A few days ago, the US Supreme Court invalidated President Joe Biden’s attempt to terminate Title 42, which was issued during the Trump era and allowed the authorities to use protocols to combat the spread of the coronavirus by preventing the entry of millions of migrants at the US-Mexican border.
By maintaining this article, immigrants are denied the opportunity to seek asylum at the border and they are immediately deported to Mexico.
This decision came at the request of 19 states led by republicans in light of the inability of these states to receive more immigrants, as they do not have sufficient resources to provide shelter, health services, or education for them. Moreover, some southern republican states, such as Texas and Arizona, have transported thousands of immigrants to states and cities ruled by the Democratic Party in the north on buses and planes in an attempt to highlight the dangers of Biden’s lenient policies with irregular immigrants.
These huge numbers of immigrants have increased dramatically in recent times due to Biden’s slogans and promises to encourage immigration. It is worth noting that the US border patrols arrested nearly 1.7 million people last year — the largest number of illegal immigrants in the US in one year. More than a million of these immigrants were quickly deported under Title 42, which Biden pledged to abolish earlier.
Biden may appear to be a defender of immigrants or the one who is resisting republicans to protect the vulnerable and those fleeing poverty, gangs, and thieves from their country. But his history certainly confirms the opposite. Facts on the ground also confirm that Biden’s criticism of Trump’s policies against immigrants and his pledges to pursue open policies were nothing more than propaganda and electoral slogans that prompted many to risk their lives on the borders for a darker future, and they may lose their lives in this risk as well.
Biden’s political history tells us, for example, that when he was a presidential candidate in 2008, he endorsed the border wall and said: “Unlike most Democrats, I voted for 700 miles of the fence.” Then, Biden served as vice president in an administration that deported three million people from the US.
Also, on the first day of his rule, Biden issued an executive presidential order to stop work on building the border wall approved by his predecessor. But in the face of an increasing numbers of undocumented immigrants arriving at the US southern border with Mexico, Biden backtracked completely and agreed to fill in some of the gaps that were left when construction was halted. This measure prompted Arizona Senator Democrat Mark Kelly to praise Biden’s decision, stressing that he was the first to push the Biden administration to close the gaps in the wall on the Arizona border with Mexico.
Surprisingly, despite Biden’s attempts to cancel Title 42, the Biden Administration asked the court to postpone the termination of this article until at least December 27 to avoid facing an expected influx of immigrants at the beginning of the year.
Furthermore, the Biden administration reopened the Immigrant Emergency Facility, which was one of the sins of the Trump administration and was opened for only one month in the summer of 2019. The Biden administration prepared the facility to accommodate up to 700 children between the ages of 13 to 17 years, even though Biden had severely criticised the matter, describing it as inhuman, with Kamila Harris, his deputy, also saying, “they are children in cages.”
Most importantly, the Biden administration is already updating a six-pillar plan that calls for expanded use of refugee deportations. Similar to Trump, Biden is trying to deter people from crossing the border, including adults who demand to cross the border.
It seems clear that Biden has no clear plan to protect immigrants or provide good living conditions for them. All that Biden aims to do is exploit immigrant issues to gain the votes of illegal immigrants from Central and South America for the Democrats. This is confirmed by the recent election laws, as a law was passed in 2021 allowing 800,000 non-citizens to vote in local elections. This is despite Biden’s previous pledge that he would not allow non-citizens to vote.
This obvious exploitation of the immigrant issue to gain more votes, even if by deceiving the people and giving them false hope, has become completely clear even for Latin Americans who have lost faith in the Democratic Party. This is where the percentage of support for the Democratic Party among Latinos decreased to the level of 33%, which is the lowest in the history of American elections.
Today, some Latino groups are opposed to the idea of illegal immigration and the chaos that Biden created with his floundering policies. Recently, American media outlets monitored the entry of criminal gangs into the US, such as the MS-13 gangs, which are among the fiercest organised crime gangs in El Salvador and many others. Thus, the Latinos in the US have realized that what they fled from in their country has arrived in the US because of the chaotic immigration policies.
Without a doubt, Biden’s only goal was to win the elections at the expense of manipulating the dreams of immigrants. This is where he failed to achieve all his promises of reforming the immigration system. Biden’s chaotic policies did nothing for immigrants. On the contrary, these contradictory policies created a humanitarian catastrophe on the borders of the US that led to the deaths of dozens and hundreds of immigrants. More importantly, these policies helped settle members of organised criminal groups within the US, and this is certainly one of the most devastating results that the Biden era will leave in the US.
* Marwa Al-Shinawy is an Assistant Professor at the International American University for Specialised Studies (IAUS)
