Biden’s Dizzying Array of Border Excuses

AMAC Exclusive – By Claire Brighn

Over the past two years, the Biden administration and elected Democrats have employed an astonishing number of pernicious lies, pathetic excuses, and self-contradictory explanations to deflect blame for the ongoing national security disaster at the U.S.-Mexico border. With the midterm elections less than three weeks away, it’s worth looking back on some of the more audacious claims employed by Democrats in lieu of a genuine strategy to restore the border.

“The border is secure”

As illegal crossings began to spike early in Biden’s presidency, the first approach the administration took (and one it has returned to repeatedly) was to deny that a crisis exists at all. As early as March 2021, Biden Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas testified before Congress that “the border is secure” and that “the border is not open.” But in February – Biden’s first full month in office – illegal border crossings had already increased by 28% from the month prior. By the second full month into the administration, there were 173,277 border crossers apprehended – the highest tally of any March in 15 years.

Fast forward to September 2022, and Vice President Kamala Harris (whom President Biden famously dubbed his “border czar” amid mounting criticism) still maintained the border was “secure.” By then, this was of course a preposterous assertion given that more than 4.4 million illegal aliens had crossed the border under Biden, including roughly 600,000 “gotaways” in FY 2022 alone. (Even these official numbers are likely a gross undercount of the real number.)

The “root causes” of the border crisis are problems in Central America

As the border crisis became impossible to ignore, the Biden administration has attempted to shirk blame for the disaster by claiming that the “root causes” of illegal immigration are problems in Central America, not Biden’s open borders policies.

But Latin American leaders have explicitly rejected this argument. Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said migrants see Biden “as the migrant president.” Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei said that the very next day after Biden’s election, “coyotes here were organizing groups of children to take them to the United States,” lured by Biden’s promises of an open border. El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, meanwhile, has said the promise of free healthcare acted as an “incentive” for migrants to make the dangerous journey north.

Central American countries have had major challenges for a long time. But it wasn’t until Joe Biden became president that migrants began racing to the U.S. border in unprecedented numbers.

Perhaps even more devastating to the Biden administration’s “root causes” talking point has been the explosion in the number of illegal aliens arriving at the U.S. border not from Mexico or Northern Triangle countries. In August 2021, 61,518 individuals from outside those countries had entered the United States illegally. For reference, during Trump’s last full month in office – December 2020 – this number stood at 7,504. Moreover, illegal aliens from more than 160 countries have been apprehended during Biden’s tenure.

The surge in illegal crossings is “seasonal” and “cyclical”

In April 2021, amid criticism over the record number of illegal aliens arriving at the southern border, Biden said “it happens every single solitary year.” Then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the spike “seasonal” and “cyclical.” In both cases, Biden and Psaki were referring to how during winter months apprehensions typically rise, only to fall in the summer months when it is hotter and fewer people are willing to make the dangerous trek.  

But by no means were the number of apprehensions under Biden seasonal or part of a longer “cycle.” In March 2021, there were more than 173,000 illegal crossings – more than 3.3 times higher than the average for crossings in March under Trump. Then in the hot month of August 2021 there were almost 210,000 crossings – about 3.4 times higher than the average for crossings in August under Trump.

A liberal favorite: “It’s Trump’s fault!”

In April 2022, Biden again tried to shirk blame for the border crisis, this time by blaming “the failure to have a real transition” between the Trump and Biden administrations. He specifically lamented “understaffing” when he first took office.

In the same interview that Kamala Harris said the border is “secure,” she also cited supposed “deterioration that happened over the last for years [under Trump].” Current White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also said that the Trump administration “decimated” the immigration system. Even more recently, far-left radical Squad member Pramila Jayapal said “[Trump] put in place all these things that eliminated legal ways for people to come to this country.”

The claim from Democrats seems to be that because Trump enforced immigration laws on the books, the surge in illegal immigration resulting from Biden’s return to lax enforcement is somehow Trump’s fault.

The truth is that it was Joe Biden himself who made the most fateful decisions to throw open the southern border. Biden reportedly ignored warnings from career officials early on to keep Trump’s border policies in place. Instead of adhering to Trump’s successful strategies like the “Remain in Mexico” program and Title 42, the Biden administration rapidly reversed them—and we have been dealing with the fallout ever since.

Congressional Republicans are “obstructing” border security

More recently, Democrats have turned their ire toward congressional Republicans after Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott sent migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and Kamala Harris’s front doorstep at the Naval Observatory in Washington, DC. Karine Jean-Pierre said if Republicans really cared about border security, they would have approved “record funding” for DHS. Just a few days prior, she also claimed that “[the Biden administration] is doing a lot more to secure the border [than the Trump administration] and could do a lot more if Republicans would stop their obstruction.”

This claim, of course, ignores the fact that Democrats control both chambers of Congress and the White House. For example, Congress has voted to hire 87,000 new IRS agents, and Biden has unilaterally ordered the cancellation of $400 billion in student loan debts, all without the support of a single Republican. In contrast, every single Senate Democrat voted in August against the hiring of at least 18,000 more border patrol agents. For the past two years, House and Senate Democrats have voted against virtually every border security measure Republicans have put forward.

Illegal aliens are “fleeing communism”

Another new favorite of the Biden administration when it comes to the border has been to claim that the United States has no choice but to take in millions of illegal migrants because they are supposedly “fleeing communism.” As the total number of apprehensions for FY 2022 topped two million in August, Biden said that “what’s on my watch now is Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua…We’re dealing with a totally different circumstance,” alluding to the fact that all three countries are communist dictatorships. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre followed up later with a claim that the massive influx of migrants is the result of a “new” migration situation stemming from migrants fleeing communism.

But in August, only 35% of those apprehended at the southern border came from Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua. And even though there has been an uptick in illegal aliens apprehended from these three countries over the past year, when excluding these countries, the first 11 months in FY 2021 saw 1.43 million apprehensions, and in FY 2022 1.66 million—still more than any year in history prior to Joe Biden’s presidency. In other words, while the number of people fleeing communism may be rising, it remains only a fraction of the overall number of people crossing the border illegally.

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With the border crisis as bad as ever, Americans can expect to continue to hear a long stream of lies and deflections from Democrats. But come November 8, voters will have a chance to make clear that they’re not buying the excuses—no matter how many times they hear them.

Claire Brighn is the pen name of a conservative researcher and writer with previous domestic and foreign policy experience in the Executive Branch.