To deflect blame for his policies that have devastated our southern border and the country as a whole, Joe Biden is attempting to gaslight the American people about his immigration record. We should be wise not to fall for it. “We need more resources to secure the border. Not less,” Biden said in a recent tweet, while falsely claiming his political opponents are trying to cut funding at the border.
The man who has allowed millions of foreign nationals to enter the U.S. illegally is now trying to reinvent himself as a border hawk. The American people are used to politicians lying to them, but this is a whole new level of dishonesty.
Not only has Biden allowed millions of illegal aliens to disappear into the country, but his malfeasance at the border has emboldened the ruthless cartels that traffic people and drugs into the country. In Biden’s first year in office, nearly 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses. The surge in drug overdose deaths is largely being driven by fentanyl, the vast majority of which comes to the U.S. through the southern border.
The Biden administration’s anti-border policies have also led to a surge in migrant deaths, with a record 853 migrants found dead during fiscal year 2022. The vast majority of this carnage could have been prevented by an administration that was actually serious about securing the border, but the Biden administration’s priority is apparently to enable mass illegal migration on a grand scale to strengthen its party’s hold on power.
Despite these indisputable facts, top officials in the administration have continued to insist that there is no crisis at the border, and that they have the situation under control. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has repeatedly insisted that the situation at the border is not a crisis, and claimed earlier this year that the administration has been “doing everything that we possibly can” to ensure security and order. Biden himself dismissed the border crisis during a trip to Arizona late last year, saying that he wasn’t visiting the border because “there are more important things going on.”
Biden later visited the southern border for a photo-op but did not commit to changing any of his policies. His gaslighting tweet makes clear that he has no plans to change any of his policies that have caused so much damage and destruction. Anti-border activists and donors are simply too invested in this administration to allow it to change course now. Leading White House officials, especially Mayorkas, see border security as cruel and racist. They believe that the U.S. has a responsibility to let in anybody who comes here, and that has been reflected in their policies. As long as people with this twisted worldview are in charge, Americans shouldn’t expect anything to fundamentally change at the border.
For most of his time as the chief executive, Biden and his minions have sought to downplay the crisis they have created at the border. This has been most clearly in Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas’ repeated and absurd declarations that the border is not open. Further adding to the “emperor wears no clothes” rhetoric has been press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s denial that foreign nationals are walking across our southern border, when ample video proved it.
Such denial of reality has failed to quell public concern about illegal immigration. There is simply too much proof out there to contradict such claims. Rather than continue a losing strategy, the White House has apparently decided to pivot from denying the problem to fabricating an alternate reality that they are taking meaningful steps to fix it.
Expect more of this from the administration while it quietly enacts policies that make our border less secure, and by extension make Americans less safe. It will be up to border security advocates to fight back against the Biden administration’s lies in order to educate Americans about what’s really happening at the border, and this administration’s culpability for it.
William J. Davis is a communications associate for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.