Biden's big show on border proclamation
The proclamation does little to nothing to stem illegal crossings
“I’ve done all I can do. Give me the power!!"
That's what President Joe Biden said to reporters back in January of this year.
After months of making that claim and attempting to blame Republicans for not passing a "bipartisan deal," yesterday Biden issued a proclamation that only temporarily stems the number of migrants who can seek asylum — with a list of conditions the House GOP Homeland Committee calls "broad enough to drive a truck through."
Media outlets are dubbing it as "drastic" and a "temporary closing" of the border. It'd really neither, but we'll get to that later on.
Biden made the announcement in a briefing at the white house flanked by two large blue signs that read "Securing our border."
Biden used a good portion of the briefing to blame Republicans for not passing "bipartisan legislation."
"Frankly, I would have preferred to address this issue through bipartisan legislation, because that’s the only way to actually get the kind of system we have now — that’s broken — fixed, to hire more Border Patrol agents, more asylum officers, more judges," said Biden. "But Republicans have left me with no choice."
There was legislation, it just wasn't the legislation Biden wanted.
The House passed H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act of 2023. The bill is still sitting on Sen. Chuck Schumer's desk and he's so far refused to bring it to the Senate floor since its second reading in May 2023.
What's also interesting about Biden's remarks is he appears to admit he lost control of the southern border by saying, "This action will help us gain control of our border, restore order into the process."
The video of the briefing is below and the transcript is here.
Border patrol agents were unimpressed, calling it "too little, too late," per the NY Post.
“That’s like trying to plug the leak on the titanic with chewing gum. It’s way too little too late. He’s trying to act tough on the border but we know he’s been the most open border administration ever,” one agent told the NY Post.
The NY Post report continued, "Despite the measure being billed as a “crackdown,” it will still permit 1.75 million new arrivals to the US, when the 2,500 a day are added to others allowed into the country through the the CBP One phone app, and via humanitarian parole paths."
The NY Post also reported ICE agents were given new orders "mandating new measures to make it as easy as possible to claim asylum." The new orders arrived the same day Biden issued his proclamation.
More To The Story
“Doing nothing is not an option,” Biden said during the briefing.
Yet what Biden has issued is a proclamation with very little action, and did not issue an executive order.
So, what does that mean; proclamation versus executive order?
Here's the difference between presidential actions, which NPR made a big deal of under President Trump:
Executive Order = Legally binding directive to agencies, published formally in the Federal Register.
Executive Action = A broader term used to include orders, memos, proclamations, and other statements.
Memoranda = Informal executive orders not published in Federal Register
Proclamations = Ceremonial presidential actions that usually have no legal aspect.
In short, one way to look at the proclamation is this is a half-hearted attempt to stem Biden's horrible polling on the issue, which arrives just 153 days out from the November election.
The Fact Sheet released by the White House as well as the graphic Biden posted on X are light on details. Specifically, both are devoid of any dates or numbers.
The actual Presidential Proclamation gives a long introduction into what Biden was doing his first years in office before it gets to the meat.
The proclamation, in a nutshell, is a suspension of accepting asylum seekers crossing the southern border during periods of high crossings (7-day average of 2,500+ encounters). That suspension lifts temporarily when crossings drop below 1,500 for 7 days.
The proclamation is effective as of "12:01 a.m. eastern daylight time on June 5, 2024."
This suspension does not include unaccompanied minors, so one might expect child trafficking over the border that has been declining in the past year to surge or increase.
As noted by Homeland GOP at the beginning of this article, the proclamation has expansive exceptions, which I've compiled below:
- Any non-citizen national of the United States
- Any lawful permanent resident of the United States
- Any unaccompanied child as defined in 6 U.S.C. § 279(g)(2)
- Any non-citizen determined to be a victim of severe trafficking as defined in 22 U.S.C. § 7102(16)
- Any non-citizen with a valid visa or lawful permission to seek entry/admission, or who presents at a port of entry pursuant to a pre-scheduled time and place, including:
- Members of U.S. Armed Forces and associated personnel, U.S. government employees/contractors and their families
- Those holding valid visas with required documents upon arrival
- Those traveling under the visa waiver program
- Those arriving at a southwest land border port per a DHS-approved process
- Any non-citizen permitted entry by DHS Secretary through a CBP officer based on law enforcement, safety, humanitarian, or public health interests
- Any non-citizen permitted entry by DHS Secretary through a CBP officer due to operational considerations
FOX News' Bill Melugin, who has owned this space in national reporting, noted the glaring issues with the proclamation.
Even More To The Story
Going back to Biden's claims of being unable to act, the reality is that Biden was able to act unilaterally when he dismantled border protections in his first 100 days in office.
On day one in office, Biden terminated construction of the border wall and diverted the funding elsewhere while terminating the emergency at the border. But that was just the first action.
Back in September 2021, Biden Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas even bragged in an MSNBC interview that, "We have rescinded so many Trump immigration policies, it would take so much time to list them."
By fall 2023, Biden's actions made history - and not in a good way.
“Since President Biden took office, there have been 7.5 million encounters nationwide and 6.2 million encounters at the Southwest border, in addition to 1.7 million known gotaways who evaded U.S. Border Patrol,” per the Sept. 2023 report on border data by Rep. Mark Green (TN-07).
Biden's actions became so numerous, that House Speaker Mike Johnson issued a list of 64 separate instances where Biden took actions which facilitated millions of illegal migrants to be released into the interior of the US.
To recap:
Biden's attempt to blame Republicans for his own actions over the past three and half years rings hollow; Even more so in the face of this new proclamation.
His border proclamation is in no way "shutting down the border" nor will it stop the flow of illegal immigration - much of which in the past year has set off national security alarm bells.
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