Joe Biden’s Real Immigration Record

Joe Biden has spent his presidency undermining immigration enforcement and opening our border to criminals and terrorists.

You can read about Joe Biden's border crisis at bidensbordercrisis.org 

• Starting on Day One, Joe Biden actively worked to open up America's borders. Biden's DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas remarked in 2021, "We have rescinded so many Trump immigration policies, it would take so much time to list them!"

• • Biden's first Border Patrol chief, Rodney Scott, said, "We handed them the most secure border in the history of the United States and a roadmap to keep it that way and make it even better. Through 94 executive actions, President Biden completely destroyed border security."
  • Biden's administration instituted a policy to stop deporting illegal immigrants if they are simply in the country illegally.
  • Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office to halt the construction of the border wall.
  • On its first day, the Biden administration announced a policy to halt deportations for 100 days.
  • Biden reinstated catch-and-release, with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitting to releasing "well more than a million" illegal immigrants a year.
  • Biden ordered ICE to stop worksite immigration enforcement.
  • Border Patrol agent Chris Cabrera told NBC News that Biden "should not have reversed Trump's border policies."
    • "They were very effective for us, as Border Patrol agents, in securing the border," Cabrera said.

• Biden's lax immigration enforcement has led to over 10 million illegal immigrants crossing during Biden’s tenure.
  • Biden set a record for most illegal immigrant crossings in a year. There were 3.2 million illegal immigrants encountered in Fiscal Year 2023. A record. The previous record was set the year prior, in FY 2022. 
  • In 2019, Obama’s former Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said if 4,000 people cross the southern border in a day, that’s a “crisis.” There have been at least four days in March with over 7,000 illegal southern border crossings.

• Criminals are taking advantage of Biden's open border. Since October 1, "thousands of illegal immigrants with criminal convictions" have been caught at the border, including ones with "rap sheets for violent crimes such as murder, rape, child molestation, as well as drugs and weapons trafficking."

• Joe Biden is refusing to deport criminal illegal immigrants. The Center for Immigration Studies found that "the Biden administration’s immigration policies have resulted in a 67 percent decline in removals of criminal aliens.” These are illegal immigrants with criminal convictions or pending charges.

• • During a 2020 interview, Joe Biden said that ICE should "only arrest for the purpose of dealing with a felony that’s committed, and I don’t consider drunk driving as a felony.”
  • The Center for Immigration Studies found: "Under Biden, there's a 71% decrease in ICE arrests of illegal aliens with DUI records. During Trump's first three years there were 235,800 DUI records on the aliens ICE arrested; during Biden's first three years, only 69,282 records."

• Record numbers of terrorists are flocking to America’s borders.
  • Fox News: “FY 23 saw a record 169 terror watchlist encounters by Border Patrol between the ports of entry at the southern border, a number that exceeded not only fiscal year 2022’s record-setting total (98) but the last six fiscal years combined.”
  • A former senior FBI official said on Fox News: “[F]rom my perspective at the Terrorist Screening Center, the last three years, you’ve had 336 known or suspected terrorists arrested between entry points in the southern border. If you take the past four years, fiscal year ’17, ’18, ’19, and ’20, you had 14. So, that caused us, from my perspective, sleepless nights.”

• The amount of fentanyl pouring across the border every year under Biden could kill every single American.
  • Fentanyl poisoning has become the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 18 and 45.
  • Biden's own administration has acknowledged that fentanyl is being "smuggled across the border into the United States."

• Illegal immigrants understand that Joe Biden is to thank for America becoming a haven for illegal immigration.  A group of five illegal immigrants recently said they all prefer Joe Biden to President Donald Trump. One illegal immigrant said shortly after crossing, "I love you Joe Biden, thank you for everything, Joe Biden."

• Joe Biden refused to speak with Raul Ortiz, who served as Border Patrol chief in the Biden administration from August 2021-June 2023.
  • "I've never had one conversation with the president. Or the vice president, for that matter. And so I was the chief of the border patrol. I commanded 21,000 people. That's a problem," Ortiz told "60 Minutes."

• Under President Trump our border was secure and our communities were safe:
  • President Trump built nearly 500 miles of border wall, lowering illegal crossings by 87% where completed.
  • The Trump Administration ended the dangerous “Catch and Release” policy of previous administrations, where illegal immigrants were apprehended and then released to disappear into the interior of the United States.
  • President Trump instituted the Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as “Remain in Mexico,” to keep asylum-seekers in Mexico while awaiting their hearings, as opposed to within the United States.
  • President Trump’s “public charge” rule ensured that non-U.S. citizens living and seeking to move here were self-sufficient and not entitled to taxpayer-funded benefits, ending a great incentive for illegal immigration.
  • President Trump deployed nearly 5,000 troops to secure our southern border.
  • The Trump Administration suspended refugee resettlement from terror-afflicted regions and instituted national security travel bans to keep out terrorists and violent extremists.
  • President Trump took executive action to strip federal grant funding from sanctuary cities.