Since Pres. Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the U.S. southern border encountered at least 6.3 million migrants at and between ports of entry.
About one-third were admitted into the country. Most of these individuals are in active removal proceedings in immigration court.
A recent analysis, from the Migration Policy Institute (MPI) examines Biden’s presidency at its three-year mark.
It found that the Biden administration has taken 535 immigration-related actions. This surpasses the 475 executive immigration actions former President Donald Trump signed while in office.
Despite this, Republicans have accused Biden of inaction at the border. An effort to impeach Biden’s top border official failed in the U.S. House this week.
Muzaffar Chishti and Kathleen Bush-Joseph are co-authors of the MPI analysis, Biden at the Three-Year Mark: The Most Active Immigration Presidency Yet Is Mired in Border Crisis Narrative.
Chishti, MPI Senior Fellow and Director of the MPI Office at New York University School of Law, said inaccuracies about Biden’s immigration policies often mire his presidency.
“Truth becomes a casualty in an election year, particularly,” he said. “What has lost (the) attention of the media, and certainly of the public, is that for the first time in years, we have gone back to Pre-Trump and pre-COVID normal on legal immigration.”
A proposed bipartisan border bill in the Senate could have been one of the most significant legislative immigration measures in decades.
It failed to pass this week.
Bush-Joseph, an MPI policy analyst, said major reform is needed now to address immigration.
“People are continuing to come to the United States and we need a way to manage their arrival so that it’s safe and orderly,” she said. “The impetus is really on Congress to allocate the resources and update our outdated immigration system … so we can respond to these challenges.”
