When Joe Biden took office, he promised a return to compassion at the U.S.–Mexico border. America would be kinder than the family-separating (first term) Donald Trump era. But according to a memo unearthed by The New York Times, advisers already told him that softer immigration signals could lead to a rush at the border that the government wasn’t prepared to handle at all.
The warning was delivered in late 2020 when Joe Biden was still the president-elect. Experts had predicted “chaos” if his administration lifted Trump-era border control measures without replacing them with something just as effective. The memo also spoke of a range of strategies to avoid a border surge. But Joe Biden and his senior aides practically shelved the proposals.
So once Joe Biden actually took office, migrant encounters doubled and then doubled again!
A New York Times analysis of government data shows the immigration surge under Biden’s administration was the largest in US history, and America’s foreign-born population is now at its highest in US history. 60% of immigrants entering America under Biden’s watch did so illegally. pic.twitter.com/XFtBPNQxKu
— Frank DeScushin (@FrankDeScushin) December 11, 2024
We saw the border stations filling and border towns buckling. Eventually, cities like New York and Denver were overrun, too. The political fallout was bad enough to help Donald Trump get back to the White House for a second term in 2025. Unfortunately, Trump has gone further than ever as masked agents backed by National Guard soldiers are carrying out aggressive migrant sweeps.
For many migrants, Joe Biden’s words felt like an open invitation, even if it wasn’t meant that way. The Texas Tribune documented the human fallout as men like Jonatan Garcia (a father from Guatemala) couldn’t survive on odd jobs after the pandemic. Then smugglers swore that Biden had said migrants would be allowed in. So Garcia borrowed $7,000 and crossed the Rio Grande with his 6-year-old son. It was probably their luck and the Mexican enforcement that allowed them to enter and await an asylum hearing.
Some kids and parents were let in, and others were expelled within minutes. Joe Biden ended Trump’s expulsion of unaccompanied minors under Title 42, yet the number of children crossing alone skyrocketed. Many of them used to be sent by scared parents; they had no other way to get them to safety. Meanwhile, other Trump-era policies continued for months, which included Title 42 expulsions of most single adults. Thus, the system was compassionate on paper but very chaotic on the ground.
TLDR NYT
Biden ignored warnings, loosened enforcement, suspended deterrence, expanded parole programs, and used CHNV and the CBP One app to turn massive illegal inflows into de facto legal entry. He rejected internal proposals to tighten asylum & refused to pressure foreign govs pic.twitter.com/rHagIM6Vm3
— Charlie Smirkley (@charliesmirkley) December 7, 2025
Joe Biden allowed around 25,000 asylum seekers with pending MPP cases into the U.S., and yes, it was a lifeline after years of tent courts and violence in Mexican border towns. But tens of thousands more have waited in Mexico ever since, as they didn’t know whether the rules would shift again. By the time the administration even grasped the scale of the crisis and ramped up Spanish-language campaigns, the perception had already taken root. Sadly, the border became unpredictable chaos.
Congress hasn’t passed major immigration reform in decades, and now backlogs in immigration courts exceed 1.3 million. While Joe Biden came in to steer immigration policy away from cruelty, America is still living with the fallout.
NEXT UP: Trump’s Humiliating Nickname for Biden Backfires as His Own Slip-Ups Pile Up
