want our fingerprints on these negotiations,” Mr. Lankford recalled the White House telling him.
That delayed the deal until after Mr. Trump had secured his party’s presidential nomination, Mr. Lankford said. If the talks had wrapped up sooner, he said, Mr. Trump might not have had the clout to torpedo the deal.
After the Senate talks failed, Mr. Biden used his authority to close the border without Congress. His efforts succeeded at reducing border crossings. But with just five months left before the election, his actions came too late to change voters’ minds about Democrats being the party of open borders.
Christopher Flavelle is a Times reporter covering how President Trump is transforming the federal government.
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