WASHINGTON – President Biden is poised to renege on his 2020 campaign promise to open the US southern border to thousands more immigrants during a major crackdown just two months into his administration, a new book says.
From the start of his presidency, “Biden’s anger made for uncomfortable encounters” over the border crisis, according to Franklin Foer’s new tome, “The Last Politician.”
On the campaign trail, Biden has pledged “to commit himself to a wholesale reversal of Trump’s immigration policies” to win the election, the book said. But personally, he “hated to see how his campaign proposals translated into policy,” Foer wrote.
For example, Trump set a historic limit of allowing just 15,000 refugees into the country each year, and Biden — despite his campaign claims — is hesitant to change that, the authors said.
“Biden didn’t realize that reform would go this far,” Foer wrote. “When he learned that ICE might stop targeting fentanyl traffickers, sex offenders and other criminals, he exploded in anger.”
President Biden is poised to renege on his 2020 campaign promise to open the US southern border to thousands more immigrants.Getty Images
Since taking office, Biden has suffered dismal approval ratings for his handling of the immigration crisis.
By March 2021, Customs and Border Patrol agents are seeing double the number of immigrants crossing the border illegally since January when he took office, according to CBP data.
The new presidential administration was already struggling at the time to deal with the thousands of child migrants piling into overcrowded CBP facilities, “sleeping on gym mats covered by sheets of foil, not showering” for weeks. But the liberal left, which has supported calls to “Abolish ICE,” demanded that Biden open the U.S. border further, according to the book.
“That issue happens to be where he is most out of sync with his party’s growing leftward trajectory,” Foer said. “With the growing number of children, Biden is no longer sure that he wants to keep another immigration promise.”
Donald Trump set a historic limit of allowing just 15,000 refugees into the country each year, and Biden – despite his campaign claims – is hesitant to change that. AFP/Getty Images
On February 12, his administration told Congress that Biden would not overturn Trump’s cap and instead raise it from 15,000 to 62,500 refugees — a move Foer called “an important symbolic reversal.” Now, all Biden has to do is approve the funding for it,” but in an ominous atmosphere, he doubts whether he needs to do that.
“They want me to increase the number of people in this country, but that’s a bit crazy,” he told Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to the book.
Blinken, “an ardent supporter of raising the cap,” objected to Biden’s complaints on the matter, angering the president to the point that his “obstinacy [to raising immigration caps] restraining assistants who might challenge him, for fear of wasting valuable capital in a futile struggle,” Foer wrote.
“[Biden] said that voters would not appreciate the difference between refugees fleeing tyranny and economic migrants from Central America. As he’s already getting crushed at immigration, increasing the cap will only make things worse,” the book said.
Blocked by the president’s stubbornness, Biden’s then-chief domestic policy adviser, Susan Rice, avoided scheduling any meetings to address the limits. New York Post
On April 16, 2021, the White House announced that Biden would maintain Trump’s refugee limits through the remainder of the fiscal year, which ends on September 30, but “calls of betrayal were immediate” from the left, Foer said.
Hindered by the president’s stubbornness, Biden’s then-chief domestic policy adviser, Susan Rice, avoided scheduling any meetings to address the limit, but Biden continued to “raise the subject himself … usually with an edge of aggression,” the book said.
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“He moaned, ‘Can you believe they want me back to those high numbers?’ ” Foer wrote. “At a moment like that, Susan Rice would throw a look across the room, which would tell the assistant, ‘Don’t take the bait.’ “
Later, when Biden’s longtime staffer Amy Pope told the president that there was enough money to cover the cost of dramatically relocating more refugees, he responded skeptically, “How can you tell me that the same man who can’t take care of children coming will manage 125,000 refugees.”
Infuriating Biden again, the Pope argued there was “symbolic value in maintaining this number [of refugees] high,” which will be “important for [his] heritage.”
“‘I don’t care about my legacy,’ Biden shot back,” Foer wrote.
After months of wrangling with his progressive advisers, Biden finally agreed to fund the annual resettlement of up to 125,000 immigrants in the US – with the Pope promising “that we do right by these people.”
Later, his administration will target another Trump immigration policy – Title 42, which allows border patrol agents to remove immigrants who illegally crossed the border on health grounds related to the outbreak.
Although Biden had toyed with keeping it, his administration ended up scorning the policy. It finally ended in May after a judge finally ruled that the policy should end along with what the government considered the official end of the outbreak.
Illegal immigration is now up about 300% since the last year of the Trump administration. As of July 31, Border Patrol agents have reported 2.55 million encounters with immigrants trying to enter the country illegally in fiscal year 2023 – an increase from just 646,822 in 2020.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
