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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   22574 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 29, 2026

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Did Biden have an open borders policy? My understanding was that the policy was to turn away people trying to enter illegally, and deport them if they entered (recent arrivals, not people with established lives in the US), and there was no surge in the number of illegal immigrants entering and staying long-term.

Edit: I was wrong, see below.

The actual policy was to not enforce any laws, actively decline to find people entering, and help coach illegals through falsifying asylum claims if anyone accidentally did their jobs.

and staying long-term.

Clever wording. By the time Trump was elected, most of the Bidenwave had only been here a couple years at most.

Okay, I looked into it and there was actually an increase in the number of illegal immigrants staying long-term, but this was not due to relaxed enforcement, but due to an increase in the number of people attempting to enter illegally. They actually deported more during Biden's last year in office than in any year of Trump's first term. Regarding asylum:

President Biden issued an executive order that sharply limited asylum which along with Mexico's help led to a decrease in illegal border crossings.

The Wikipedia article Immigration policy of the Biden administration also has some interesting bits:

On June 4, 2024, Biden signed A Proclamation on Securing the Border to shut down the border if illegal crossings reached an average of 2,500 migrants a day in a given week.[15] Migrant encounters subsequently dropped down to 2020 levels.[16][17]

In February 2024 and again in May 2024, Republicans in the Senate blocked a bipartisan border security bill Biden had pushed for to reduce the number of migrants who can claim asylum at the border and provide more money for Customs and Border Protection officials, asylum officers, immigration judges and scanning technology at the border. (...) It was negotiated in a bipartisan manner and initially looked like it had the votes to pass until Donald Trump opposed it, citing that it would boost Biden's reelection chances.

So it seems he tried to curtail the influx, but it was too late.

They actually deported more during Biden's last year in office than in any year of Trump's first term.

No, they didn't. They just fraudulently counted people turned away at the border as "deportations".

So it seems he tried to curtail the influx, but it was too late.

Also viciously disingenuous. That bill was pure poison. Ostensible limitations (which were still high), all of which had "Unless Biden or Mayorkas doesn't want to", when they manifestly didn't want to. It was just shitty, manipulative theater. Like the Proclamation that doesn't actually do anything besides shut down a detention center. It "halted asylum applications", but they were still just doing catch and release.

From the same wiki article:

In response to Biden's order on February 7, 2021, an anonymous ICE official chafed that the Biden administration had "abolished ICE without abolishing ICE [...] The pendulum swing is so extreme. It literally feels like we've gone from the ability to fully enforce our immigration laws to now being told to enforce nothing."[4] Other ICE officials and agents argued that said changes were more dramatic than even Biden promised during his campaign.

No, they didn't. They just fraudulently counted people turned away at the border as "deportations".

Did they not do the same under Trump?

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