President Joe Biden has essentially told the American people the buck does not stop at the Oval Office — at least not on the border crisis. Having dismantled many of the immigration policies the Trump administration used to regain control of our southern border, Biden administration officials now insist the current mess is somehow all Trump’s fault.
Unfortunately, the facts are not on their side. In truth, the Trump administration reformed a broken immigration system — one that had encouraged illegal migration, incentivized the most vulnerable to attempt an often deadly journey, and forced the Department of Homeland Security to release those they caught (in some cases criminals) into American communities.
Under President Trump, we applied long-standing immigration law, working with officials in Mexico and Central America to ensure those who were truly in fear of their governments applied for asylum closer to home. Furthermore, we assured those with lawful claims of asylum were allowed to enter. Meanwhile, those who did not have lawful claims gave up even trying.
As a result of these policies, we inherited a flood of fraudulent asylum claims and a massive backlog of cases. Unfortunately, this meant deserving individuals were waiting years to have their claims adjudicated. To meet this need, we hired roughly 500 new asylum officers to address the backlog, leading DHS and the U.S. Department of Justice to grant asylum to more individuals in Trump’s first three years in office than in the highest four years of Obama’s entire eight-year tenure.
