FWIW - How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans' Faith in Immigration (NYT)

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/07/us/politics/biden-immigration-trump.html

https://archive.ph/bHjBj

How Biden Ignored Warnings and Lost Americans’ Faith in Immigration
The Democratic president and his top advisers rejected recommendations that could have eased the border crisis that helped return Donald Trump to the White House.
By Christopher Flavelle
Dec. 7, 2025 Updated 4:24 p.m. ET

In the weeks after Joseph R. Biden Jr. was elected president, advisers delivered a warning: His approach to immigration could prove disastrous.

Mr. Biden had pledged to treat unauthorized immigrants more humanely than President Donald J. Trump, who generated widespread backlash by separating migrant children from their parents.

But Mr. Biden was now president-elect, and his positions threatened to drastically increase border crossings, experts advising his transition team warned in a Zoom briefing in the final weeks of 2020, according to people with direct knowledge of that briefing. That jump, they said, could provoke a political crisis.

“Chaos” was the word the advisers had used in a memo during the campaign.

...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reopening the border after Trump - and leaving it wide open to all comers - was a grave mistake.

[elleng]

1. By Christopher Flavelle

Christopher Flavelle interviewed more than 30 former Biden administration officials who worked on immigration and border policy, as well as members of Congress, state and local officials, lawyers and migrants.

[LuvLoogie]

3. OH FFS. They had a bill ready to go

but America is full of racist pieces of shit and cowards, and trump scuttled the bill because he knew the MAGA CHUD and white hegemony Dems would blame Biden for the diapered, rapist horde invasion.

[Celerity]

4. Those immigration bills were voted down in early to mid 2024, 3+ years into Biden's term.

[In It to Win It]

9. The lesson is that he probably should have been a little more aggressive in using executive authority

Last edited Mon Dec 8, 2025, 10:02 AM - Edit history (1)

as he did after the immigration bill died.

He did some things before that point, but it largely went unnoticed. Even as border encounters went down, the public perception was that the Biden administration was doing nothing. They had to create the perception that they were doing something and being aggressive about it.

[LuvLoogie]

11. Be more aggressive to placate the racists or to apply justice to the immigration process?

He had to convince the racists and white hegemony that he was preserving their supremacy?

Sorry. This is peak America. It was always going to end this way. Justice is an option. Resource exploitation and wealth accumulation is the priority. The least of us are thrown under the wheels for Hallmark fantasies.

[In It to Win It]

12. He had to convince the racists and white hegemony that he was preserving their supremacy?

No, just convince enough people that the border was closed to win the next election.

[LuvLoogie]

13. Closed to who, from where, for why?

[In It to Win It]

14. Closed to who, from where, for why?

1) To people without legal status in the USA, specifically anyone that showed up the southern border.
2) Anywhere is that is not the USA.
3) For politics.

ETA: ...and by the way, when I say "closed", I don't mean preventing people from coming in. I mean creating the perception of order because the perception is that it looked liked chaos. For a time, it did look like chaos. It didn't remain chaotic, but the perception is that it did. They had to create the perception that the border was being handled in an orderly fashion, and that people weren't just being let in carelessly.

[LuvLoogie]

17. There was a bill that was 99 % GOP written.

But it wasn't enough for the racist criminal and his supporters. So I don't know to whom's perceptions of criminality, law, and order you would have Biden appeal.

The GOPs folded to the racist criminal and his Nazi advisors. Trump was able to demagogue the border because this is a racist country and the adverse effects of that aren't affecting the overall bottom line of white hegemony much.

[In It to Win It]

21. It was too late by then, in the final year of his presidency.

The administration needed to act much earlier.

[LuvLoogie]

22. Like 2013?

Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 (S. 744)

Republicans in the House wouldn't even take up a vote after it passed in the Senate.

You're blaming America's racist immigration policies on Biden's inaction. On failure to persuade racist xenophobes and fascists that the border was secure. Fuck that. they're arresting people in line for their citizenship ceremony while trump calls their home countries shitholes.

Fuck trump. Fuck American racism and apologies for it. Border security my ass.

[In It to Win It]

25. I'm not blaming Joe Biden for that but okay.

[PatSeg]

37. How quickly and conveniently people forget that

[PSPS]

5. The republicans intentionally stymied Biden's attempt to reform immigration policy.

They want to keep it around just to gain any political advantage. They've been blocking immigration reform for decades for this very reason.

[B.See]

30. Exactly. And fought Immigration reform BEFORE Biden.

Yet it's all Biden's fault. I'm surprised such tripe passes for news.

[PatSeg]

38. They have so little to run on these days

but immigration has always worked well for them, even though they don't really try to solve any border problems.

[betsuni]

6. "Although some of the most conservative Republicans had helped draft a bipartisan bill with the toughest

set of border reforms in decades, Trump had intervened to kill it, calling it a 'waste of paper.' So instead of a bipartisan agreement, which is so badly needed to properly address the border crisis after the lifting of Title 42, which curbed migration during the pandemic, we'd used executive action that had cut illegal border crossings by half, to the lowest level in four years. We'd increased the number of border agents and provided fentanyl scanners, which had led to more fentanyl seizures in the past two years that the previous five.

"Even so, Trump was slaying us in the polls on this issue. He preferred to run on the problem ... rather than fix the problem. ... Trump had four years to increase the number of border agents, to boost the number of border judges. He did neither. All he did was fan the flames of hate and division ... . "

Kamala Harris, "107 Days"

[fujiyamasan]

7. I hope all potential 2028 candidates learn the lessons here

Aside from inflation, this was likely the reason 2024 ended up the way it did.

[dalton99a]

10. +1. If Liberals Won't Enforce Borders, Fascists Will

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/04/david-frum-how-much-immigration-is-too-much/583252/
If Liberals Won’t Enforce Borders, Fascists Will
We need to make hard decisions now about what will truly benefit current and future Americans.
By David Frum
April 2019 Issue

[Johonny]

24. In the real world, if Trump crushes the border

When Trump leaves, people who wanted to come but didn't, will try, hence causing the appearance of a crisis. Same shit will happen again. Only way to stop it is if Trump makes America such a shitty place no one wants to come. Trump is only delaying the immigration . . .

[JI7]

16. At the very least our public position needs to be tough and strict

it's not really about details since people don't focus on that too much.

Just present yourself as being tough on the issue.

Same with crime .

[Keepthesoulalive]

32. We've been here a long time

And there is always someone else to pick on. As long as some Americans live in fear of imaginary others, demagogues will push the hate button activate that fear. Let’s play name the groups
Chinese yellow peril
Indigenous people savages
Catholics Papists
I could go on but I’m sure you get my message.

[Blue Spark]

33. So many commercials for the R's

At least in my TV market, the R's hammered the point about the few unvetted that caused the most trouble.

I agree that the successful 2028 candidate will need a better position to campaign on.

[yaesu]

8. No mention of the fascists weaponizing immigration like they do everything else

so they can destroy this country while grifting off it's corpse

[Kid Berwyn]

15. It's ALWAYS Biden's fault.

Good ol’ New York Times, guardians of the well-off.

[Midwestern Democrat]

18. Having observed Biden's political career for over 30 years prior to him becoming president, I think a younger Biden

would have handled several things differently - but by 2021, he was an older man who seemed to be deferring to the advice of younger, more liberal advisers - and a lot of this advice was not very wise.

[RedWhiteBlueIsRacist]

19. In the beginning, Biden pushed Eve aside, and chomped down on the fruit, ushering in the fall of Mankind.

Why is everything Joe's fault, but the asshole Trump skates on everything?

[Paladin]

26. Typical NY Times coverage. (nt)

[somsai]

20. Biden came into office in Jan of 2021 not Jan of 2025 the Democratic Party was different then.

His border policies were not much different than I think any other Democrat in power at the time. It was just after the summer of Floyd. Wokeness was the law of the land. Massive numbers of people began crossing in March of 21 breaking all records, Biden had hardly been in office for a month and a half. To this day we have no plan. No alternative policy.

[Keepthesoulalive]

34. What do you mean by wokeness was the law of the land?

[Johonny]

23. The border crisis was made up by FOX

So nothing he did, was going to do, or could do in the future would have solved it.

Just like the Tea Party and whatever the fuck they were complaining about were never going to be appeased by an Obama policy.

[niyad]

27. FWIW-- this is the Biden-hating bezos fishwrap.

[B.See]

28. FWIW a right wing take from a right wing rag.

[niyad]

40. GMTA

[Keepthesoulalive]

29. They will always find a boogeyman

Businesses depend on the cheap labor and the immigrants pay taxes with no benefits.
Why are they not focusing on the monster in the White House? He has not fixed anything and the country is in shambles. Don’t follow the media down the propaganda rabbit hole. Joe Biden is not responsible for this mess, Trump and the people who voted for him also the republicans and judges who enable him. The media has given him a pass or cheered him on as he has destroyed everything we believed in. Joe Biden is no longer the president, let’s focus on the current administration.

[Jilly_in_VA]

31. NYT is good for the outhouse

Otherwise, not so much. How have the mighty fallen!

[MineralMan]

35. More Biden Bashing? Really?

Have we not had plenty of that? Feh!

[BannonsLiver]

36. Starmer is making similar mistakes in the UK

Biden is/was not infallible, as some in the thread suggest. But let’s be honest, even if he had reduced the number to zero the NYT and other right wing media would have spun it the other way.

[Keepthesoulalive]

39. Every president makes mistakes

It comes with the job . His team was competent and kept most of the pieces together. My question is what is the agenda, he is not the president, trump is hold him accountable and acknowledge his screw ups he is not helping curb illegal immigration he is just creating chaos to stop people from talking about his association with a blackmailing pimp. The media is helping him by discussing the past in a questionable fashion.