Biden Repeatedly Ignored Warnings About Border Crisis, Feared Backlash From Left, Insiders Say

As the situation at the border continued to escalate, the Biden administration reportedly kept rebuffing proposals to stem the situation out of political fears.

Caving to the Radical Left

“They were a little too sensitive to criticisms from the left,” Cecilia Muñoz, who oversaw domestic and economic policy for the Biden transition team, said to the NYT.

The crisis dramatically changed Americans’ outlook on immigration enforcement, with polls at the time showing illegal immigration to be a top concern for Americans and more voters believing Trump would better handle the issue than Biden. A February 2024 YouGov survey found a mere 31% of Americans believing Biden to be the better candidate to fix the border, compared to 45% for Trump.

By the summer of 2024, a majority of Latino voters supported mass deportation of illegal migrants, smashing the Biden administration’s assumption that hawkish border policies would alienate the constituency.

In the waning days of their administration, both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris — who eventually became the Democratic presidential nominee — campaigned heavily in favor of a Senate border bill that, they argued, would’ve solved the border crisis. While Biden blamed Trump for not supporting the bill, insiders say the Biden White House initially wanted nothing to do with the legislation.

Democrat Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy and GOP Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, the bipartisan pair of lawmakers behind the Senate border bill, said the Biden White House refused to get involved when negotiations first began to gain momentum, according to the NYT.

The Democrats Sank Themselves — and Our Country

“We don’t want our fingerprints on these negotiations,” Lankford recalled the White House saying to him, according to the NYT. It was reportedly only after border crossings continued to surge did Biden’s team finally get on board. However, by that time Trump had firmly established himself as the Republican presidential nominee and made clear he did not support the bill, tanking any chance of GOP support.

By the summer of 2024, Biden finally issued an executive order that restricted the number of border crossings, a move that ultimately helped drive down the border crisis, but came too late for an electorate that had already decided Trump was the better candidate on immigration enforcement.

The Biden administration “had no strategy, because they had no goal,” Scott Shuchart, who joined the Biden White House in 2022 as a senior adviser at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told the NYT.

“All they had was wishing the problem would go away so that they could focus on the things they cared about,” Shuchart continued.

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