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By Dan Gooding
Associate News Editor
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President Joe Biden and the White House sought to shore up the administration's record on immigration, aiming to show a stronger record on border security than perhaps many voters felt was the reality over the past four years.
Posting on social media on Tuesday, the White House also took a jibe at Republicans in Congress for failing to pass the much talked about bipartisan border bill, while touting a surge in law enforcement to the U.S.-Mexico border to tackle the surge in crossings seen over the first few years of Biden's presidency.
Hours earlier, Biden himself made the false claim that crossings had fallen from the moment he took office.
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Newsweek reached out to the White House for further comment via email Tuesday morning.
Why It Matters
The claims made by the White House and the president come with just days left of an administration that has, despite its efforts, struggled to convince voters that it has successfully dealt with both legal and illegal immigration.
The second election of President-elect Trump was widely seen as a rebuke of the current administration's immigration policy, among other issues.
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What To Know
The White House said that on President Biden's first day in office, he called on Congress to secure the border and "address the country's broken immigration system".
Its post went on to say that: "While Congressional Republicans refused to pass a bipartisan border security agreement, President Biden took action and encounters today are the lowest since July 2020.
"The Biden-Harris Administration has surged law enforcement personnel to the southern border, seized record levels of illicit fentanyl at ports of entry, removed more individuals in one year than any Administration since 2010, expanded lawful pathways for those seeking to come to the U.S. legally, and brought together world leaders to jointly address irregular migration.
"President Biden also took historic steps to make our immigration system more fair and more just, including introducing legislation to modernize our immigration system, and supporting Dreamers."
Biden Says Crossings Came 'Way Down'
On Monday, Biden also made a similar claim while speaking to reporters ahead of his speech on foreign policy.
"Let's get something in mind about the border. When I became president, the numbers came way down," he said.
That is false.
Biden took office in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, when public health measures implemented by the previous administration were still in place, keeping crossings low. As the health emergency eased, illegal crossings surged from the end of 2021 through early 2024, reaching a peak in December 2023 of 370,883.
Biden did take action to move some limited resources to the border, including TSA agents, to tackle the surge. Later in his term, as illegal immigration was becoming a salient issue in the coming presidential election, he introduced two effective bans on asylum in May 2023 and June 2024.
That later Executive Order, coming in the heat of the election season, had a noticeable impact on crossings that steadily fell to their lowest level since January 2021 in November 2024. Deportations have also soared in recent months.
Biden's Day One Immigration Actions
When Biden took office on January 20, 2021, he did immediately issue orders on immigration, including outlining the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021.
The bill was designed to "establish a new system to responsibly manage and secure" the U.S. border, including new technology for border patrol officers to screen arrivals, and provisions for tackling the "root causes" of immigration.
It was also meant to:
- Create a roadmap to citizenship for undocumented migrants
- Keep families together while waiting for immigration cases to be determined
- Clear employment-based visa backlogs and expand work permits to family members arriving through the H-1B and other visa types
- Support more asylum seekers and vulnerable populations
While the bill was introduced in Congress on February 18, 2021, it died in committee and was never picked up again.
Many of the elements of the bill were enacted through executive orders issued by the President over his term in office.
Bipartisan Border Bill
The bipartisan bill was another attempt to get comprehensive immigration reform passed by Congress, introduced in early 2024. This time, Democrats and Republicans worked together to draft the legislation, which took tougher stances on illegal border crossings than Biden's previous attempts, and once again sought to increase funding to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
Also in the bill were improvements to legal immigration which would have been the most comprehensive reform to the system in around 40 years.
Republicans did not move en masse to support the legislation as it moved through Congress, however, with just four Senators voting for the bill in February. It was blocked again in May, after Trump got involved, despite clear messaging from voters that they wanted immigration fixes as the presidential election drew closer.
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Increased Legal Immigration Pathways
The claim that the Biden administration has increased legal pathways for migrants is true, to a certain extent. While the president has powers to issue executive orders on issues such as immigration, that power is limited.
Biden expanded Temporary Protected Status, which allows migrants from certain nations to remain in the country without fear of deportation, pending immigration hearings.
He also expanded humanitarian parole for those from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela – known as CHNV for short. That allowed 531,670 people from those four countries alone to enter the U.S., having been screened at home, for a set period of time while they apply for more permanent status.
In his last few days in office, Biden extended the parole for those from a handful of countries, including Venezuela.
Other measures, such as the Keeping Families Together plan mentioned above, have been blocked by Republican attorneys general in court. Dreamers have also been left in limbo, with the DACA program remaining paused as a court battle rages on.
What People Are Saying
Federation for American Immigration Reform, on X: "Biden's open-borders policies invited the largest wave of illegal immigration in U.S. history with nearly 11 million illegal crossings and 2 million gotaways."
Michelle Mittelstadt, from the Migration Police Institute, told Newsweek: "If you take the 'when I became president' literally, yes, encounters in January 2021 were lower than the three preceding months. If you take the statement to mean the entire presidency, encounters have been declining since January 2024 from record highs seen earlier in the administration. And November 2024 marked the lowest point in encounters of the entire Biden administration."
What's Next
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President-elect Trump will take office on Monday, promising sweeping measures to tackle illegal immigration and border security on Day One. He has said he will undo many of the developments made by Biden on legal pathways, while carrying out mass deportations of illegal immigrants.
Congress, meanwhile, is already pushing forward legislation relating to detaining illegal immigrants accused of theft or burglary offenses, and to introduce DNA testing of asylum seekers at the border.
Immigration advocacy groups have promised to challenge Trump's plans, as they did during his first term in the White House, while far-reaching reform to a system many agree is broken appears to remain out of reach in Congress.
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