Biden's Broken Promises On Immigration
Office of Rep. Henry Cuellar
From reneging on pledges to end border wall construction to failing to deliver on family reunification at the Southern border, the Biden Administration faces a slew of broken promises on immigration. What began as a campaign that would supposedly deliver a humane contrast to the Trump presidency’s widely criticized family separation and migrant detention policies has quickly devolved into lackluster follow-through. Immigration advocates have expressed concern over three main policies which President Biden has failed to discontinue, even after over 3 months of the new administration, — border detention centers, family separation, and border wall construction.
The first of these concerns— the continued use of detention centers at the Southern border— gained renewed public interest in late March 2021, when a series of photos were released by Representative Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) to Axios in an effort to reveal the ongoing employment of border detention facilities. The photos show dozens of young children huddled under silvery blankets in a cramped border facility in the South Texas city of Donna. Biden’s administration had employed consistent efforts to keep nonprofit groups, advocates, and media from having access to detention centers in order to prevent publicizing the distressing state of these facilities. Rep. Cuellar explained that he released the photos in order to combat the administration’s secrecy. Associated Press has reported their efforts to gain entry into these detention centers, but to no avail and without permission from the Departments of Homeland Security and/or Health and Human Services.
A separate report found that the extended use of these detention centers is owed to a policy under the Biden Administration which separates migrant minors accompanied by non-parent adults, housing them for weeks and months in detention centers until their accompanying adults/relatives can be vetted. Due to the current inefficiency of this vetting process, and the American immigration system as a whole, the procedure can take weeks to months, meaning that the minors are housed in detention centers for extended periods of time. While this isn’t exactly the same as the Trump’s administrations horrific migrant detention policies, experts argue that these separations have the same effect on the children. Lisa Koop, associate director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, a legal advocacy group that represents young immigrants, explained to USA Today that "It really does look and feel in many ways like a parent-child separation... The trauma of the separation is very similar." When it comes down to it, detention centers at the Southern border haven't been retired by the Biden Administration, and there’s no sign of them shutting down anytime soon.
The second issue— prolonged family separations— are in direct contrast to one of Biden’s most prominent campaign promises. On the campaign trail, Biden called Trump’s policy of separating children from parents and other relatives who crossed into the U.S. without permission a “moral failing” and promised to immediately end the prosecution of parents for minor immigration violations that led to the separations. According to Axios, “Not one of the hundreds of migrant families separated from President Trump's zero-tolerance policy has been reunited under President Biden thus far, senior Department of Homeland Security officials confirmed on Wednesday.” The senior DHS official admitted that "Regarding the reunification thus far, the task force has not directly reunified any families yet, and that's because we really are trying to build the processes and the information.” Why does it matter? Reuniting the 400+ families separated under the Trump Administration was one of Biden’s clearest campaign promises on immigration. Officials even went on the tell reporters that they are scouring through records of thousands of child migrant cases in the last 4 years, meaning an uptick in separation statistics may be on the horizon. While Biden put together a task force to reunify these families, it remains unclear whether any real progress has been made. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project, which filed an ongoing federal lawsuit to stop the family separation policy and force the Trump administration to reunite families, explained to USA Today that Biden officials should allow the deported parents back into the U.S. to reunite with their children and focus less on helping agencies find the missing parents. “Given what the 5,500 families have been through, they deserve to be reunited and given safe refuge in the United States,” Gelernt said. “We owe that to these families.”
Ultimately, Biden’s campaign promises on immediate reunification have given way to a stalled process with vague answers about when hundreds, maybe even thousands, of families will finally be reunited.
Lastly, not only has the Biden administration failed to rectify Trump’s appalling migration policies, they’ve even continued construction on the prior administration’s highly controversial border wall. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has told colleagues that some construction might resume along the border wall to plug some "gaps," The Washington Times reported on Monday. According to the reporting, Secretary Mayorkas said that the administration's current stance "leaves room to make decisions as the administration, as part of the administration, in particular areas of the wall that need renovation, particular projects that need to be finished." These statements are in stark contrast to pledges made by President Biden during his campaign. "There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1," he told NPR's Lulu Garcia-Navarro during an interview with journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Clearly, that hasn’t remained the case, as campaign promises have turned into policy disappointments.
All in all, Biden’s follow-through on his campaign’s immigration promises is lackluster at best and increasingly harmful at worst. From additional border wall construction to stalled family reunification and the continued use of appalling border detention facilities, there doesn’t seem to be an end in sight for America’s issues with handling immigration.