RUTHFULLY YOURS

Joe Biden’s latest argument for why the crisis at the southern border isn’t his fault is predicated on the assumption of widespread civic illiteracy.

The yet-unknown terms of a bipartisan deal designed to mitigate the border crisis and relieve the pressure it has put on the nation’s immigration system would, Biden insists, give him “a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed.” The president assured voters that, “if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

The specifics in the bill are not yet public, but they do not need to be for observers possessed of a passing familiarity with the executive branch’s authority to know the president isn’t being honest. Biden has taken to insisting that the White House is all out of “options” when it comes to enforcing border security, only for the administration to suddenly discover unexplored avenues of executive power now that chaos at the border has become an acute political liability for him and his party. The president and his administration are not suddenly admitting to the scale of the disaster along the Rio Grande because they want to take ownership of it. They’re doing so to condition Americans into believing the GOP bears more responsibility for that crisis than the president does.

Today, the New York Times got in on that act, but half-heartedly and in an entirely unconvincing fashion. A three-bylined item in the Times casts Biden as a passive observer of the crisis over which he has presided — one that tragically “shattered his immigration hopes.” Moreover, it drafts the GOP into the role of antagonist against Biden’s leading man. Republicans “refused to provide resources, blocked efforts to update laws and openly defied federal officials charged with maintaining security and order along the 2,000-mile border,” the Times insists. Biden’s foremost shortcoming was that he “failed to overcome those obstacles.”

With that throat-clearing out of the way, however, the outlet goes on to explore the ways in which Biden exacerbated one of the growing number of crises consuming his presidency.

First “the children arrive.” Of course, Biden bears no responsibility for a surge at the border, despite his loud advocacy for pausing deportations, increasing asylum limits, and providing a pathway to citizenship for current illegal residents — what are known as “pull” factors contributing to the influx of migrants. But when these “pull” factors pulled, Biden could not adjust his approach. “Sending them back, the president said, would be unconscionable and inhumane,” the Times dispatch reads. So, the crisis grew.

Next, a wave of Haitian migrants descended on the country in response to Biden’s “more welcoming stance.” He joined his more trigger-happy administration officials in condemning his own Border Patrol officers for the erroneous impression conveyed in images that they were using horse tack as whips to beat Haitian refugees. While some in the administration favored a “tough-minded approach” to this politically sensitive migrant crisis, Biden channeled the instincts of his party’s immigration doves — both outside the administration and within it. The voices within the administration who favored laxity “saw the treatment of Haitians as a betrayal of the values that Mr. Biden had promised to uphold.” They won the argument.

Then came the GOP’s migrant-busing program — a political coup that put Republican arguments on the untenability of the situation at the border into the mouths of Democratic elected leaders in America’s bluest municipalities. “The administration scrambled to meet the Democratic demands, providing more money and speeding up the processing of work permits,” the Times observes. “But the busing of migrants clearly shifted the discourse around the issue.”

One year ago, under intense political pressure, Biden finally introduced “new restrictions on asylum” to partially address the crisis. Oddly enough, he took no credit for his action. Instead, he ascribed his change of heart to the “extreme Republicans” who rejected comprehensive solutions to America’s illegal-immigration problem. Accordingly, voters gave Biden none of the credit he didn’t seek. And yet, the new rules failed to entirely stanch the bleeding at the border. The crisis deepened when Biden “voluntarily dropped enforcement of the Title 42 authority” that had limited the flow of illegal migrants across the border during the pandemic.

That brings us to today, the point at which the border crisis became so acute that it sparked a dangerous conflict between the states and the federal government. Texas is in open revolt against Washington amid its effort to enforce federal law in ways Biden won’t. “Outrageously,” as we editorialized, “the federal government has treated Texas, not the flood of illegal migrants, as the problem.” Suddenly, Biden discovered the “options” he once claimed to lack. The White House committed to tough diplomacy with its Mexican counterparts culminating in renewed commitments from Mexico City to police its side of the Rio. “He appears ready to run more as a leader determined to keep people out and less as a champion of displaced people,” the Times concludes.

Careful readers of this piece of journalism might be confused by the degree to which it emphasizes the president’s agency and the consequences he is suffering as a result of his own actions. After all, they were assured at the outset that the president was merely a beleaguered spectator to conditions that were forced upon him by Machiavellian Republicans. Maybe the paper is hoping its readers don’t read that far down into this dispatch. After all, as the Times concedes, “Many voters now say immigration is their top concern, and they do not have confidence that Mr. Biden is addressing it.” That certainly does describe “many voters,” but not Democrats.