David J. Bier
Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.
Would Trump Have Stopped the Crisis?
President Joe Biden’s inability to remove everyone Border Patrol arrested was the result of logistical obstacles to removals, not a policy against removals. The logistical obstacles related primarily to non-Mexican families and children that Mexico would not accept unless they had shelter space for them and immigrants from outside Mexico and northern Central America.
Trump might say that he would have handled the logistical problems with families, children, and immigrants from distant countries better than Biden. Still, no administration has removed a majority of families and children for an entire fiscal year for as far back as we have records. As of December 2021, the government had still failed to remove most of the families and children who arrived in 2013 and every year after. It is not that they were not removed in that year. They were never removed. In 2021, Biden was still removing a much higher percentage of families and children than Trump in 2019, yet the border crisis continued anyway.
Again, the difficulties with removals of non-Mexicans and non-Central Americans were not unique to Biden. Every administration struggled to promptly remove a majority of non-Mexican, non-northern Central American border crossers, even when the flows were much lower than under Biden.
Biden wasn’t just dealing with the highest Border Patrol arrests ever. He was dealing with the most geographically diverse flows ever. Obviously, Border Patrol could not prepare for this situation as it had never occurred before. There were more of these immigrants arrested each year in 2021, 2022, and 2023 than were ever arrested in Border Patrol’s history. Nonetheless, Biden was still removing a higher number than in 2019. He was even removing a higher percentage of these crossers in 2021 when the crisis began than in 2019.
Biden’s actions reduced the time it took to process an asylum seeker for removal through the fear screening process by more than 85 percent, leading to the most removal orders ever in immigration courts. Biden substantially increased the United States’ removal capacity. His administration ended up removing nearly 3.3 million people arrested by Border Patrol compared with 1.2 million for Trump.
More remarkably, Biden removed a nearly identical percentage as Trump in 2021—at the start of the crisis—despite nearly as many people arriving in that year as all of Trump’s four years combined. Even looking at all four years of Biden, the share of individuals removed was not radically different from Trump’s. The removal rate does not explain the difference in the numbers arriving.
Biden’s Election Did Not Cause the Crisis
Illegal immigration ultimately more than tripled under Biden from the 2020 level. But contrary to the myth, illegal immigration was already increasing under Trump, not dissipating as many people erroneously believe. Biden’s election and election statements are often blamed for the border crisis. Some commentators pin even the border situation at the end of 2020 on Biden’s election, theorizing that immigrants were anticipating more favorable conditions under Biden. However, the FOIA data help refute this narrative. Biden’s election did not cause any deviation in the trend.
Biden did not cause the border crisis. The border crisis started before Biden came into office or was even elected and it ended before he left office. The graph below shows the number of Border Patrol arrests for each December back to 1999. Trump left office with the most arrests in twenty-one years. Arrests under Trump’s watch had already increased 64 percent over the level in December 2016. The crisis was coming whether Trump was reelected or not.
Many people believe that the border crisis only started subsiding when Biden signed his asylum ban executive order in June 2024 and that this proves Biden’s inaction on immigration before this point caused the crisis. But Biden’s border order only accelerated a preexisting decline, and signing it earlier would have made no difference:
From December 2023 to May 2024—before Biden’s order—Border Patrol arrests had already fallen 53 percent (see Figure). Over the following five months, from May to September 2024, arrests fell another 54 percent. The border crisis was already dissipating when Biden signed his executive order.
Biden already tried to enforce an absolute asylum ban under Title 42 from 2021 to May 2023. It didn’t work because arrivals overwhelmed his capacity to enforce the ban. Biden wouldn’t have obtained different results had he signed this executive order in 2021; it would have just duplicated what already existed.
Finally, the executive order did not radically change enforcement conditions at the southwest border. The purpose of the order was to enable Border Patrol to increase its removal capacity and deport more people. This did not happen. Total arrivals fell, but not thanks to any increase in the government’s ability to remove people. The graph below shows that border removal capacity has been effectively fixed at around 30,000 since the end of Title 42. This means the marginal border crosser is still being released, but migration is falling for other reasons.
Even looking at the percentage of border crossers removed, Border Patrol removed a higher percentage of crossers in 2021, 2022, and parts of 2023 than it has since Biden’s executive order. Biden’s order achieved a less successful result, with many fewer crossers in 2024, and did not end the crisis.
Taking a step back, Biden never had asylum rules as unrestricted as during Trump’s presidency before 2020. If asylum had been the most important factor, illegal immigration should have been lower throughout Biden’s term than during Trump’s.
Read Biden Didn’t Cause the Border Crisis, Part 4: What caused the border crisis?