President Biden has been trying to frame the November election around two themes: his legislative accomplishments and former President Trump's fitness to hold office.
But Biden's own vulnerabilities have stood in his way. Among them, for many voters, is a sense that the country is in chaos, fueled in part by images of an overwhelmed southern border that have flooded television screens and social media since he took office.
“Fentanyl coming across the border is coming into our communities,” Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nevada, where Biden trails Trump by an average of 6 percentage points, said in an interview. “Human trafficking that occurs at the border reaches our communities.”
That helps explain why Biden took an executive action this week — severely limiting immigrants' rights to seek asylum — that surprised and angered many allies on the left and could well be overturned in the courts.
“He did what he had to do, not just because it's a big campaign issue, but because it's a genuine issue,” said David Axelrod, who was a top political adviser to former President Obama. “I probably should have done it sooner.”
Biden, Axelrod, Cortez Masto and other Democrats have been blaming the border problem on Republicans, who earlier this year failed on a bipartisan bill that would have given the president more money and influence for border enforcement, because former President Trump I wanted to keep the theme alive for the campaign.
But despite his role in killing the law enforcement bill, Trump maintains a big lead on the question of which candidate can best handle the problem, including an ABC poll released last month that showed him leading Biden between 47% and 30% on who to trust more. fixing the border.
A campaign “is always a combination of attack and defense,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster.
Whether it works or not, Biden is playing defense here.
But there are serious political and policy issues (some of which are beyond its control) that could thwart the impact of the effort.
Quickly returning migrants to their home countries, as the Biden administration plans, only works if they are from Mexico and a handful of countries that are part of an agreement that allows Mexico to receive them.
Immigrants from Russia, China, Venezuela and many other countries who have arrived in greater numbers recently are likely to remain stuck in a clogged asylum system that could allow them to wait for a hearing in the United States, regardless of whether the government tries to limit their options. said Ariel Ruiz Soto, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
Ruiz Soto predicts that the number of border crossings will remain relatively low – as it has been in recent months – for a couple of months as smugglers and migrants figure out if there are loopholes to exploit in the new system.
But later in the summer, a variety of factors outside Biden's control could emerge, including the possible re-election of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in July, which could spark another wave of migrants seeking to escape the political, economic and social crisis. and security of that country.
Biden must also rely on continued help from Mexico under newly elected President Claudia Sheinbaum. So far this year, the country is on track to surpass the record number of immigrants it detained last year, she said.
One of the biggest flaws of the new policy is that it lacks money for enforcement and the higher level of protection in court that a law passed by Congress would have provided. Republicans, despite their own culpability for thwarting Congress's efforts, immediately called Biden's bill “a scam.”
“If you want to secure the border and you want this group to do it, you're going to die waiting,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who supported the bipartisan package, told reporters this week.
Many of Biden's critics predicted the action would be delayed in the courts and argued the administration would be happy with a delay.
“The most immediate thing I was trying to do was come up with a talking point for the debate with Trump later this month,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that supports stricter controls on immigration. “At least he needs to pretend that he's doing something.”
Nor are all Democrats convinced that Biden can win much.
Polls tend to show that the issue ranks high among Americans' concerns; Immigration consistently ranks third behind the economy and government/leadership issues in monthly polls conducted by Gallup.
But polls that break down the issue by party often show that the biggest concern is on the Republican side. “I don't necessarily think there are many persuadable voters who think this is the most important issue,” said Greenberg, who also conducts focus groups.
But many elected Democrats in battleground states and districts were among the quickest to support Biden's new policy, suggesting they at least see the need for some protection against Republican attacks.
Voters are seeing a “process that appears to be out of control for immigration and they want a safe process,” Greenberg said.
And that includes Latino voters, who want security and justice in the system, said Cortez Masto, of Mexican descent. “And I've talked to them and you can do both” if Congress acts, he added.
Polls show Biden is losing support among Latinos compared to previous Democrats, including Obama, who won more than 70% of the Latino vote in his 2012 re-election. But Fernand Amando, who led Obama's polls among Latinos in his two choices, he said they typically rank fifth or sixth in importance, depending on the poll.
“Immigration is not the issue that animates Hispanic voters, who by definition are not directly affected by immigration policy since they are citizens,” he said. “That doesn't mean it's not an important issue, but it's not the fundamental problem that has been attributed to them.”
However, Latino activist groups and some prominent politicians are furious and have warned Democrats that they could suffer a greater lack of enthusiasm at the polls. The California Latino Legislative Caucus urged Biden to reverse the order.
“We cannot afford to return to Trump-era immigration policies that threaten the lives of refugees or delegitimize migrants for the sake of political expediency,” Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat from Riverside, said in a statement. who presides over the group.
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), who has become Biden's biggest immigration critic on the left, said the president still has time to deliver on his campaign promises to fix the system in a more holistic way. to provide legal protections for more essential workers and farmers who were praised during the pandemic but are now threatened by Biden to deport.
Meanwhile, he wants the game to return to attacking.
“Do you want to see chaos and disorder?” she said in an interview. “If Trump were re-elected… family separations and mass deportations. “That would create chaos and disorder in communities across the country and in our economy.”
