[PlanksVariable]

Sure, recent past administrations enforced border protections and prioritized deporting immigrants with criminal records. And that’s irrelevant.

The Biden administration did neither. They took active measures to strip the Customs and Border Protection Agency of its scope and authority through executive order from their first day in office. Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.

This wasn’t policy they campaigned on or announced. It wasn’t something the American people wanted, and it polled terribly even among Democrats. But they did it anyway.

Conversely, Trump had the voter’s mandate to secure the border when he entered office, but he’s managed it so poorly, created terrible optics, and has Democrats marching in the streets in every major U.S. city in support of illegal immigration. The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.

[defrost]

I'm not a partisan US voter.

> The Biden administration did neither.

This appears to be a partisan statement subject to data source and bias. eg:

  The Biden administration took office amid heightened debate in some circles over the merits and tactics of deportations, yet it is on track to carry out as many removals and returns as the Trump administration did.

  The 1.1 million deportations since the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2021 through February 2024 (the most recent data available) are on pace to match the 1.5 million deportations carried out during the four years President Donald Trump was in office. These deportations are in addition to the 3 million expulsions of migrants crossing the border irregularly that occurred under the pandemic-era Title 42 order between March 2020 and May 2023—the vast majority of which occurred under the Biden administration.

  Combining deportations with expulsions and other actions to block migrants without permission to enter the United States, the Biden administration’s nearly 4.4 million repatriations are already more than any single presidential term since the George W. Bush administration (5 million in its second term).

~ https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/biden-deportation-re...

> Their policies directly led to over 2.4 million border encounters in 2023 alone, the most ever recorded in the history of the country.

Their policies or global events? Either way the sheer number of recorded border ecounters speaks to them being out and about and actively encountering people on the border ... when thought about, that's hardly a bad thing - it sounds more as if they were getting the job done.

To be clear, I have zero interest in debating this aside from noting it's hardly clearcut.

> The Republicans make the Democrats look like PR masters by comparison.

They are indeed superlative propagandadists, on this we can agree ...

they are, however, in a view from afar, falling well short of actually making middle North America great again, gutting essential infrastructure maintainance, etc. etc.

But few will ever know given they've also gutted many of the means of tracking the state of the country, the state of the environment, the activities of their administration.

[PlanksVariable]

Counting deportations is half the equation. If Biden was deporting roughly as many people as Trump, but there are 4X as many people crossing the border, it wasn’t good enforcement. Look at net illegal immigration to get the impact, and it’s estimated the number of illegal immigrants increased by 3.5 million people during Biden’s term.

[bonsai_spool]

I encourage you to seek objective statistics on political isssues instead of repeating what the news media (any media) repeat to you.

Obama began an unprecedented increase in deportations (guess who gave the CURRENT director of ICE his first job?).

Biden continued this.

Maybe what you mean is that they didn’t call immigrants by names on TV?

[PlanksVariable]

Yes, Obama increased deportations, and deported people at a faster rate than Trump. But that’s completely irrelevant when we’re talking about the Biden administration, who did not continue this policy, who reversed it, who allowed an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants through his executive orders and policy set by Mayorkas, with many millions more granted asylum status with reduced vetting. This was not reported by the news media until it inevitably reached crisis level.

The very fact that Obama deported more immigrants, and Trump is deporting fewer but with riots in the streets should clue you in to the effect that media has over you.