Biden’s Border Kabuki

The New Center: A Wednesday Newsletter From Sohrab Ahmari

The border bill that Senate Democrats couldn’t pass, President Biden has now codified into an executive order. On Tuesday, Biden issued a directive allowing US authorities to turn away would-be asylees if total arrivals at legal ports of entry average more than 2,500 in a given week. Liberal outlets are touting this as a super-duper-tough action that shows Biden getting serious after Trumpy border hawks scuttled an earlier “reform” bill containing a similar provision.

In reality, the new executive order amounts to little more than a sort of kabuki theater, whereby Biden makes a show of exercising authority he enjoys under existing legislation—and along the way normalizes a huge number of economic migrants entering the United States as “refugees.”