Trump maintains illegal immigration as the focus of his campaign against Biden

Illegal immigration is one of the problems that worries Americans most. It has also become the star argument of Donald Trump’s campaign to return to the White House. Trump already successfully used immigration as the axis of his campaign in 2016, but after the record of border crossings during Joe Biden’s term, he has redoubled his bet. While he maintains his xenophobic and authoritarian rhetoric, Republicans rejected a law to reinforce the border last week for the second time in the Senate. With less than six months until the elections, they prefer to ride on the back of the problem than to provide means to solve it.

In February, Democrats reached an agreement with some Republican senators to advance a package of about $20 billion to fight illegal immigration. At that time it was linked to aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and in fact, the border package had been a Republican demand. However, before the vote was taken, Trump moved to have it boycotted. Although Democrats have control of the Senate, a strengthened majority in a procedural vote is needed to clear the vast majority of legislation. Without Republican votes, the rule was shelved.

The leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer, decided to return to the fray last week, not so much because he had hopes for a change of opinion among the Republicans as for them to be portrayed with their rejection. “We’ve given Republicans a second chance to show where they stand,” Schumer said after the vote. “Do you want to fix this so-called emergency or do you want to show blind loyalty to the former president even when you know he is wrong?” he added.

In last Thursday’s vote, a majority of Senate Democrats again supported a procedural vote to begin debate on the border bill, but all Republicans except Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski voted against it. “We are approaching the end of President Biden’s term, and the American people’s patience with his failure to secure the southern border is wearing thin,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said Thursday.

The president complained in a statement: “Republicans in Congress do not care about protecting the border or fixing the United States immigration system. If they cared, they would have voted for the strictest border control in history. Instead, today they have put partisan politics before our country’s national security,” Biden said. “By blocking the bipartisan border deal, Republicans in Congress have said no to legislation that would hire more Border Patrol agents, add more immigration judges and asylum officers to process cases in months rather than years. They have said no to new technology to detect and stop the entry of fentanyl into the United States, and no to resources to pursue drug traffickers. “They have rejected an agreement that would give me, as president, new emergency authority to temporarily close the border when the system is overwhelmed,” he added.

The law would have allocated more than $20 billion to provide personnel and equipment for immigration and border services. It included funding for border patrols, asylum officers, immigration judges and foster care services. In addition, it introduced a legal modification that would have allowed Biden to make immediate returns, suspending asylum rules when certain thresholds in the flow of entries were exceeded. The legislation allows immigrants to apply for asylum, regardless of how they arrive, and they arrive in such numbers that it overwhelms the capacity of an underfunded immigration system. That effectively allows immigrants to settle while their cases are delayed for years. The law would have activated the immediate repatriation of migrants upon exceeding 4,000 illegal crossings per day on average for a week.

The Biden Administration has introduced some changes to the asylum system to speed up the processing and possible expulsion of immigrants. In addition, it is analyzing the possibility of approving a decree with some measures to make the passage of immigrants more difficult or facilitate their expulsion. Among the measures he is considering is invoking the powers under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which gives the president broad latitude to block the entry of certain immigrants if doing so would be “harmful.” for the national interest.

Trump repeatedly resorted to that rule during his term, including his controversial entry ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, which Biden revoked as soon as he took office. The Biden Government is analyzing whether this provision can be applied when a certain number of illegal crossings is exceeded, in line with the provision included in the proposed law. But if the law is not changed, any decree against border crossings can be challenged in court.

The former president promises much stronger measures in his campaign rallies and in the interviews he has given. He refers to immigrants as “criminals” and “terrorists” and has promised mass deportations, even employing the military if necessary. In a recent interview with the magazine Time, When asked if he would be willing to break the law that prohibits using the military against civilians, he replied: “Well, these are not civilians. They are people who are not legally in our country. This is an invasion of our country. An invasion like probably no country has seen before. They are arriving by the millions. I think we have 15 million now. And I think we will have 20 million by the time this is over.” At some rallies, Trump has even said that undocumented immigrants “cannot be called people.”

When asked again if he saw himself using the military for this, he said: “I see myself using the National Guard and, if necessary, I would have to go one step further. “We have to do whatever it takes to stop the problem we have. (…) Yes, we have to do what we have to do to stop the crime and to stop what is happening on the border.” In that same interview he refused to rule out that he is going to create immigration detention or concentration camps. “We may do it to some extent, but we shouldn’t have to do it much,” he said, arguing that removal would be quick and those fields would not be needed.