No. of Recommendations: 11
I'm still reading it.
Summary
The main takeaways are:
~Biden immediately started increasing expulsions from his first day in office.
~Biden tripled interior detention and increased border detention 12-fold.
~Biden increased air removal flights by 55 percent over 2020 levels.
~Biden negotiated broader expulsion deals with foreign countries than Trump.
~Biden got many foreign countries to carry out crackdowns on illegal and legal migration.
~Biden removed or expelled 3.3 million border crossers—three times as many as Trump.
~Biden even managed to remove a similar percentage of crossers as Trump’s four years.
Despite Biden’s historic crackdown:
Expulsions did not deter migrants, even among demographics universally expelled.
The percentage increase in evasions of Border Patrol increased as much as Border Patrol arrests, implying that releases did not cause the
crisis and that many people did not want Border Patrol to catch them but were undeterred by the threat.
Releases occurred not because Biden cut removals but because migration grew faster than the administration could increase them.
As a result, releases only occurred among specific demographic groups and in certain areas where removals were logistically complicated.
Biden could not easily remove groups to Mexico, like families, children, and immigrants from distant countries who were arrested in record numbers.
The actual causes of the increases in illegal immigration were:
Unprecedented labor demand, which incentivized and funded migration from around the world: From February 2021 to August 2024, there were more open jobs each month than in any month before Biden’s term began. During this time, economies worldwide were recovering far less quickly than the United States. As labor demand subsided in 2024, immigration fell.
Unprecedented access to information about migration through the Internet and social media: Internet access rose rapidly from 2018 to 2021, nearly doubling in Central America and reaching unprecedented highs in South America. Social media platforms gave people step-by-step instructions on migrating and connected them directly with smugglers. This opened migration from around the world, which contributed to the number of releases.
Novel and perverse enforcement policies: The Title 42 expulsion policy incentivized repeat crossings by returning people to Mexico, where they could immediately attempt to re-enter the United States. Title 42 also cut off access to asylum, incentivizing more Border Patrol evasions.
Novel and perverse legal migration policies: Title 42 not only banned asylum for people who crossed illegally but also prohibited legal entries by asylum seekers, including demographic groups that had traditionally always entered legally, like Haitians, Cubans, and Mexican families. Biden eventually increased legal entries by these groups and others, limiting the crisis’s extent and ultimately contributing to its end.
The border crisis did not end because Biden signed an executive order in June 2024. If he had signed his border executive order in 2021, it would have merely duplicated what Title 42 was already doing: ban asylum. Moreover, the border executive order did not significantly change the downward trend in arrivals in 2024, which had already fallen in half during the five months before he signed it. Finally, the order did not increase removals. Rather, the crisis primarily ended because labor demand subsided significantly and because Biden expanded legal migration.
