Joe Biden has promised that if he’s elected president, he will set in motion on Day One the largest dismantling of U.S. immigration law enforcement in the history of the republic.
On the very day he’s sworn in as president, the oath for which includes a constitutional obligation to “take care that the Laws be faithfully executed,” Biden has pledged to begin a 100-day moratorium on deportations of violators of U.S. immigration law. When deportations resume on Day 101 of his administration, Biden has further promised that “from that point on, the only deportations that will take place are [for the] commissions of felonies in the United States.”
That is an invitation for a tsunami of uncontrolled immigration into the U.S. beginning on Jan. 20, 2021. Biden cannot even be trusted to follow through on his commitment to remove convicted felons from the country. In the same primary debate in which he pledged to remove only felons, Biden also said he is opposed to local police departments turning over unauthorized immigrants who are in their custody to federal immigration law enforcement officials. The vast majority of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests and removals of convicted felons from the country depends on exactly that kind of logical cooperation by local and federal law enforcement.
Biden has even gone so far as to specify that he does not consider driving under the influence a felony, though the fact is that the repeated commission of that crime is a felony in most states. It is pertinent to note that DUI charges and convictions have up until now been a major driver of ICE arrests, accounting for nearly half of the agency’s 158,000 arrests in 2018.
But this is only the beginning of what will be a wholesale breakdown in immigration law enforcement, along with an ensuing tidal wave of illegal immigration, under a Biden administration. Biden’s plan to gut immigration law enforcement would not be complete without his additional pledge to end ICE arrests at work sites where unauthorized immigrants are employed.
The 2020 Democratic Party platform on immigration further pledges to end “community raids” and other enforcement actions “in which children and members of vulnerable populations are left behind without their caregivers.” Fulfilling such a pledge means it would no longer be possible for the United States to arrest and deport any unlawfully present immigrant who is a father or mother or who has dependents.
As former ICE Director Tom Homan has pointed out, ICE’s contracted detention facilities have proven to be a more efficient use of taxpayer resources and are required to operate in compliance with strict governmental and other pertinent health and accreditation standards. The Biden plan’s justification for opposing such centers, however, focuses solely on the fact that they are for-profit contractors, stating that “no business should profit from the suffering of desperate people fleeing violence.”
Biden is also committed to ending the Trump administration’s asylum-related policies, including the Migrant Protection Protocols with Mexico, that were instrumental in finally putting an end to last year’s historic number of Central American family units appearing at the southwestern border.
Together with the promise of a “roadmap to citizenship” for the millions of unauthorized immigrants and related enticements such as healthcare, the Biden plan appears to be tailor-made to produce a massive and unstoppable new rush on the country’s southwestern border.