On border and beyond, is Biden agenda ‘America First’?

President Joe Biden is a very different national leader than his predecessor. But when it comes to dealing with the rest of the world, there are similarities: President Biden has kept in place some major Trump foreign policies that candidate Biden decried as ineffective or inhumane.

Exhibit A for this may be the forced deportation of Haitians from a crowded makeshift camp in Texas. Images of Border Patrol agents on horseback confronting migrants seemed painfully reminiscent of aggressive Trump-era southern border controls.

Mr. Biden also, of course, withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan, as former President Donald Trump tried to do. Many Trump-era tariffs remain in place, including those aimed at China.

Immigration, however, may today best illustrate how presidents can struggle to break with the past and steer the nation in a new direction. The problem, difficult to begin with, has worsened in recent months. Rolling back enforcement may be politically unpalatable.

“On paper, the Biden administration’s border policies are pretty similar to the Trump administration’s, particularly during the pandemic,” says Jessica Bolter, associate policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute.