Immigration Reform Shouldn’t Ignore Enforcement
Biden’s moves to reverse Trump’s errors are welcome, but comprehensive reform needs more than that.
There's smart enforcement, and there’s this.
Photographer: Sandy Huffaker/Getty Images
President Joe Biden’s early efforts on immigration have focused on quickly mending the damage done by his predecessor. Quite right. President Trump was especially active, and especially foolish, on immigration, so there’s plenty to undo. But Biden is also looking farther ahead, and he’s proposed a comprehensive immigration reform that’s meant to resolve the issue for the foreseeable future. This part of his thinking is harder to endorse.
Trump issued a blizzard of executive orders on immigration, most of them ill-conceived. Courts rejected many as illegal. Biden’s early orders on the issue are mostly an effort to pick up the pieces. He’s rescinded the travel ban imposed on some Muslim-majority countries, stopped work on Trump’s wall along the southern border, moved to restore the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that Trump tried to hobble, and withdrawn the “zero tolerance” instruction on border enforcement that led to thousands of family separations.