Biden will either toughen up on the border or lose reelection

Three months ago, a frustrated President Joe Biden hosted the National Governors Association in the East Room of the White House, claiming that he was exploring the use of executive action to curb migration across the U.S.-Mexico border. 

“Over time, our laws and our resources haven’t kept up with our immigration system and it’s broken,” Biden told the governors. For the inaction, he placed the blame on the “petty politics” that “intervened” to kill a congressional bill, as well as on his attorneys. 

“He did say that he has been working with his attorneys, trying to understand what executive action would be upheld in the courts and would be constitutional, and that he seemed a little frustrated that he was not getting answers,” recalled Utah Gov. Spencer Cox.

Those attorneys are taking awhile, huh? Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking. 

Part of the reason why there has been no rush is due to a downtick in border crossings. After a record-breaking number in December, Border Patrol apprehensions dropped a whopping 50 percent in January. 2024 has seen relatively stable border crossing numbers, staying 40 percent below the December peak. This has been largely due to an effort by Mexican law enforcement at the behest of the U.S.

Public polling, however, hasn’t mirrored this decline. For the third month in a row, immigration has been listed as the “most important” issue by a plurality of those polled by Gallup. The Biden campaign could blame the media for this; the pictures haven’t helped. But the truth is that illegal border crossings have averaged 2 million per year under Biden — the highest levels since the Border Patrol was established in 1924. Thus, even big month-to-month declines have little public impact when people think in year-to-year or, say, president-to-president terms.

This is a political disaster for Biden. An election that looks, in great part, like a referendum on immigration is one he can’t win — unless he does something about it. But even if he does act, would it be too late? Maybe. 

A maybe is still better than a clear no, which might be why two immigration-related White House senior personnel moves have made headlines.

The first was bringing in Marcela Escobari as a senior advisor. Escobari served in both the Biden and Obama administrations as assistant administrator of USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean. She joins the National Security Council as a coordinator for the Los Angeles Declaration — a pledge between countries in the western hemisphere to tackle immigration together.

The second personnel change, as reported by Axios, will likely be Blas Nuñez-Neto, who previously served as the assistant secretary of Homeland Security and the chief operating officer of Customs and Border Patrol under Biden. Nuñez-Neto is expected to join deputy chief of staff Natalie Quillian’s team, which has increasingly taken responsibility over the immigration portfolio in the White House since May of last year.

The two are highly qualified, which suggests that the president is planning a policy change. The nature of the change is unclear, but taking a page from Trump’s playbook does not sound politically unreasonable.

Bringing in new faces is good for the campaign. Yet looking tougher on immigration will require much more than personnel changes. Only a few politicos will be aware of these moves. If Biden wants to change the narrative, he’ll need to start talking tough on immigration. And while he’s at it, he could greatly benefit from signing some Trump-sounding executive orders.

Juan P. Villasmil is an Intercollegiate Studies Institute editorial fellow at the Spectator World and a Young Voices contributor.