How Biden’s Promises to Reverse Trump’s Immigration Policies Crumbled

Immigration was dead simple when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was campaigning for president: It was an easy way to attack Donald J. Trump as a racist, and it helped to rally Democrats with the promise of a more humane border policy.

Nothing worked better than Mr. Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” that he was building along the southern border. Its existence was as much a metaphor for the polarization inside America as it was a largely ineffective barrier against foreigners fleeing to the United States from Central America.

“There will not...