Donald Trump Would Be Horrible at Dealing with Unauthorized Immigration. Here’s Why.

“As empty vessels make the loudest sound: so they that have least wit, are the greatest babblers.”

– William Baldwin, A Treatise of Moral Philosophy

The United States has been facing an unauthorized immigration crisis for years.  Policies aimed at managing our southern border, regulating asylum claims, and maintaining a workable approach have proven elusive.

With the 2024 election fast approaching, more Americans believe that Donald Trump would be better equipped to deal with the task than Kamela Harris.

The majority is wrong.

In this article, we focus on former President Trump’s horrible record with respect to the unauthorized immigration situation in the United States.  With facts and figures from high quality information sources, we first explore the reality of the evolving situation from 2007 to the present day.  We then analyze Mr. Trump’s rhetoric, policies, and other actions during his presidential term and since.

Contrary to common belief, this article will demonstrate that Mr. Trump has exacerbated the problem greatly through the political opportunism, deceit, and gross incompetence of himself and his allies.  In sharp contrast, President Biden, Vice President Harris, and their allies have made policy changes and advocated for measures that would have together far more effectively, and humanely, addressed the crisis – if Republicans in Congress had not blocked what they could of their efforts to actually solve the problems.

The Claim

Before we can accurately evaluate Mr. Trump’s record, it’s crucial to understand his characterization of southern border migrants.  From the day he announced he’d run for president in June 2015, he cast a very cynical, dangerous, and frightening pall over southern border migrants.  He claimed they were an “invasion” and consisted of many horrible gang members, rapists, drug traffickers, and other nefarious criminals.  There is “an invasion of our country with drugs, with human traffickers, with all types of criminals and gangs,” and if we don’t halt it “the current influx… threatens to overwhelm our immigration system and our communities, and poses unacceptable dangers to the entire nation.”  In 2018, he also claimed that “large, well-organized caravans of migrants are marching towards our southern border.  Some people call it an ‘invasion.’  It’s like an invasion.  They have violently overrun the Mexican border… These are tough people, in many cases.  A lot of young men, strong men.”

Mr. Trump has continued to regularly make the same dark claims over the years since about migrants up to the present day.  And many Republicans in office and prominent right wing media companies like Fox have parroted the same dismal sentiments about southern border migrants.  As recently as during the 2024 presidential debate, Mr. Trump falsely claimed that a community of Haitian “illegal” immigrants (who are actually quite legal, authorized immigrants) are stealing and eating pet dogs and cats in Springfield, Illinois.  His own vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance, has likewise defended Mr. Trump’s many disparaging, denigrating, and racist falsehoods about immigrants, including this typical (though particularly out there) recent lie.  According to a recent Pew Research Center poll, an overwhelming majority of Trump supporters (92%) say that immigrants living in the country illegally make crime worse.

Reality check: Mr. Trump and his allies have flat out lied about unauthorized migrants, and egregiously and repetitively so.  And his supporters have apparently been fooled.  This is demonstrated in polls and interviews with his supporters.  Because they believe him, Mr. Trump’s repeated lies have had dire consequences: we’ve seen threats and crimes committed against immigrants, legal or otherwise, rising sharply in direct response to his vile rhetoric.

The Bush and Obama Years

Let’s now cover the facts which debunk Mr. Trump’s broader false narrative.  We begin by examining the broader context of unauthorized immigration trends leading up to his presidency.

In sharp contrast with Mr. Trump’s dramatic and false claims that the “hordes” are “invading” to rape and kill us all, the total unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. has, in fact, steadily declined from 2007 to 2017.  It peaked in President Bush’s final term in office at approximately 12.2 million.  By President Obama’s final year in office in 2016, the unauthorized total population had dropped down to about 10.7 million.  It continued to drop, down to 10.5 million, in President Trump’s first year in office in 2017.  With the rise of America’s total population from 302 million to 327 million between those years, this means the total population of unauthorized immigrants as a percentage of the total U.S. population dropped from about 4% down to around 3%.

In other words, while he began claiming the opposite in 2015 (and hasn’t stopped), more unauthorized migrants were leaving the U.S. than entering it for many years.

While the topic of unauthorized immigration often focuses on southern border crossings, it is also notable that more than half (62%) the total unauthorized population of migrants did not arrive in the U.S. by crossing the southern border.  The majority actually came by airplane, and applied for and were granted legal status (e.g. green card, work visa, etc.), but later let their legal status expire.  So illegal southern border crossings actually account for a minority of the unauthorized migration.

While illegal southern border crossings over the same time span fluctuated a bit, the numbers similarly declined.  The border patrol apprehended approximately 830 thousand migrants illegally crossing the southern border in 2007.  By the year 2016, there were 479 thousand apprehensions, and in 2017, it dropped to 304 thousand.  According to the CBP, the total number of individuals attempting to cross illegally is less than these numbers given that about 10% of apprehensions are repeated attempts by the same individuals.

These figures demonstrate that immigration enforcement was largely effective in curbing unauthorized crossings during the Obama years.  The one area which remained in need of improvement with respect to border security by 2016 was a need for more staff and equipment at ports of entry (where southern border migrants are processed for entry into the U.S.).  Expert-conducted research, such as that published by the Washington Office on Latin America, consistently concluded that more staff and gear was needed at that time to specifically find more of the small and more easily concealed shipments of illegal drugs entering the country.

An important demographic shift occurred during these years as well: considerably more families and unaccompanied minors were attempting to cross the border.  By 2014, families and unaccompanied minors made up a significant portion of apprehensions, which posed unique challenges for the U.S. immigration system.  And in contrast with Mr. Trump’s characterization that they are all “strong, young men”, only about 13% of the apprehended were young men between 16 and 34 years of age.

It is crucial to note that the vast majority of these individuals did not, and still do not, have criminal records.  Most unauthorized immigrants were, and are still, fleeing violence, poverty, and political instability in their home countries — particularly from Central America’s Northern Triangle (Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador).  As a result, many were seeking asylum in the United States to be safe from violent criminals: they were not criminals themselves.  Of all migrants apprehended at the border, only around 3% have criminal records.  And while Mr. Trump and his right wing allies in government and at Fox have been ablaze with dire warnings about violent gangs coming to get us all, less than two-tenths of a percent of the unauthorized are gang members.

As for what these people are doing once they get into the U.S. illegally, the facts show that, contrary to popular belief yet again, crime rates in communities along the border with large unauthorized populations are for the most part lower, not higher, than the national average.  Unauthorized immigrants in fact commit fewer crimes than native U.S. citizens on average, not more.  Perhaps the fear of being discovered and deported is a strong motivating factor for this very low crime rate.  Examining records from 2015, of the 23 border communities in the U.S. including sanctuary cities, only five have higher rates of violent crime than the national average; and just one or two of the five have a comparable rate.  Only three of the 23 have higher rates of homicide than the national average; only one of the three has a significantly higher rate.

To call Mr. Trump’s and his allies’ claims false is therefore a gross understatement, to put it mildly.  Of course criminality amongst the unauthorized exists, and laws should be, and have been, appropriately enforced.  But in spite of the demeaning and violent rhetoric, the unauthorized community is far from being “hordes” of violent murderers, rapists, and gang members.  Many are traveling families and unaccompanied minors who risk a lot when they illegally cross over the border.  And they often have very good reasons for taking such risks.  Some are desperately seeking a better life for their impoverished, hungry families with children.  Others are fleeing real gangs and criminals, political oppression and violence, or devastating natural disasters in their poor, corrupt home countries that destroyed all hope of rebuilding their lives.  While regulating border crossings is nonetheless necessary, it is crucial to first understand the situation, and empathize with their situations, before you can effectively decide on how to most effectively improve the situation for all parties involved.

Trump’s Policies: Cruelty and Incompetence

Mr. Trump’s rhetoric is clearly revealed to be chock full of falsehoods in light of the facts.  But they were not mere words.  His many lies formed the basis of his presidential administration’s immigration and border security policies.  And they govern his proposed plans if he were reelected.

The Trump administration’s policies of 2017 – 2020 demonstrated both extraordinary cruelty and incompetence.  They failed to address the actual root causes behind our immigration and asylum systems’ issues.  Instead, they greatly exacerbated the problems at the southern border, creating a real crisis.  And they inflicted needless, lifelong suffering to vulnerable populations.

One of the most damaging aspects of the Trump administration’s immigration policy was the approach to asylum seekers.  The administration sought to bring down the backlog of asylum cases which had reached over 542 thousand cases in January 2017.  Mr. Trump’s first Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, saw to it that two-thirds of judge seats at U.S. Justice Department immigration courts were filled with a slew of new and often unvetted and unqualified judges.  The judges were primarily instructed to be biased against asylees and reject most asylum cases, thwarting the fairness of rulings.  A series of policy decisions were also made by both Mr. Trump and Mr. Sessions, such as eliminating judges’ authority to suspend or terminate cases – a power routinely used to set aside less urgent cases and focus on more complex asylum and criminal cases under the Obama administration.

The changes effectively backfired.  Instead of expediting asylum processing and denying and deporting more asylum seekers, the Trump administration broke and bogged the system down in a cluster of their incompetence.  By December 2020, the number of backlogged asylum cases had more than doubled to 1.29 million.  This count does not even include the over 300 thousand additional cases that Mr. Sessions’s policy decision to retroactively apply the removal of judges’ suspension and termination powers to previously suspended or terminated cases, which had not made it the active docket.  Hence, the backlog count might have been more accurately closer to 1.6 million cases by December 2020.

Another self-destructive policy change was Mr. Trump’s decision to enable the Department of Homeland Security to file many more cases, which ultimately piled up onto an already beleaguered system.  The decision was to no longer focus on deporting unauthorized immigrants with criminal records as with the Obama administration, but to instead broadly deport any and all unauthorized migrants whether they have criminal records or not.  And as we have seen, the vast majority of apprehended migrants (97%) do not have criminal records, which remarkably multiplied the pool of potential cases by a few dozen.

White House officials in the Trump administration in 2018 and early 2019 blamed the backlog explosion on the increasing number of migrants illegally crossing the border.  But this was a lie.  Back in mid-2019, the backlog had already grown to over 876 thousand cases.  While the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) both saw upticks in domestic arrests and border apprehensions in 2018 and 2019, this increase does not account for the spiking backlog growth.  The growth of 334 thousand more cases amounted to more than double the number of additional arrests and apprehensions.  And that does not include the additional 300+ thousand cases reopened but not in the active docket.

The truth is, appointing a lot of judges you need to adjudicate cases they’re not qualified to adjudicate, coupled by crippling policy changes and vastly expanding the number of potential individuals to file cases against, leads to a lot of mistakes, a lot of extra work, and a spiraling growth in backlogged cases.

Interviews with judges, lawyers, and court staff have further revealed a consensus that most of the Trump administration’s policy changes indeed crippled the courts’ ability to process asylum cases.  The average time it took asylees to have their day in court in December 2020 was between four and five years.  This left many thousands of asylee individuals and families in limbo for all those years.

Other cruel policies enacted by Mr. Trump with his administration were widely condemned by the international community for being in violation of international human rights.  Specifically, it is illegal to send asylees to regions of high danger according to international law.  After the Trump administration began its Remain in Mexico policy, some 60 thousand asylum seekers were deported back to Mexico.  But migrants in Mexico’s northern border towns or in other dangerous parts face rampant harassment and violent crime.  And with the Trump administration’s “safe third country” agreements, many additional asylum seekers were deported to El Salvador, Guatemala, or Honduras, and were required to seek asylum there first.  Given that these governments are highly corrupt and incapable of processing asylum cases, in effect they were deprived of their lawful right to seek asylum, and forced back to face the very violence they fled in the first place.

For the few percent who had indeed committed crimes, America’s security was compromised by the Trump administration as it allowed criminals to enjoy these years of delay before eventually having their day in court scheduled.

For migrant individuals and families with children and infants, at best they were unable to settle down permanently and could not get on with their lives for several years.

At worst, tens of thousands of migrants who legitimately feared and fled the violence where they came from were deported back to be robbed, raped, maimed, traumatized, and murdered.  For far too many, by the time their case hearings would be scheduled years later, it would be too late for these men, women, and children whose only crime was to cross a border without permission in their desperate attempt to evade poverty, violence, and murder for their families.

But the incompetence and cruelty of the Trump administration would only get worse.

Family Separations: A Policy of Cruelty

Starting in early 2017, the Department of Homeland Security under Mr. Trump began the especially cruel practice of separating families.  Not only were husbands and wives separated, but children and even infants were taken from their parents or legal guardians.  This was done whether they were caught crossing the border illegally or coming through legal ports of entry.  Family separations were done purposely by the administration in yet another failed attempt to dissuade migrants from coming to the border.

Children were placed into metal cages, forced to live in squalid conditions wholly inadequate for the care of young children.  They had no toys or books to occupy them.  An infant was reportedly pried from a mother while breastfeeding.  In at least one facility, detained five year old toddlers were forced to change the diapers of detained infants.  Over a thousand lawsuits were filed over the years since, charging sexual abuse against detained children, including 178 cases of rape committed by adults, as well as cases of kissing, fondling, and lewdly watching the children shower.  Guards were caught on video laughing and cracking jokes about the detained children while the children’s cries resounded around them.  Some facilities caging the children were found to have had inadequate food, water, or sanitation.  Some facilities also failed to provide basic hygiene, such as not providing for them to bathe or brush their teeth.  Some children died while in custody due to the combination of the extreme stress of essentially being kidnapped by the Trump administration, the sheer negligence of the system, and inadequate medical care.  Hundreds of parents were actually deported without their children.

By June 2018, DHS formally and publicly admitted to separating over two thousand children from their parents.  Mr. Trump’s appointed Homeland Security Secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, repeatedly lied to the public by claiming family separations were never their policy, even after the DHS publicly admitted they were doing so just a few days earlier.  A week later, former President Trump signed an executive order halting the so-called “Zero Tolerance” practice of separating parents and children.  This only came to be after mounting public outcries of horror against what was essentially the government-sanctioned kidnapping, torture, and manslaughter of children and their grief-stricken parents, and after a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction requiring immigration authorities to reunite the separated families within 30 days, and to reunite all children under five years of age with their parents within two weeks.

But the Trump administration did not stop the family separations, nor did they reunite the families.  It continued the practice of family separations secretly.  By October 2018, Amnesty International uncovered that over six thousand children had been separated from the parents.  Excuses were made by the DHS, claiming they had to continue separating families where the parents were supposedly criminals or gang members and a danger to their children.  But records indicate this to be yet another lie.  Separations were performed on migrants for the most minor of records: possession of a small amount of marijuana, a traffic violation, etc..  The DHS also relied on information supplied by foreign governments about the supposed criminal activities of migrants.  Given that many migrants are fleeing corrupt governments and criminal dictatorships, exactly how reliable is the word of officials working for such governments?  Especially if they are political refugees labeled “criminals” simply for daring to speak truth to power in a dictatorship.

The DHS as well did not bother to properly keep track of the separated children.  In May 2019, the administration’s DHS announced that over 1,700 additional children were separated from their parents before the executive order was put into place.  Who can say how many more were left uncounted to this day?  They also failed to satisfy the 2018 injunction to reunite families.  In July 2019, over 900 children were counted as still not reunited with their parents.

Yet in August a month later, the DHS and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under the Trump administration doubled down on their extraordinary cruelty.  They rescinded the Customs and Border Patrol’s requirements to limit migrant child detentions to 20 days or less, to comply with certain standards of care, and to place children in the “least restrictive” setting in accord with their age.  This ruling allowed the Trump administration to detain migrant families indefinitely.

The lifelong trauma inflicted on these families was profound, to say the least.  Some families remain unreunited to this day, and may never be reunited due to poor record-keeping and a lack of transparency by the Trump administration.  This policy was widely condemned both domestically and internationally as a gross violation of human rights.  Yet, Trump has remained unsympathetic and unapologetic, and his supporters continue to actually and falsely praise this malevolent policy as a deterrent to illegal immigration.  In reality, it was nothing short of a cruel and heartless display of authoritarian power, with no regard for the human cost.

According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, studies of detained immigrants have shown that children and parents may suffer negative physical and emotional symptoms from detention, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.  Even after children are released from detention, post-traumatic stress symptoms can be long-term, negatively impacting their emotional, mental and physical health into adulthood.  Two pediatricians testified in Congress following President Trump’s 2018 executive order.  In a press statement, Dr. Kraft said:

“Per the Academy’s policy statement, there is no evidence that any amount of time in detention is ‘safe’ for children.  In fact, even short periods of detention can cause psychological trauma and long-term mental health risks for children.

In addition to the health consequences associated with detention, the conditions in the detention facilities themselves can be traumatizing. Some of these conditions include open toilets, forcing children to sleep on cement floors, constant light exposure, insufficient food and water, no bathing facilities, and extremely cold temperatures.

No child should ever have to endure these conditions.”

After four years of lies and horrible policies, it turned out President Trump, instead of resolving a fictitious immigration crisis, helped to create a very real one.

Belligerence Toward Mexico

We’ve seen how Mr. Trump extensively lied about, disparaged, and insulted Mexico, Mexicans, and unauthorized migrants since campaigning in 2015.  From claiming Mexico would pay for his ill-conceived border wall (a waste of billions of taxpayer dollars), to threatening to impose tariffs on America’s largest trading partner (which would have hiked inflation, the cost of living, and caused an economic recession for the U.S.), to threatening to launch missiles into Mexico and send the U.S. military in to attack drug cartels on Mexican soil (which, alone, should greatly alarm every American, as it shows great irrationality and would have certainly provoked a needless war with Mexico), to say that President Trump only strained diplomatic relations between the two countries would be an understatement.

In Mexico, there was nearly universal dislike and strong opposition to President Trump throughout his administration – far greater unpopularity than any American president previously or since.  Mexicans grew resentful of being accused of such ignorant things as sending “rapists and murderers,” as Mr. Trump has repeatedly and irresponsibly insulted them.  A popular sentiment of no longer being willing to do America’s dirty work swelled, becoming a significant factor in Mexico’s election of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador in 2018.

This decision, inspired by Mr. Trump, would prove Mexico’s undoing as a democracy, cause the Mexican people great trauma, and truly created a far graver crisis for the U.S. and our southern border to contend with.

Mexico has indeed been doing America’s dirty work for decades.  Our southern neighbor’s own immigration situation has mirrored America’s in important respects.  Like the U.S., Mexico has been overwhelmed by migrants from their own southern border with Guatemala.  Mexico’s immigration system has likewise been bogged down and broken, with court dates for asylum claims taking years to be scheduled.  Mexico has resorted to detaining migrants in detention centers as well, some of which have had similar complaints as the Trump administration’s, such as providing inadequate food, water, hygienic, and medical attention to detainees.

Mexican President López Obrador ran his presidential campaign with the slogan “Abrazos, no Balas” (“Hugs, not Bullets”).  In response to the violent clashes between federal police and drug gang members that had left many bystanders dead or injured over the years, he promised to radically alter how Mexico deals with the drug cartels.  President López Obrador replaced the federal police with a new Mexican national guard, with army veterans filling the ranks.  He provided socio-economic incentives for gang members to stop their lives of crime and become productive members of society.  He idyllically used the carrot approach instead of the stick approach, at least superficially, with the professed hope of letting Mexico put the days of violent gang crime behind them.

But the policy changes only exacerbated the violence and government corruption.  Embolded by Mexico’s lax law enforcement, the drug gangs used assassinations and bloodshed to consolidate their power.  Two large and very powerful competing drug cartels emerged: the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels (the Sinaloa cartel was run by the infamous criminal known as “El Choppo”; his four sons now run the cartel in his absence).  Arrests of gang members fell to 2,800 in 2022 from 21,700 in 2018 under President López Obrador’s new policies.  Assassinations of government officials rose by fourfold from 2018 to 2022, with the drug cartels accounting for 70% of them.  City and regional government corruption rose sharply as cartel members bribed, intimidated, and assassinated politicians and their families.

With larger political control over more of Mexico, the country became a far more dangerous place to live.  This is the real reason why Mexican migrants, as well as other migrants particularly from Guatemala, El Salvidor, and Honduras traveling to Mexico, have been forgetting about staying in Mexico and fleeing further north to the southern U.S. border in suddenly far greater numbers up to the present day.

By 2019, the U.S. border with Mexico had truly devolved into a crisis.  The number of illegal border crossings spiked to over a whopping 851 thousand in 2019 under President Trump’s watch, compared to just over 303 thousand in 2018.  It was the first time illegal crossings had increased since President Bush’s final term in 2007.

After President Trump threatened massive tariffs on Mexico in response to the spike, President López Obrador seized the opportunity to exert more authoritarian power over Mexico.  Back in 2006 when he first ran for President in Mexico and lost (and again in 2012), he hotly contested the election and held a grudge ever since.  While giving the appearance of being a center left candidate, in truth he was a dangerous authoritarian demagogue, not much different than former President Trump.  While lying about his disastrous policies by denying and rhetorically minimizing the spike in violent crime largely at the hands of the cartels, President López Obrador took inspiration from President Trump.  He began to harshly crack down on migrants throughout Mexico.  He collaborated with the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, and, to the grave detriment of the country, redirected his new national guard away from dealing with the growing power of the drug cartels, towards immigration enforcement.  Reports of using tear gas and shootings of migrants by the guard rose, and the detention centers became even more dismal.  Like President Trump, President López Obrador began to now corrupt Mexico himself through demagoguery and exerting more and more unconstitutional and unchecked power, damaging democratic norms and leading Mexico back to the authoritarian regime it once was before.  He’s attacked and vilified Mexico’s media, just like former President Trump has.  He went a step further by using spyware to spy on and harm individual reporters who’ve been critical of him.  He also attempted to enact so-called “election reforms” that would have targeted and crippled Mexico’s ability to hold free and fair elections, ensuring he and his own party could retain power indefinitely at all levels of government.  Mexico’s Supreme Court thankfully overturned those reforms, though President López Obrador has been effectively able to hand pick his presidential successor nonetheless.

Back during Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, there was no migrant crisis in fact, in spite of his rhetoric to the contrary.  Indeed, his false claims, that violent migrant hordes were flooding across the southern border into America to rape and murder everyone, we now see were truer in the reverse.  The migrants were not the rapists, murderers, or gang members he’d claimed.  They were, and continue to be, largely the victims of sexual assault, violence, and murder by Mexico’s powerful drug cartels.

The drug cartels have increasingly ravaged Mexico with violence and corruption under President López Obrador’s presidency.  The cartels have been funded in large part by fentanyl addicts in America.  Smuggling migrants to the U.S. border has likewise proven profitable for them.  And the arsenal of guns they use to exact their violence are largely purchased from American sellers.

What would have made more sense for the U.S. to do is to crack down on the fentanyl supply chain (i.e. funding for more agents and equipment at ports of entry), and to stop selling guns to Mexican cartels.  These actions alone would have reduced the power of the cartels, allowing Mexico to regain more control over its criminal cartels, make Mexico a safer place to live, and thereby giving less cause for migrants to flee into the U.S..

Alas, sense is not a quality Mr. Trump has ever been in possession of.  He simply reacts like a Neanderthal and, again, alarmed and angered Mexicans (and many Americans) by suggesting we fire missiles at drug cartels in Mexico’s territory, or even send the U.S. military in.  President Trump even suggested we lie and blame it on another country.  All of which, besides breaking international laws, provoking international conflict, and being a needless, self-damaging, and clear act of war against our largest trading partner, Mexico, it would have been an impossible task.  Fentanyl, in demand for years now, is a synthetic drug so cheap to make and high in demand that its far more lucrative for Mexico’s drug cartels than cocaine or marijuana were in the past.  The drug cartels erect small cheap labs all over the place to manufacture the drug.  If one or several are destroyed, several more can pop up in short time and at little cost to them.  Militarily, the cartels have gained so much military power, a battle between Mexico’s National Guard and the Sinaloa cartel made it evident to the country that the cartels were now capable of overpowering and defeating the country’s own national armed forces.

There is so much that could have been done better by both the U.S. and Mexico in those years.  If the U.S. at least had had a rational, knowledgeable, wise, and competent president, instead of reacting idiotically like an angry man-child, we could have potentially avoided a true border crisis, addressed the real causes of illegal migration, and provided a pathway forward to solidifying a more rational, more secure, and more compassionate approach to our border security and unauthorized migrants.

Instead, America chose an ignorant and reactive buffoon to lead the most powerful nation in the world in 2016.  And we’ve all paid the dire consequences of this folly.

Brief Overview of the Biden-Harris Years

While President Biden immediately started the work of reversing and revoking the Trump administration’s horribly cruel and incompetent policies from day one in late January 2021, he was left with a very bad situation by his predecessor.  President Biden had the stark task of having to rebuild the infrastructure that former President Trump had broken and left in ruins, and at a time when the numbers of illegal border crossings started skyrocketing again (after a slowdown in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic) to what would become as much as five times the levels of previous years.

More might have been done by the Biden administration to improve the crisis, truth be told.  But President Biden did make good strides, and made some headway.  He was not more successful in large part because noble efforts were blocked by Republicans in Congress whose loyalty to Mr. Trump outweighed their supposed concerns for border security.  Most notably was the 2024 border security and immigration bill that two prominent conservative Republicans co-wrote.  President Biden supported the bill, which contained all that was needed to best secure the border and handle unauthorized immigration, such as more funding for border staff and equipment in order to break down the supply chain of fentanyl flowing into the U.S..

But after Mr. Trump publicly tweeted and spoke out against the bill, Republicans in Congress led by Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, opted to reject the border security bill.  They made excuses, but the reality is that they rejected it because Mr. Trump wanted to keep the border in crisis.  He wanted to lie and blame President Biden for the border crisis, using the issue for his own political campaign rather than see progress made under his rival.  Mr. Trump could care less that the crisis is actually resolved, that many lives have been ruined or lost in part by his own inept and malevolent policies.  Mr. Trump, a criminal convict, will do and say anything in order to get elected, to regain power, and use the power of the presidency to protect himself from justly going to jail from his multiple criminal trials.

As Vice President, Kamala Harris helped President Biden to accomplish the gains he made, and pushed for those sensible reform bills Republicans in Congress blocked.  The only factually true complaint lodged against her was not having actually visited the southern border for months after becoming vice president.  While visiting the border would have been a nice touch, in truth it would have been a fairly irrelevant exercise with respect to actually solving border problems.  Compare this fairly inconsequential flaw of Ms. Harris’s with the plethora of incompetence, self-defeating belligerence, and irrational threats to start multiple wars needlessly that characterizes former President Trump.

Concluding Thoughts

As we have seen, the Trump administration was a dark chapter in American history.  When we look back at the man, with his long history of spewing many derogatory lies and falsehoods about migrants prior to, during, and after his term in office, what else could we have expected but malevolent and devastating policies?  Many, many lives that were already scarred by violence came only to suffer and shatter because of him.  From purposely crippling our nation’s ability to process migrants and asylum cases, to belligerently threatening, name-calling, and demanding tribute for a useless extra wall from our neighbor Mexico and, somehow, expecting a positive response from them, to using the federal government to separate and jail fathers, mothers, and their children, even toddlers and infants, and even kidnapping several thousand of them… all under the guise of “securing” America?  Security was not achieved, but rather it was exacting a criminally punishing toll on a group of people, on our country’s reputation, and on any claim to moral standing we may have had before.

A lot more on this topic could be covered.  Rest assured, none of it would paint any less devastating a picture of former President Donald Trump’s cruelty and incompetence.  With the upcoming election taking place in less than two weeks, this article has at least covered the most critical point: another Trump presidency would leave America inevitably damaged, with a migrant situation made far worse than it currently is.  Between his plans to, like President López Obrador did, bring the military into domestic affairs (an obvious breach of the U.S. Constitution and our civil liberties) to threatening mass deportations of millions (with his track record for chaos and violence, undoubtedly it would not be just the unauthorized migrants but legal American citizens as well who would be raped, assaulted, murdered, and deported on his orders, as was done by Mexico’s authoritarian ruler).

In short, if you want to improve America’s border security and the unauthorized migrant situation, then you must vote for Harris and Walz this November.  Vote for the presidential candidate with the intelligence, the education, the respect for power, and the insight to grasp each situation and handle it accurately, effectively, and with compassion – Kamala Harris.

Bibliography

William Baldwin, A Treatise of Moral Philosophy, 1564, quoted in Paul M. Gaudet, William Baldwin’s “A Treatise of Moral Philosophy” (1564): A Variorum Edition with Introduction,Princeton University ProQuest Dissertations & Theses,  1972, https://www.proquest.com/openview/63fa2eb4be2ab67cd145a7c5c5cc83b8/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

The Claim

Suzanne Gamboa, “Donald Trump Announces Presidential Bid By Trashing Mexico, Mexicans,” NBC News, June 16, 2015, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/donald-trump-announces-presidential-bid-trashing-mexico-mexicans-n376521 (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Donald Trump, “Remarks by President Trump on the Illegal Immigration Crisis and Border Security,” WhiteHouse.gov, Nov. 1, 2018, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-illegal-immigration-crisis-border-security/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

The Bush and Obama Years

Kristen Bialik, “Border apprehensions increased in 2018 – especially for migrant families,” Pew Research Center, Jan. 16, 2019.  https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/01/16/border-apprehensions-of-migrant-families-have-risen-substantially-so-far-in-2018/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Brian, “Crisis at the Mexican Border, Part Two: An Overwhelming Invasion?,” What’s Wrong: A Blog on American Politics, Sept. 7, 2020, https://whatswrong.water.blog/2020/09/07/crisis-at-the-mexican-border-2/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Brian, “Crisis at the Mexican Border, Part Three: Gangs and Criminals?,” What’s Wrong: A Blog on American Politics, Sept. 27, 2020, https://whatswrong.water.blog/2020/09/27/crisis-at-the-mexican-border-3/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Adam Isacson, Carolyn Scorpio, and Maureen Meyer, “Not a National Security Crisis: The U.S.-Mexico Border and Humanitarian Concerns, Seen from El Paso,” Washington Office on Latin America, Oct. 27, 2016, https://www.wola.org/analysis/not-national-security-crisis-u-s-mexico-border-humanitarian-concerns-seen-el-paso/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Jens Manuel Krogstad, Jeffrey S. Passel, and D’Vera Cohn, “5 facts about illegal immigration in the U.S.,” Pew Research Center, June 12, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/12/5-facts-about-illegal-immigration-in-the-u-s/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Sahana Mukherjee, and Jens Manuel Krogstad, “Trump and Harris Supporters Differ on Mass Deportations but Favor Border Security, High-Skilled Immigration,” Pew Research Center, Sept. 7, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2024/09/27/trump-and-harris-supporters-differ-on-mass-deportations-but-favor-border-security-high-skilled-immigration/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Jeffrey S. Passel and Jens Manuel Krogstad, “What we know about unauthorized immigrants living in the U.S.,” Pew Research Center, July 22, 2024, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Joel Rose, “FACT CHECK: Migrants Are Not Overwhelming The Southwest Border,” NPR, Nov. 2, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/11/02/663532238/fact-check-migrants-are-not-overwhelming-the-southwest-border

“Border Patrol Total Apprehensions Fiscal Years 2000 to 2018,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Mar. 2019, https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2019-Mar/BP%20Total%20Apps%2C%20Mexico%2C%20OTM%20FY2000-FY2018%20REV.pdf (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Trump’s Policies: Cruelty and Incompetence

“The State of the Immigration Courts: Trump Leaves Biden 1.3 Million Case Backlog in Immigration Courts,” TRAC Reports, Inc., Jan. 19, 2021, https://trac.syr.edu/immigration/reports/637/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

“Workload and Adjudication Statistics,” U.S. Department of Justice, Executive Office for Immigration Review,  https://www.justice.gov/eoir/workload-and-adjudication-statistics (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

“Fiscal Year 2018 ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Report,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/about/offices/ero/pdf/eroFY2018Report.pdf (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Maureen Meyer and Elyssa Pachico, “Mexico Has a Major Role to Play in Undoing Trump’s Disastrous Migration Policies,”Washington Office on Latin America, Dec. 2, 2020, https://www.wola.org/analysis/mexico-migration-under-biden/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Adam Isacson, Elyssa Pachico, Maureen Meyer, and Adriana Beltrán, “How Biden Can Overcome Obstacles to Reversing Trump’s Disastrous Migration Policies,” Washington Office on Latin America, Dec. 9, 2020, https://www.wola.org/analysis/biden-reverse-trump-disastrous-migration-policies/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

“Public Outcry, Sanctuary Policies are Essential to Push Back Against Trump Administration’s Anti-Migrant Agenda,” Washington Office on Latin America, June 27, 2019, https://www.wola.org/2019/06/sanctuary-policies-anti-migrant-agenda/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Family Separations: A Policy of Cruelty

The AAP is a group of over 67,000 pediatricians (more or less all in the US, see https://www.aamc.org/data-reports/workforce/data/number-people-active-physician-specialty-2021) “committed to the optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults.” (from the footer of their main page).

American Academy of Pediatrics.  https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/12792/Pediatricians-speak-out-Detention-is-not-the?autologincheck=redirected (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

“Catastrophic immigration policies resulted in more family separations than previously disclosed,” Amnesty International, Oct. 11, 2018, https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/usa-catastrophic-immigration-policies-resulted-in-more-family-separations-than-previously-disclosed/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Jill Colvin and Colleen Long, “In reversal, Trump orders halt to his family separation rule,” Associated Press, June 20, 2018, https://apnews.com/article/latin-america-court-decisions-politics-courts-ap-top-news-1dafadd6fee4447cadd4a0179553026e

Camila Domonoske and Richard Gonzales, “What We Know: Family Separation And ‘Zero Tolerance’ At The Border,” National Public Radio, June 19, 2018, https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621065383/what-we-know-family-separation-and-zero-tolerance-at-the-border?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20180619 (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Nomaan Merchant, “Hundreds of children wait in Border Patrol facility in Texas,” Associated Press, June 18, 2018, https://apnews.com/article/9794de32d39d4c6f89fbefaea3780769 (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Ginger Thompson, “Listen to Children Who’ve Just Been Separated From Their Parents at the Border,” ProPublica, June 18, 2018, https://www.propublica.org/article/children-separated-from-parents-border-patrol-cbp-trump-immigration-policy (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Belligerence Towards Mexico

Reade Levinson, Kristina Cooke and Mica Rosenberg, “Special Report: How Trump administration left indelible mark on U.S. immigration courts,” Reuters, Mar. 8, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/article/world/special-report-how-trump-administration-left-indelible-mark-on-us-immigration-idUSKBN2B0178/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Marta Campabadal Graus and Maria Ramirez Uribe, “How viable is Donald Trump’s 2024 immigration plan?” PolitiFact, Nov. 21, 2023, https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/nov/21/how-viable-is-donald-trumps-2024-immigration-plan/ (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Fareed Zakaria, “America’s Mess With Mexico”, Global Public Square, July 8, 2024, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/americas-mess-with-mexico/id377785090?i=1000661504826 (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Brief Overview of the Biden-Harris Years

Stephen Groves, Rebecca Santana, and Mary Clare, “Border bill fails Senate test vote as Democrats seek to underscore Republican resistance,” Associated Press, May 23, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/border-immigration-senate-vote-924f48912eecf1dc544dc648d757c3fe (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Lexie Schapitl, Eric McDaniel, and Susan Davis, “Senate border negotiations forge ahead despite pressure from Trump,” National Public Radio,Jan. 25, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/01/25/1226883552/bipartisan-border-deal-at-risk-of-collapse-under-pressure-from-trump (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).

Concluding Thoughts

Elliot Spagat, “Trump’s goal of mass deportations fell short. But he has new plans for a second term,” Associated Press, Sept. 22, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/trump-mass-deportations-immigration-844f3050ba99552b900ed9f3a1dec22d (accessed Oct. 24, 2024).