Saturday morning, I awakened to a message from a dear former colleague responding to one of my posts titled, “Some Reasons to Vote Blue Across the Ballot”. One of the reasons I listed was, “immigration reform and border security”. In her message, she wrote: “This administration has failed in border security! Why let them continue?” My immediate response was to proclaim that they did not fail. And then I proceeded to explain why. We should all know about important issues in preparation to respond to a plethora of questions based on false claims coming our way before this election.
In the next weeks, Republicans will say that Biden, and specifically presidential candidate, Vice President Kamala Harris, failed to secure the border. They will lie about her actual role at the border by falsely labeling her “the border czar”. Her actual assignment was to visit countries to determine the reasons for increased migration and to find ways to work with those countries to stem it. That was her assignment, not to visit the border to enforce draconian policies that endanger innocent lives or cause irreparable harm to people fleeing violence and poverty in search of a better life.
Our border patrol already works hard to capture drug and human traffickers and to prevent terrorists and violent criminals from entering the country. As a result of their efforts, there have been no terrorist attacks by a migrant and only two violent murders in a country of over 300 million people. And most drug traffickers are Americans. The facts contradict the fear mongering typical of Republicans and conservative media. And yet, they cite imminent danger as their main reason for using any means necessary to secure the border, including building an expensive wall paid for by our tax dollars, and not by Mexico.
The Biden administration proves to be an ethical and humane administration that refuses to continue or allow acts of cruelty like those under Trump. I recall how the Trump administration kept children in cages and how he purposefully separated parents from their children without keeping records of the children’s location as part of his “zero-tolerance” policy. According to NPR some 5,000 children were separated under Trump and to this day, some families have yet to be reunited. That cruelty was eventually stopped by a U.S. district judge. In 2023, the Biden administration settled a class action lawsuit filed for damages for that horrible act of inhumanity.
The reality is that the pandemic allowed Trump to enact Title 42 COVID restrictions which curtailed migration on the basis of the emergency. Under Title 42, border agents were allowed to immediately deny entry to migrants without giving them a chance to ask for asylum. Title 42 expired and without a pandemic emergency that would keep Title 42 lawful, Biden did not extend it. The previous law, Title 8, went into effect. That restored any migrant’s right to ask for asylum and enter the country until their case could be adjudicated which typically takes years.
In response to the current laws and the crisis at the border, the Biden administration worked with a bi-partisan group of senate members to draft the strictest border laws in decades that would numerically limit the number of migrants granted entry, provide for more border patrol agents, provide more judges to reduce case wait times from years to months. In addition, the bill would make stricter asylum rules, provide better technology to detect drugs among other provisions. Just as the law was about to pass, Donald Trump demanded that Republicans reject the legislation because he wanted to run his campaign on chaos at the border. He said that passing the law would give Biden a “win” and he wanted to claim credit for fixing the border. So, the border security bill failed. This failure lies squarely at the feet of Trump and cowardly Republicans who put loyalty to Trump before the country. And it also exposes their lies about the violent threat migrants actually pose to average Americans.
There are many drivers to our border. First, there is the violence and economic crisis fueled by the U.S. demand for illegal drugs and worsened by the pandemic. Second, there is a demand for cheap exploitable labor in several U.S. industries that require back-breaking work and little education. Third, there are greedy human traffickers who use the constant Republican announcements that our borders are open to convince their victims to spend money and risk their lives to journey here. And finally, there is the promise of a better life whether that means freedom from tyranny, safety from violent drug cartels, or economic prosperity from available jobs. Of course, there are those who seek to enter the country to do us harm, but they are actually a very small minority, and our border patrol rightly concentrate their efforts on preventing those people from entering the country.
Most migrants, whether they entered the country as asylum seekers or illegally, want nothing more than to live peacefully and to earn a living. Very few commit crimes against people or property. They are hard-working people who add more to our economy than they subtract from it. Once they are able to find jobs, they make purchases, pay state and local sales taxes, start businesses, pay income taxes, and they pay into Social Security and Medi-care even though they will never receive benefits from either program. Their cheap labor keeps our prices artificially low. In the mind of Trump, these migrants are doing what he considers to be “black jobs”. He continuously says that migrants are stealing the jobs suitable for black and brown people as though this is a reason to vote for him. His racism and thoughts about the role of black and brown people in this country is evident.
In fact, Trump represents a segment of the Republican Party who are white suprematists and Christian nationalists. We must remind voters that Trump enacted a Muslim ban and openly said he was against immigration to the U.S. of people from “shit hole” countries. He said he prefers people from Norway and Sweden. He repeatedly characterizes migrants as rapists, murderers, and insane people who will “poison the blood” of our nation, a Hitler phase. The anti-affirmative action, anti-CRT, anti-Woke, anti-DEI, anti-public school, and anti-history policies of the Republican Party and particularly of Project 2025 are designed to return black and brown people to historically “black jobs” and to return women to the kitchen and LGBTQ folks to the closet.
Who needs the labor of black and brown immigrants if American women are forced to have lots of babies? Who needs more black and brown immigrants if homegrown black and brown people are forced into the labor-intensive jobs again and public-school graduates fill our military ranks? Who needs immigrants if child labor laws are relaxed, and retirement becomes a luxury reserved for the independently wealthy?
If we are able to elect Kamala Harris and give her a majority in the House and Senate, she has promised to sign the border security bill into law. In addition, she will push to restore and preserve our reproductive freedoms and will protect our freedom to pursue our dreams, to be who we are, and to love whom we love without discrimination. Our job is to know the issues on the table and to dispel the misinformation, misconceptions, and outright lies being spread by Trump, conservative news outlets, and too many supporters of the Republican Party.