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Immigration law is a trainwreck in general, so there are tons. One particularly noteworthy issue that Biden abused was the parole authority. This is something the 2024 bill would have ameliorated somewhat. Then Trump cynically torpedoed that bill with MAGA promising he'd deliver a much stronger bill if he became President. Then he did almost nothing statutorily.
Then another issue is Trump's border policies are constantly getting shredded by the courts, usually because he's trying to do something with an executive order when there's laws on the books from decades ago that say differently, so the courts rule against him. Instead of trying to fix the law he just looks for a different loophole for enforcement. It's a strategy with more wins than he had in his first term, mostly because he spent his first term losing hard over and over, and a few effective strategies bubbled to the top. But it's still wobbly in lots of places, and it's a very fixable issue.
Miller is great but is more like a local maximum -- Trump has given him broad leeway to do stuff with EOs and enforcement agencies but gives him little leverage beyond that.
It is a trainwreck because one side just ignores the law. Look at your example of Biden's parole abuse. The law says that the pres admin can temporarily parole individuals into the US on a case by case basis. Biden admin parole in millions of him over his term, this was done categorically, not at all case by case.
Why rely on another law to fix parole? The original law is already clear and is ignored. Trump was able to shut down the border with the laws on the books, what is another law that gives concession to the pro side going to do?
Biden didn't really ignore the law on immigration. One could make the argument (which I would agree with) that he ignored the spirit of what the law intended, but his parole abuse followed the letter since every applicant technically received an individual decision, and the DHS asserted individualized "significant public benefit" findings. The definitions of those things were so wishy washy that it could mean almost anything. Republican states tried to sue, then fell victim to another way in which immigration law was busted: technicalities around standing. They actually did fix that issue in 2025 though with the Laken Riley Act.
I would consider "pretending words mean what we want them to mean instead of what they actually mean so we can technically follow the law" the same as just ignoring the law.
Biden's interpretation wasn't so egregious that a "reasonable" person would say it's completely unfounded based on the text alone. Usually we'd have courts decide these sorts of things, and they almost did! But then the court case got thrown out for lack of standing because, again, US immigration law is a trainwreck and badly in need of reform.
aka: Biden interpreted "shall" to mean "only when I want to, and I never want to", and TheAntipopulist will never, ever, ever, ever recognize it or grapple with it.
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I'm having a hard time seeing how this is easy to do, or even possible. We actually do have a lot of good immigration laws on the books. The problem is that, until Trump, they were just not enforced. Remember how Biden said he needed a law to strength the southern border? And then Trump fixed it almost immediately? This is similar to gun control. We don't need more laws. We just need the will to enforce existing laws.
The most important thing is not to pass any new laws which come with amnesty. Because that was tried before. The result was millions of new citizens while enforcement was just forgotten immediately.
I'll go further though. Congress is hard to work with because there are enough crypto-democrats to prevent the passage of any genuinely useful laws. The SAVE act is the most salient example. A lot of Republicans who got primaried like Thomas Massie and John Cornyn revealed their true colors once they no longer had to answer to voters. Its just easier in this world to be a Democrat and collect applause from the genteel classes.
The courts are also nigh-impossible to fix. There are nearly 700 judges who can issue an injunction against an executive order. Probably at least 100 of these are on the Kentanji Brown Jackson partisan level where they don't care what the law says. Their goal is to block Trump. Thus the strategy to rotate to a new executive order playing whack-a-mole. As Cardinal Richelieu said, "no executive order is lawful enough that I cannot find a reason to block it".
The problem with many of the immigration laws is things like they say "may" instead of "shall" so they can be turned off whenever a D executive decides not to enforce them. Then another issue crops up when states sue saying "hey well you have to enforce at least enforce the laws that say shall" and then they get thrown out of court for lack of standing.
Funny you say that since the 2024 bill was actually supported by many Democrats! Then Trump had an overwhelming amount of political capital to spend at the start of his term to force something even harsher through Congress, but he never even bothered trying.
This particular issue was basically fixed in 2025.
I feel like this is that two screens thing we've talked about.
May, shall? Who cares? Certainly not the Biden administration. Certainly not blue city DA's.
Trump was met by insane resistance from Democrats and a good deal of resistance from his own party from day one. A lot of the latter took place in the form of slow-walking. But the craziest thing to me is the idea that any bill signed by Biden could have been a good bill. This was the guy who let 10 million illegals walk across the border. He could have stopped it at any time! So clearly he wouldn't sign a bill if he believed it would meaningfully restrict immigration. Sure he was a doddering fool, but his people knew exactly what they were doing. This bill just gives them political cover to say they're doing something. They weren't.
Maybe I'm not enough of a legal expert to discern the difference, but it seems to me that Boasberger and Sparkle Sooknanan keep doing their thing. Lower judges can just ignore the Supreme Court. Sure they'll get a tongue lashing but impeachment is off the table. Of course the Trump admin could simply ignore those same judges, but they seem mostly not willing too. I'll admit my certainly is less on this one.
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Trump plus no bill is better than Harris plus bill.
Even if we accept the bill was a net positive by itself (it still had loopholes) executive authority is still far more important. And giving the Biden administration a win that they were doing something could have flipped the election which polling showed as much closer at the time. He ended up winning big so perhaps you still could have done the bill.
It would be impossible to pass anything right now without eliminating the fillibuster. I think we should get rid of it but so far we haven’t gone down that path. It would costs some political capital; though in my opinion smart people on both sides are thinking that we have too many checks/balances and eliminating them to boost the power of congress would be a good thing.
If the GOP got rid of the filibuster now it would give the Dems another issue to run on even if their smart people think it’s a correct decision.
One of the reasons I like getting rid of the filibuster the most is it would be a check on the Supreme Courts power as the SC would be more comfortable telling Congress to fix legislation.
Agree-ish, at least on the topic of immigration. Though I'd pretty strongly claim that the two were not mutually exclusive! It might have been a bit awkward for Trump when the Dems started implementing small chunks of his immigration-restriction agenda, but the Dems had already started their own crackdown on immigration by this point. The bill itself was mostly closing loopholes and getting funding for border enforcement, which I doubt would have moved public opinion much.
Too convenient of an omni-excuse for purple state legislators to never have to vote on anything controversial. Obviously it should be abolished -- by either side.
If it was a serious obstacle to immigration reform at the start of Trump's term, Trump almost certainly could have obliterated it.
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For anyone that doesn't want to reenact the reruns.
Glad that my somewhat lazy reading of the situation matches with a much more thorough investigation.
Although really everything can be said in a few words: Laws don't matter if they aren't enforced.
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