“The president long boasted of signing the first day in office an executive order repealing former President Donald Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy.

“Biden should be able to undo by executive order the policies he put in place by executive order.  Any order issued on Day 1 of an administration should be revokable just as rapidly by the same administration.

“So, the claims that Republicans, by opposing the Senate measure the Senate never passed, have prevented Biden from effectively enforcing the border are incorrect.

“Biden has let in this record surge of illegal immigrants. He could cut it off.”

Commentary

Everyone knows that the Biden administration’s open-door policy at our southern border went into effect on his first day in office when he revoked all of former President Trump’s immigration policies with the stroke of a pen.

I’ve been asking, ‘if it was that easy then, why, when it became a crisis, didn’t he simply reinstate Trump’s policies,” rather than allow millions of migrants to illegally cross our border and travel to cities across the nation?

Of course, we know why.  It would hand Trump a campaign advantage on the leading topic going into the general election.

“I’ve done all I can do.  Just give me the power. Give me the border patrol. Give me the people. The judges.  Give me the people who can stop this and make it work right. – President Biden, January 30, 2024

“The President has done more to secure the border and to deal with this issue of immigration than anybody else.  He really has!  He is doing everything he can to deal with the border.”  – Karine Jean-Pierre, White House Press Secretary

These quotes were always followed with criticism of the Republicans for not giving him what he needed, indicating they were getting their orders from Trump.

 I do a lot of reading and viewing of the news on TV, but I haven’t read or heard anyone suggest, as I did, that Biden simply reinstate Trump’s policies.

That is until Friday, when I noticed Michael Barone’s commentary in Rasmussen Reports, and read his take on that recommendation.  Barone’s words led you into this blog.

Finally, I thought, someone who writes on the national scene addressed the question about Biden and his refusal to close the border.  Currently, Barone is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and writes a column in the Washington Examiner.  At 79 years of age, he’s a known political analyst with broad experience in a number of publications and on TV.

He began his commentary on Biden’s open-door policy telling readers “what’s been missing” in the coverage of the failed immigration bill, noting that the left-leaning newspapers and even the conservative Wall Street Journal suggested that without new legislation, Biden would lack the legal authorization to reduce the record number of illegals crossing the border.  Not true.

That led to his writing of the paragraphs that appear as the lead-in to this blog.

Getting Nervous

Biden is considering a string of new executive orders and federal regulations in an effort to curb migration at the southern border, according to Politico.

The president has always had the authority, under Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, to “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” any time, for a long as he wants, if he judges that letting them in “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”

Considering the flow of millions of migrants so far, including some 20,000 nationalist Chinese, that’s a no-brainer.

We all know that Biden is “an elderly man with a poor memory,” but can he really not have known that he always had the authority and chose to effectively open the border instead?  That was the observation of Mark Krikorian in his piece for the New York Post, “Biden’s new border plan shows ‘I can’t do anything’ was always a lie.”

With the growing concern even among Democrats that the border issue presents a profound election liability for the party, it is believed that the president plans to introduce his plan during the State of the Union address on March 4, 2024, as part of a reset of his agenda. Good luck with that, Joe.

On Biden’s Day 1, when he revoked Trump’s border policies, he boasted, “I’m not making new law.  I’m eliminating bad policy.”  It occurred to me that he could use that quote again if, in fact, he has a plan we can agree to.

May God continue to bless the United States of America