Elections have outcomes, and never has that fact been clearer than when Joe Biden replaced Donald Trump as commander-in-chief in 2021.
As , I highlighted , Monday at The Federalist, Joe Biden’s mental inadequacy is just half the issue, his failed plans represent an equally damaging prosecution of his administration and presently his reelection campaign. Our world became a chaotic tinderbox after President Biden’s “near immediate and absolute reversal” of Trump’s foreign policy, and his reversal of border security demonstrates the same kind of damage, but more directly.
In the case of border security, the change came quickly, with Biden, in his first 100 days in office,  , reportedly , executing 10 different orders  , on immigration that directly reversed Trump’s policies.
” I want to make it clear … I’m not making new law, I’m eliminating bad policy”, Biden , said , when he signed several immigration-related executive orders on Feb. 2, 2021, less than a month into his presidency. What I’m doing is addressing the issues that the president, the country’s last president, issued executive orders that I thought were very counterproductive to our security and counterproductive to who we are as a country, especially in the area of immigration.
Reality quickly became apparent as a result of Trump’s border policy’s reverse led to an unrelenting upwell of illegal crossings. To date, U. S. Customs and Border Protection has  , encountered , more than 10 million illegal aliens — so many that even the hard-left Democrat mayor of New York , warned that the unchecked stream of illegal aliens would “destroy New York City” and affect every part of it.
The numbers represent only part of the story, however, with Americans feeling firsthand the damage of Biden’s immigration policies. In Chicago, which at its peak saw some 2, 000 illegal aliens arrive per week,  , residents  , watched as the city spent nearly$ 300 million in tax dollars to give resources to the illegal border crossers. The crisis was made personal in New York, too, when the mayor , commandeered , a public high school to shelter illegal aliens, displacing students who were required to stay home and study remotely.
Horrific , crimes , allegedly committed by illegal aliens — such as the rape and murder of Maryland mom Rachel Morin, the brutal killing of 12-year-old Texan Jocelyn Nungaray, and the murder of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley — give Americans a stark reminder of the real human cost of an open border. Although supporters of the Biden administration’s failed immigration policy claim that illegal aliens are actually less likely than Americans to commit violent crimes, the counterargument ignores the fact that none of those crimes would have occurred had the president seized the border because none of the murderers would have been in our country.
Statistics also show a strong , uptick , in illegal crossers with criminal records. In fiscal year 2023, Border Patrol agents , arrested , more than 35, 000 illegal aliens with criminal convictions, including nearly 600 known gang members. That figure far exceeds the roughly 4,200 illegal aliens detained in the 2019 fiscal year’s figure of nearly 4,200.
Our homeland and national security are also threatened by the porous border. Of the illegal aliens , apprehended , at the southwest border since fiscal year 2021, nearly 300 were individuals on the terrorist watchlist—” and those are only the individuals Border Patrol agents have caught”, the Homeland Security Republicans point out. Not only does the Biden administration’s failures to secure the border raise the risk of terrorism, but it appears the country has also already suffered its first attempted terror attack , connected , to illegal border crosser: An illegal alien from Jordan crashed through the gate at Quantico.
In addition to the illegal aliens flooding the country, drug cartels are exploiting the Biden administration’s failure to secure the border. Border agents in fiscal year 2023 , seized , over 27, 000 pounds of fentanyl at the southwest border — reportedly enough drugs to kill roughly 6 billion people. Yet, according to Homeland Security Republicans,  , “federal officials estimate they are only able to seize , 5-10 percent of all fentanyl , smuggled across the Southwest border”. Americans can tell firsthand how widespread fentanyl is, with cities strewn with addicts and children dying from fentanyl-laced drugs.
Joe Biden struggles to explain the consequences of his reversal of Trump’s border policies, despite his best efforts to spin the border crisis. And with immigration , reported , as one of voters ‘ top concerns this election year, Biden’s failures on this front are just as damning to his candidacy as his mental incompetence.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She then worked for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals as a permanent law clerk for nearly 25 years. Former full-time university professor, Cleveland teaches adjunct occasionally. Additionally, Cleveland serves as a lawyer for the New Civil Liberties Alliance. Cleveland is a follower of her greatest accomplishments, her dear husband and dear son, on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. Cleveland’s views are those expressed here in her personal capacity.
