Illegal Immigration, the Historic Crisis That Dominates the Presidential Election

On screens in the United States, pro-Palestinian protesters have replaced migrants coming from all over the world, crowding around the country’s southern border. But illegal immigration is still the main concern for Americans and one of Joe Biden’s biggest vulnerabilities.

According to a Gallup poll of Americans, April is the third consecutive month in which the unprecedented surge in the number of illegal immigrants is “the most pressing challenge that the country must face.”* To an open question by the market research company, which does not influence responses from those polled, immigration was cited as the biggest concern.

Gallup points out that this is the first time that this subject has dominated a presidential campaign. Other institutes confirm the preeminence of immigration in the minds of Americans, particularly in those of registered voters.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, nearly 10 million undocumented immigrants have been apprehended or reported to officers since Joe Biden became president. However, this record does not include undocumented immigrants who have entered the country without any contact with the CBP, which estimates that number at 2 million.

The vast majority of arrivals takes place at the Mexican border. The years 2021, 2022 and 2023 broke all records for the number of illegal entries at this border, with a total of 7.9 million. Last December alone, the CBP recorded 302,000 illegal entries at the southern border, a historic monthly record. However, the northern border has also seen an increase in illegal entries, with most terrorist suspects, who were later identified by U.S. authorities, arriving from Canada.

The ramifications of this historic migrant crisis are important when it comes to security. In March, the director of the FBI announced, among other things, that “one of the human and drug trafficking cartels has links with the Islamic State group which is something that we are very concerned about” and that “the FBI alone seized enough fentanyl in the last two years to kill 270 million people.”

The migrant crisis no longer only concerns neighboring regions of Mexico. Before the House in April, Native leaders from the American Northwest condemned the infiltration of their territories by drug and migrant traffickers. Jeffrey Stiffarm, president of the Gros Ventre Nation, who presides over a reservation in Montana, even revealed that a colleague had decided not to testify before Congress because of death threats from these criminal groups. In Chicago, where the Democratic Party’s nominating convention will be held in August, African Americans are criticizing the Black mayor of this Democratic stronghold for housing illegal migrants in predominantly Black neighborhoods long neglected by the city.

Biden Out of Step

The overwhelming majority of Americans responds to polls by saying that illegal immigration is a “serious or very serious problem” (84%). Two-thirds call it a “crisis” (including 53% of Democratic voters), or even an “invasion” (up 11 points from 2022).

Generally in favor of legal immigration, Americans believe that illegal immigration undermines the rule of law, is unfair to legal immigrants, and worsens the problems of drugs and criminality. No less than 86% even see illegal immigration as a “significant or critical threat to the vital interests of the United States.” That is six points more than a year ago.

Biden is completely out of step with his compatriots on this issue. Up until very recently, the president, who only visited the southern border for the first time in January 2023, alternated between silence, denial and minimization. It was only in January 2024 that he admitted that the southern border is “not secure” and that the country is facing a “crisis.”

In the wake of this semantic shift, Biden asserts that the crisis demands “enormous changes” and that he wants to “close the border.” But he is not convincing: 57% of Americans feel that Biden “blew off the issue” during his State of the Union address. More importantly, 64% of independents, which is the dominant category of voters who decide between candidates, think that the president “has not responded adequately” to the problem.

On average, immigration is the issue in the polls where the public is the most dissatisfied with Biden, and it has been this way since mid- 2021. Even before the disastrous handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, the migrant crisis triggered a plunge in Biden’s poll numbers from which the president never recovered, with them remaining well below the 50% mark since that summer.

The United States has seen other crises relating to illegal immigration, notably in the mid-1980s under Ronald Reagan and at the turn of the 1990s and 2000s under Bill Clinton and George Bush Jr. Today, Biden is quite rightly a reminder that the problem has structural causes, both in the countries of origin and in the U.S. legal immigration system. But most Americans agree that Biden is primarily responsible for the current migrant crisis because he “has created an open-border policy and a historic influx of migrants.”

And 73% think that contrary to what Biden claims, the president has the means to act without waiting for new legislation from Congress. The vast majority of Americans, including 78% of independents and even 56% of Democrats, wants Biden to take stricter measures at the southern border.

Trump as an Example

In an unprecedented crisis, most Americans want unprecedented measures, including some advocated for by former President Donald Trump.

Some proposals by the Republican candidate have considerable support among Biden voters, with 42% in favor of mass deportation of illegal immigrants, 35% wanting complete closure of the southern border, and 30% calling to put an end to the automatic acquisition of U.S. nationality by right of birth on U.S. soil.

Illegal immigration partly explains why Biden has lost the support of many Black people, some of whom are gravitating toward Trump, with African Americans generally being more opposed to immigration, illegal or otherwise, than their compatriots.

Furthermore, some emblematic measures brought in by the Trump presidency receive more support today than they did then. This is notably the case for extending the wall along the border and for the requirement that migrants remain in Mexico while their applications for entry are considered.

Candidate Trump, who opposes the proposed bipartisan legislative agreement on immigration before the election, often makes outrageous remarks about undocumented immigrants, who, according to him, “are poisoning the blood of our country.” But at this stage, the majority of Americans prefer Trump to Biden when it comes to managing immigration. In fact, it is on this subject that Trump, in poll after poll, obtains his biggest advantage over Biden. An ABC News poll published at the start of May shows Trump with 17 points more than Biden when it comes to immigration. The situation was the opposite during the 2020 presidential election.

With 2024 looking likely to break the successive annual records for illegal entries into the United States that were set in 2021, this crisis is a major issue for Americans in the run-up to the presidential election. Three-quarters indicate that this issue will be “very important” or even “extremely important” when it comes to their vote.

*Editor’s Note: Though accurately translated, these quotes could not be independently verified.