"Data Show Trump Would’ve Released as Many Border Crossers as Biden" from the right-wing Cato Institute
> As I previously demonstrated, President Biden removed a higher percentage of border crossers in his first two years than Trump did during his last two years (51 percent versus 47 percent), despite Trump having to deal with many fewer total crossings (Table 1). Congress right now is in a bipartisan state of denial about these three central facts:
> 1) The reason people are being released is because of operational capacity to detain and deport them, not policy.
> 2) Biden has deported vastly greater numbers and a higher share of crossers, but it has not deterred people from crossing.
> 3) The logistics are such that once arrivals exceed the deportation machine’s capacity, people will find out and even more will come.
Yes, breaking asylum and due process laws will be a deterrent. The question was always how to deter immigration legally, which prior POTUSes thought they had to care about.
Re the funding increase:
People to put handcuffs on wasn’t the bottleneck, so no it doesn’t. Immigration courts are the bottleneck, and actually jamming more low-level or non-offenders into the system exacerbates that problem.
Which is not related to the closure of borders to asylum seekers nor the withholding of due process rights for people who are suspected of breaking immigration laws — neither of which is at the Executive’s discretion.
I'm pretty sure the executive has power over border policy, the INA is very broad and gives a lot of power to the executive, also it would be crazy if the executive can't decide on border policy, congress is too slow/deadlocked to do anything meaningful.
It’s not “iffy.” POTUS has absolutely no ability to curtail due process rights. It is a blatant violation of a right that undergirds every single other right in the Constitution. Without due process right, there are no property rights, no gun rights, no speech rights, no religious rights — all of them can be taken away by the state simply declaring that you have been found guilty of such an offense that those rights are stripped from you.
The solution to Congressional deadlock is called “electing new representatives.” The executive in fact does not have the ability to “shut off” asylum processing, no matter how dysfunctional Congress is. And even under the INA. Read INA § 1158(a)(1).
We could have a clause in the Constitution that says something like, “if Congress is deadlocked, POTUS can do whatever they want.” Alas we do not have such a clause, and so he cannot, even if you feel there is deadlock.
Illegal immigration can best be thought of as a slow-moving constitutional crisis. An increasingly large portion of the electorate wants decisive solutions to illegal immigration and will vote for the person who gives them that, regardless of the constitutionality.
