Headline Roundup • September 30th, 2021
Perspectives: Biden's Handling of Immigration Questioned Across the Spectrum
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Amid controversy surrounding the since-disbanded migrant camp in Texas and Border Patrol's treatment of the migrants, as well as the continued influx of unauthorized migrants at the southern border, President Joe Biden's handling of immigration has attracted criticism from all sides of the spectrum. According to Customs and Border Protection, 208,887 people were apprehended at the southern border in August. 50,014 were apprehended there in all of 2020.
Some on the left have criticized Biden for continuing to use Title 42 of the Public Health Services Act to expel migrants; the law, which former President Donald Trump invoked at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, allows federal health officials to take extra measures to limit the transmission of a disease during a pandemic. Left-rated voices have often expressed concern that Biden is too hard on immigration, and that his willingness to deport asylum-seekers and opposition to more open borders too closely resemble Trump's immigration stance.
Many right-rated voices have said Biden is too soft on immigration, arguing that he hasn't focused enough federal resources on curbing illegal immigration at the southern border. Some also condemned him for his criticism of Border Patrol agents that was based on misleading claims that agents whipping Haitian migrants. Many on the right also highlighted a recent interview of former President Barack Obama in which he criticized open borders.
Featured Coverage of this Story
Go Nakamura/Reuters
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...
(AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
President Joe Biden is caught between a hard place and an even harder one when it comes to immigration.
Biden embraced major progressive policy goals on the issue after he won the Democratic nomination, and he has begun enacting some. But his administration has been forced to confront unusually high numbers of migrants trying to enter the country along the U.S.-Mexico border, and the federal response has inflamed both critics and allies.
Much of the anger is centered on the administration’s immigration point person, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Getting hit from both...
(Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
The photographs that should be seared in your memory from the Del Rio debacle are not those of Border Patrol agents on horseback, defamed by their federal superiors — and in particular, by President Biden himself — for daring to do their job.
Focus instead on the photos of police vehicles arrayed in long, imposing rows on the American side of the river — state police vehicles, ordered to secure the border by the governor of Texas.
Does Governor Abbott have the authority to deploy a “steel wall” of Lone Star State troopers? Well, he...
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