“If you go to Tijuana, right up to the border wall, you can see a deportation in its final throes. At the edge of a Mexican freeway that runs along the border, there’s a nondescript metal door. On any given morning, a Mexican official will open the padlock on the Mexican side and an American immigration agent will open the padlock on the U.S. side. Then, dozens—sometimes hundreds — of people get pushed back into Mexico. Some wander to shelters; others end up camping just outside the door, as if staying close by might improve their chances of getting back in. That deportation door got plenty of use under Donald Trump. But perhaps no president has used it more than Joe Biden.
You wouldn’t have guessed that watching Trump’s 92-minute speech at the Republican National Convention earlier this month, where Trump brutalized the Biden-Harris administration over Biden’s immigration record, accusing the president of throwing the border open.”
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” Most Americans don’t understand how many people the Biden-Harris administration has removed from the country, and that’s allowed Trump to repeatedly — almost gleefully — claim he’ll deport “millions” of people every year if he takes back the White House, something he says Biden is too feckless to do. It plays into his narrative that Biden is decrepit. If deportations are a gas pedal, Trump has portrayed Biden as a lethargic octogenarian, too impaired to drive over 10 mph. In reality, Biden has that gas pedal pushed almost all the way to the floor. Under Biden, migrants have been removed from the U.S. at a blistering pace, pushing the country’s deportation infrastructure to its limit. And it’s not clear how Trump could top him if he takes back the White House next year.
Biden’s migrant removals started as soon as he took office. In the spring of 2021, deep in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, I was in a camp in Tijuana, where some migrants were so hopeful the new president would let them in that they flew “BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT” flags outside their tents. But most of them who crossed got a slap from reality: They were quickly frog-marched by U.S. Border Patrol back through the deportation doorway, back to the squalid camps in cartel turf. Others got rapidly loaded onto ICE planes and flown back to Haiti, Guatemala, El Salvador, wherever. As the number of people crossing the border grew during Biden’s first two years in office, these expulsions reached a scorching pace. ICE charter flights bounced around the globe like Taylor Swift’s jet. According to data collected by Tom Cartwright, a researcher with the advocacy group Witness at the Border, there were more ICE flights in the air during the early Biden years than ever before.
Biden’s expulsion regime was made possible by the most radical shift in immigration policy of the last 50 years: Title 42. When Biden took office, he undid dozens of Trump’s immigration policies, but he kept in place Trump’s most consequential ban, the public health statute Title 42. Using the pandemic as pretext, Title 42 gave the president the power to rapidly expel migrants without the normal court process. During just his first two years in office, Biden used it to kick out over 2.8 million migrants. That’s a stunning number. In Trump’s entire time in the White House, his administration removed only 2 million people total.
There’s an important caveat here. Even though millions of migrants got expelled during Biden’s first years in office, the number of deportations actually shrunk. Though they’re both a form of removal, expulsion and deportations are different: Title 42 expulsions were a brand new phenomenon. They could happen rapidly, without a trial, and the subject was almost always arrested near the border. Deportations, on the other hand, only come after an immigration judge officially orders someone removed, and they often involve people arrested in the interior. During Biden’s first two years in office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported under 200,000 people total — less than any single year during the Trump era.
You might think that’s because Biden didn’t want to deport people. His administration may have been comfortable kicking out migrants who just arrived, but deporting immigrants who have been here a long time is, of course, a different story. That hesitation was likely part of the reason deportations shrunk during the early Biden years. But there’s another reason: ICE — along with all the country’s deportation infrastructure — had been surged to the border. To handle the huge number of new arrivals, the administration sent ICE agents to assist Border Patrol, and that took government workers away from arresting people in the interior. Meanwhile, ICE Air flights were filled to the brim with recent border crossers; they literally didn’t have room for other deportees.
As soon as Title 42 ended in May 2023, deportations immediately skyrocketed to historic numbers. According to data analysis from the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, Biden “removed or returned” 775,000 unauthorized immigrants from May 2023 to May 2024. That’s more than any previous year since 2010. (For comparison, Trump’s record for removals in one year maxed out at under 612,000 — and that was with Title 42 in place.)
Maybe, if he takes office next year, Trump will be able to get a bit more juice out of the deportation system and get his numbers higher. However, there are indications that the country’s deportation system is at its redline. With the current manpower and equipment, it just might not be possible to deport that many more people.”
“Immigrants, including those living in the U.S. illegally, can get a green card if they marry an American citizen. But U.S. law generally requires those who entered the U.S. illegally to leave the country and re-enter legally to be eligible for a green card. Doing so, however, can trigger a 3- or 10-year ban from the U.S., prompting many mixed-status families not to pursue that option.
While the Biden administration has argued its initiative promotes family unity in households that include U.S. citizens, Texas and the other Republican-controlled states said in a lawsuit filed Friday that the policy rewards illegal immigration. The red states, which have challenged nearly every major Biden administration immigration move, said the policy misused the immigration parole authority.
On Monday, Barker, the federal judge in Texas appointed by former President Donald Trump, issued an administrative order prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security from granting parole to those applying for the Keeping Families Together policy.”
“In the months since President Joe Biden imposed sweeping restrictions on asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border, the policy appears to be working exactly as he hoped and his critics feared.
The number of people asking for haven in the United States has dropped by 50% since June, according to new figures from the Department of Homeland Security. Border agents are operating more efficiently, administration officials say, and many of the hot spots along the border, like Eagle Pass, Texas, have calmed.”
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“Under the new rules, border agents are no longer required to ask migrants whether they fear for their lives if they are returned home. Unless the migrants raise such a fear on their own, they are quickly processed for deportation to their home countries.
It is difficult to know how many people with legitimate cases are turned back because they don’t know to “manifest fear,” as the practice is known. But critics of the new policy say it is deeply unfair to desperate people who have no idea how to seek help in America.”
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“The order mandates that only people who enter the country at an official port of entry with an appointment can be considered for asylum at the southern border, with only limited exceptions for unaccompanied children, victims of human trafficking and people facing serious medical emergencies or threats to their lives.
Before the new rules went into effect, migrants would cross the border illegally and seek out border agents to surrender, knowing that anyone who set foot on U.S. soil could ask for protection. Often, after an initial screening, they would be released into the United States to wait, sometimes for years, for their cases to come up.
Biden’s order changed that. Now, the majority of migrants are turned back quickly.”
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“An administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the policy freely, said the new rules allow the agency to focus on migrants who are more likely to have legitimate claims. The person said more than 1,000 migrants a day can schedule an appointment to claim asylum at an official port of entry, so there is still a pathway for people seeking refuge.”
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“Biden’s executive order is not the only reason the numbers have dropped.
Mexico has ramped up enforcement, intercepting migrants en route to the border. And illegal crossings typically fall after a major policy change — only to rise again later — as migrants try to make sense of the new rules.
But it is clear that the restrictions are having a significant effect.
The number of people crossing into the United States has plummeted since Biden imposed the restrictions. In July, there were about 56,000 illegal crossings, the lowest monthly tally of the Biden administration. In December alone, that number was 250,000.
The number of people seeking asylum, in turn, also fell precipitously. Although the Department of Homeland Security did not give exact figures, the agency said in a court filing last week that asylum requests had dropped more than 50%.”
“Democratic delegates are largely volunteers who speak for no one beyond the primary voters in their areas. In this context, a contested convention could be chaotic, and its nominee lacking in democratic legitimacy.
To be sure, anointing Harris is not especially democratic either. She was not elected by primary voters, any more than any other non-Biden Democrat. But the US electorate did vote to make her the president’s heir apparent, and this gives her a source of legitimacy that any other selection would lack.
Second, and more importantly, failing to coalesce behind a nominee today would have left Democrats without a standard-bearer for a month. This would inhibit fundraising, at a time when the Trump-Vance ticket is taking in serious cash. And it would mean ceding swing-state airwaves to the Republican message — or else, running exclusively negative advertising — for the next four weeks. This is especially risky in a context where Democrats face the challenge of introducing a new nominee to the country.
As Biden’s default replacement, having been elected to fill in for him in the event of his death or disability, Harris was uniquely capable of becoming her party’s consensus nominee in the absence of a protracted process.
Finally, Harris would have been highly likely to win an open convention, anyway. Before Biden dropped out, South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn — a highly influential member of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) — let it be known that he would favor Harris were Biden to drop out.”
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“although Harris has weaknesses, she is not devoid of political gifts. At 59, she is young by the standards of American politics. She is an able speaker, whose recent appearances have brimmed with more vitality and coherence than either Biden or Trump have mustered in years. Her recent remarks debunking the GOP’s claims of being the party of “unity” were especially effective.
Harris does have a negative approval rating. But it is nevertheless better than Biden’s. And the public’s disapproval of her is less strongly held. As the political consultant Sarah Longwell has reported, voters in focus groups tend to have a negative impression of Harris — but it is just that, an impression, rather than a deep-seated evaluation. They do not know much about her and are aware of that fact.”
“Vance is an outspoken protectionist, nationalist, and anti-corporate hawk who’s bound to shift any future Trump administration in an anti-trade, anti-immigration, and anti-market direction. That can only mean bad things for the cost and availability of housing.”
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“The federal government hasn’t regulated rents at private buildings since World War II. There’s a good reason for that. A mountain of economic evidence suggests rent control is a terribly counterproductive policy.
The research couldn’t be clearer that where rent control policies suppress rents, they also suppress the supply of rental housing (by reducing construction or encouraging conversion of rental units to for-sale units) and reduce the quality of rental housing (by limiting investment).
The people who get a rent-controlled unit pay lower prices and stay in their units longer. The people who don’t get a rent-controlled unit end up paying higher prices. Cities as a whole suffer from declining investment and economic growth.
A rent control policy adopted in St. Paul, Minnesota, saw an exodus of developers from the city. New York City’s long-standing “rent stabilization” policy is producing vacant, dilapidated buildings that no one has the money to fix or redevelop.”
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“Vance is an arch-protectionist who’s endorsed Trump’s call for 10 percent tariffs across the board. Slapping taxes on imported materials needed for housing construction would make the costs of construction higher, lower housing production, and ultimately raise costs for consumers.
The Republican Party’s 2024 platform calls for deporting immigrants as a means of making housing more affordable.
Vance has been an outspoken proponent of this idea, saying on X last month that “not having 20 million illegal aliens who need to be housed (often at public expense) will absolutely make housing more affordable for American citizens.”
There’s a certain chilling logic to this idea: Lowering housing demand through mass deportations will lower housing prices as well.
New research however suggests the negative supply effects of kicking immigrants out of their homes outweigh any price declines caused by falling demand for housing. While immigrants consume housing, they also build housing. A recent study found that increased immigration enforcement creates a shortage of construction labor that lowers housing production and increases housing costs.”
“Steve Ricchetti, who’s been with Biden since his days in the Senate, drove to see the president at his house on the Delaware shore on Friday. Mike Donilon arrived on Saturday. The two men, both of whom had been by Biden’s side during key decisions about whether to seek the presidency in 2016 and 2020, sat at a distance from the president, still testing positive for Covid, and presented damning new information in a meeting that would hasten the end of Biden’s political career.
In addition to presenting new concerns from lawmakers and updates on a fundraising operation that had slowed considerably, they carried the campaign’s own polls, which came back this week and showed his path to victory in November was gone, according to five people familiar with the matter, who, like others interviewed for this article, were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations. Biden asked several questions during the exchange.
The only other people with Biden in the residence when he arose Sunday were first lady Jill Biden and two other trusted aides: deputy chief of staff Annie Tomasini and assistant to the first lady Anthony Bernal. At 1:45 p.m., he notified a somewhat larger group of close aides that he had decided the night before to end his quest for another term, reading his letter and thanking them for their service. A minute later, before any other campaign and White House staffers could be notified, he posted the historic letter from his campaign account on the social media site X.”
“the party isn’t avoiding an election, they’re trying to win one, by picking a nominee who (they hope) can win more people’s votes”
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“yes, 15 million people did indeed end up voting in those primaries. But how democratic was that process? Biden won the primaries because he won the inside game. It was party elites who determined the (few) options available to voters. Polls showed the voters would in theory have preferred someone else, but they weren’t offered a realistic opposing candidate.
Furthermore, asserting that the primary result is all that matters, and that taking anything else into account is “undemocratic,” is a very limited and blinkered definition of democracy. After all, those 15 million people are a paltry sum compared to the 150 million people who may vote in the general election — people who, according to polls, overwhelmingly think Biden is too old to serve another term. Many of those people wanted another candidate — shouldn’t their views matter?”
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”
Another issue is that primary voters did not have the information that Biden would perform so poorly in the debate when they cast their votes.”
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“party elites didn’t push Biden off the ticket in an effort to steal the power of the presidency from him. They abandoned him because they fear he is hurting the party’s electoral chances — that is, because he’s lost support from voters.”
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“maybe it would have been nice if Democrats had had an actual presidential primary process rather than this mess. But that didn’t happen — and, considering the options, party officials abandoning Biden to try and nudge him aside in favor of someone who can win was a reasonable response.”
“Carr blames the delay on “the addition of a substantive wish list of progressive ideas” to the approval process. In an April 2023 letter to Davidson, 11 Republican U.S. senators warned that “NTIA’s bureaucratic red tape and far-left mandates undermine Congress’ intent and would discourage participation from broadband providers while increasing the overall cost of building out broadband networks.”
Among several examples, the senators noted that NTIA’s BEAD proposal “requires subgrantees to prioritize certain segments of the workforce, such as ‘individuals with past criminal records’ and ‘justice-impacted […] participants.'” The infrastructure law that authorized the program merely required contractors to be “in compliance with Federal labor and employment laws.”
The previous year, in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Republican senators warned that the NTIA’s proposed BEAD rollout “creates a complex, nine-step, ‘iterative’ structure and review process that is likely to mire State broadband offices in excessive bureaucracy and delay connecting unserved and underserved Americans as quickly as possible.”
In practice, this is exactly what’s happening: Multiple representatives from the telecommunications industry told MinnPost this week that they had no interest in applying for a piece of Minnesota’s $652 million in BEAD grants. Brent Christensen, president and CEO of Minnesota Telecom Alliance, which represents 70 Minnesota telecom companies, said, “None of them would bid for the federal grants because of the regulations that would come with it—especially the requirement to provide low-cost services to low-income households in exchange for grants that would allow internet providers to build out their networks.”
MinnPost noted that new state laws also “requir[e] companies who receive state grants to pay workers a ‘prevailing wage,’ a basic hourly rate paid on public works projects to a majority of workers in a particular occupation.” Since the federal government’s prevailing wage list does not include telecom workers, “companies in Minnesota would have to pay more because they would have to use a similar, but higher-paying, classification.”