When President Biden took office on Jan. 20, 2021, he did what he had promised: he rescinded many of former President Donald Trump's draconian immigration policies.
But three years into his presidency, Biden and the Democratic leadership changed its approach to immigration, focusing heavily on enforcement, restrictions, and punishments — a strategy at times indistinguishable from the Trump administration. Their positions have moved significantly to the right in part due to Republican attacks and changing public views on border security.
This has left immigration rights advocates wondering whether Democrats will focus again on providing pathways to legal status for millions of unauthorized migrants in the U.S.
"What we are seeing is that the center of the Democratic Party is now adopting the same policies, the same postures, that MAGA Republicans were fighting for about six years ago," Elora Mukherjee, the director of the Immigrants' Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School, told NPR.
Some immigrant rights advocates say misinformation, as well as a record number of unauthorized crossings during the Biden administration, have put Democrats in a position where they have to prove they can be tough at the border.
Add to that: Republican-led states have been trying to regulate immigration on their own.
An "outdated" approach
In the last six months, Biden issued a number of executive actions that mimic those from the Trump administration, including limiting most asylum petitions at the U.S. southern border.
That proposal went into effect in the summer and temporarily suspended the processing of most asylum claims after the seven-day average of unauthorized crossings in the southern border exceeded 2,500.
This was the same rule Trump used in 2017 to ban immigrants from several majority-Muslim countries, and again in 2018 suspending the right to petition asylum for migrants crossing the border illegally.
Prior to 2024, Biden was already adopting some of Trump's immigration proposals: he kept Title 42 in place for two years, a provision meant to quickly turn back migrants to Mexico for public health reasons.
Andrea Flores, who served as the director of border management on the National Security Council under the Biden administration, said Democrats continue to use an "outdated" approach first used by former President Barack Obama, and expanded by Trump, "that is all about asylum and restricting asylum, and blocking people from being able to raise asylum claims."
Flores said for the last decade, both Democrats and Republicans have looked at the issue of border security through the lens of limiting or expanding access to asylum.
"But that isn't really a full answer on the challenges we see at the border," Flores said. "It's less about how Democrats have shifted — it's more about why we aren't talking about better solutions than the same policies that have already failed to create order at the U.S.-Mexico border."
There have been some advancements, Flores concedes.
An example, she says, are Biden's policies that have reduced the number of unauthorized crossings while protecting migrants fleeing their countries. The humanitarian parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans allows up to 30,000 eligible migrants a month to come to the U.S. for up to two years after being vetted.
The idea behind the program is to reduce the number of migrants attempting to come to the U.S. illegally.
According to the American Immigration Council, nearly 500,000 migrants from those four countries have come to the U.S. in the last two years under the humanitarian parole program.
"That innovation, more than any asylum restriction in the last 10 years, led to the most sustainable drop in those people making unauthorized crossings at the border," Flores said.
According to the Department of Homeland Security, encounters with migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua between ports of entry are down 99 percent since the program started. Earlier last month the White House announced it would not renew the legal status of those in the country under the parole program.
White House spokesperson Angelo Fernández Hernández told NPR in a statement that the Biden administration "has put forward a balanced approach in order to secure our border and make our immigration system more fair and just."
He said the most recent policies have led to a decrease of more than 55 percent in unlawful crossings at the southern U.S. border.
In December, border agents processed nearly 250,000 migrants, a record high. But those numbers have dropped dramatically since Biden's asylum restrictions. In September, the number of migrants processed was about 54,000.
Fernández Hernández said the White House continues to call on Congress to "reform our broken immigration system, pass the bipartisan Senate bill, and provide the funding we have requested for additional border security personnel and resources."
That bipartisan border agreement had initial support in the Senate, but got derailed after Trump persuaded House Republicans to oppose it.
That legislation would have overhauled the asylum system, imposing severe restrictions for those seeking asylum, and would have raised the initial credible fear threshold for migrants. It would have also increased detention capacity.
The proposal would have also created a pathway to citizenship for Afghan evacuees and allies.
But the Democrats' approach has created uncertainty, said Mukherjee, with Columbia Law School.
"There's a real sense of fear … in immigrant communities across the country with the impending election," Mukherjee said. "Because no matter who takes office, we are very likely to see massive changes in the immigration system."
Trump's impact on Democratic policies
For many immigration observers, the positions taken by Democrats over the last decade seem to contrast with the policies proposed by the leaders they once saw as close allies.
Bruna Sollod is with United We Dream Action, the political arm of an immigrant youth-led advocacy organization. Her organization was key in lobbying Obama to launch in 2012 the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, best known as DACA.
She says the way Republicans have mischaracterized the increase of migrant crossings along the southern U.S. border has pushed Democrats to take more restrictive actions.
"The Republican Party, the MAGA Republicans, have been so strategic in lying to the American people about this crisis at the border that now everyone believes this thing is happening when it's not," Sollod said.
According to survey results released by the Pew Research Center last month, an overwhelming majority of Trump and Harris' supporters are in favor of "improving border security."
Nearly 30 percent of Harris' supporters back mass deportations, the Pew survey found.
Sollod says she believes that Democrats have been left with trying to be "seen as tough."
"The thing is, you are never going to be seen tougher on immigration than Donald Trump, who has promised mass detention and deportation of people," Sollod said.
Congressman Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, says Trump's focus on false narratives about immigrants is one of the reasons the conversation around immigration has changed so much.
"The Democrats' response, in my view, should be to provide a vision of what a functional, orderly, lawful, and humane immigration system could look like," Casar said.
That includes, Casar says, pathways to citizenship.
"The Democratic Party should be able to play offense on that issue," Casar said. "Unfortunately, I think, Trump's relentless fear mongering and scapegoating in the immigrant communities has pushed the Democratic Party into being more fractured on this issue than we need to be."
Cautious optimism on Harris
Many immigrant rights activists are cautiously optimistic about what a Harris presidency could mean for immigration.
The Harris campaign declined a request for comment and referred NPR to remarks the vice president made in Arizona last month. There, she called for revamping the immigration system. She vowed more punitive measures for migrants who cross without authorization, and called for a pathway to citizenship for "hard-working immigrants who have been here for years."
Sollod, with United We Dream Action, said many of Harris' policies don't fully align with her group's priorities, but she said she believes a potential Harris administration could be persuaded to pursue more progressive policies.
"I know it won't be easy, because it never is," Sollod said. "Politicians, I've learned through this work, never do anything out of the kindness of their hearts — they do things when they are pushed."
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