Why Biden’s Blaming Trump for Border Crisis Has Zero Credibility

No one believes the Biden White House’s feeble attempt to blame the Trump administration for the current border crisis.

As the Biden administration unsuccessfully tries to deflect blame for the humanitarian disaster now occurring before America’s eyes, despite its directed media blackout, the administration is only succeeding at showing it knows it has a problem.

The Trump administration experienced a border crisis in 2019 when families and unaccompanied children, mostly from Central American countries, surged at our southern border and claimed fear of returning home to obtain entry into the U.S. and disappear into our country’s interior.

No one can forget the images of the caravans of illegal aliens traveling north. The height of the crisis occurred in May 2019, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection encounters reached over 144,000 illegal aliens.

To end the problem, the Trump administration sought help from Congress in the form of additional funding to build the border wall; an end to the Flores Agreement, which a single federal judge expanded over the decades into an unrealistic order that children could not be detained more than 20 days; and a legislative fix so that the Department of Homeland Security could treat unaccompanied alien children from Central America the same as those from Mexico.

Congress refused. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and others on the left denied there was a border crisis (sound familiar?) and the government shut down in a stalemate.
The Trump administration had to end the crisis on its own. Choosing a heretofore-unused, but statutorily authorized “Remain in Mexico” program, it negotiated with Mexico to house migrants seeking U.S. asylum on the Mexico side of the border during their pending court proceedings.

When would-be migrants learned claiming fear alone was no longer their ticket into the U.S., the caravans stopped coming.

The Trump administration also used leverage with El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to negotiate asylum cooperative agreements that resulted in those countries (and Mexico) enforcing their own borders to prevent migrant flows, building up their own asylum systems, and receiving nationals back who traversed their country, but had not requested asylum before seeking it at the U.S. border.

In short, the Trump administration imposed consequences for illegal immigration and ended “catch and release.”

It worked.