High numbers of deportations and illegal border crossings: this was the 4 years of the Biden administration in migration
CNN Spanish
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The outgoing president of the United States, Joe Biden, arrived at the White House in 2021 with a promise to move away from the immigration policies of his predecessor and now president-elect, Donald Trump, who has promised to initiate a large-scale deportation of immigrants.
Biden spoke of implementing a 100-day moratorium on deportations after taking office and protecting sanctuary cities from federal law enforcement agencies. His words went further when he stated in August 2019 that the country could afford to “welcome two million in the blink of an eye.”
But his words were overshadowed by the massive influx of asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border that significantly strained immigration resources and became a political issue for the Biden administration, something Trump exploited in the race for asylum. presidency.
In fact, the president leaves office with an approval rating for his handling of immigration of just 31%, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS.
Biden himself acknowledged in February of last year that the border was “chaos” after border crossings reached a record in December 2023, which led him to issue a decree in June 2024 that restricted the capacity of immigrants. who were illegally crossing the border to request asylum after the failure in Congress of a broad bipartisan border security bill.
The measure resulted in a drastic drop in encounters at the border with Mexico and remained at its lowest level since July 2020 during the final months of the Biden administration.
An analysis by the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) indicates that Biden leaves a mixed legacy on immigration matters. On the one hand, it recorded record numbers of deportations and exceeded those adopted in the previous four years of Trump in immigration-related executive actions and, on the other hand, it naturalized the largest number of people in more than a decade and extended temporary protections against deportation before Trump’s return.
This is a review of immigration figures in the four years of Biden’s presidency, which promoted 605 executive actions related to immigration as of December 6, compared to 472 during Trump’s term, according to MPI data.
The Biden administration began with a decrease in deportations in 2021, but that figure increased over the next three years until reaching the highest number in the last decade.
In fiscal year 2021 – which begins on October 1 and ends on September 30 – the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) reported 59,011 deportations, which represented a decrease compared to the 185,884 reported in fiscal year 2020, when Trump was still in office.
The drop was related to a change in the measures adopted by authorities to focus police priorities on threats to national, public and border security.
In 2022, deportations increased again to reach 72,177 to more than 150 countries around the world and the following year that figure was almost doubled with 142,580 people deported to more than 170 countries.
Among the 2023 data, the 62,545 deportations under Title 42 stood out, the measure that allowed authorities to quickly expel migrants at land borders that was no longer implemented in May of that year.
However, fiscal year 2024 saw the highest level since 2014 with a total of 271,484 people deported to nearly 200 countries. Many of them were from people who crossed the US-Mexico border illegally, reflecting the challenge faced by Biden administration officials.
For fiscal year 2023, ICE counted 142,580 people deported to more than 170 countries.
Currently, there are about 1.4 million people in the US with final deportation orders, but many of them cannot be sent back to their home countries because they are not accepted, or because some form of deportation still exists. potential relief through the immigration system.
There are also more than 7.6 million immigrants in deportation proceedings or subject to final deportation orders on ICE’s non-detainee list, according to the agency’s report, meaning they are not currently in ICE custody and still They are going through the immigration process.
Since the implementation of the executive action in June restricting asylum applications, the Biden Administration has boasted a drop in encounters at points of entry, but unprecedented levels of border crossings were recorded during his administration.
During fiscal year 2021, the number of Border Patrol encounters – which includes the number of apprehensions and expulsions along the southwest border – was 1.6 million, while by 2022 the number increased to 2.2 million of border crossings. The following year, crossings showed a slight decrease to just over 2 million and in fiscal year 2024 they decreased again to reach 1.5 million encounters at ports of entry, according to data from the Office of Customs and Protection Border Protection (CBP).
The monthly record for crossings on the border with Mexico was recorded in December 2023, when almost 225,000 encounters with migrants were recorded, which represented the highest monthly total since 2000, according to official statistics. But the figures reversed after the executive order implemented in mid-2024.
“In the last six months of 2024, Border Patrol apprehensions along the southwest border have decreased more than 70% compared to the same period in 2023,” CBP said in a recent statement.
He detailed that encounters between ports of entry between November (46,610) and December (47,330) are currently at their lowest level since August 2020 and are lower than the monthly average for 2019.
In contrast to the numbers of deportations and border encounters, some migrants were able to secure a place in the United States as naturalizations reached their highest number on record during any presidency.
About 808,000 people were naturalized during fiscal year 2021, compared to 625,400 people in the previous fiscal year, according to data from Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
For 2022, the agency reported 967,500, while in 2023 878,500 new citizens were naturalized and for 2024 the figure was 818,500, while the annual average from 2010 to 2019 was 730,100, according to official data.
In one of his last actions before Donald Trump’s return to the White House, President Joe Biden extended temporary protections against deportation for nearly one million immigrants residing in the United States.
The relief, known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS), applies to people who would face extreme hardship if they were forced to return to their countries of origin, devastated by armed conflict or natural disasters, so Protections are limited to people who are already in the country.
The measure applies to people from El Salvador, Sudan, Ukraine and Venezuela, protecting them from deportation for another 18 months, after the expiration of current protection, and allowing them to remain in the United States with work permits.
Additionally, the Department of Homeland Security announced days ago that it will extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for eligible Venezuelan nationals who arrived on or before July 31, 2023.
The extension will be for 18 months, the DHS said in a statement. “The extension of TPS is due to extraordinary and temporary conditions that prevent eligible Venezuelan nationals from returning safely,” he noted.
Despite efforts to protect migrants as much as possible, the truth is that many of the immigration policies implemented during the Biden era can very easily be undone.
Administration officials who previously spoke to CNN said there are few, if any, ways to protect policies put in place by Biden that, for example, provided temporary protections to certain migrants in the United States.
“People are on the edge of their seats,” one immigrant advocate told CNN, referring to immigrants in the United States. “They have no certainty.”
With reporting from CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez and Geneva Sands.
