Biden’s Actions at the Border: Impact on Voter Support?

President Joe Biden’s new border security executive order angered both hard-line conservatives and progressive immigration activists in near-equal measure on Tuesday, but the move could bump his stock with moderates ahead of the 2024 general election.

Immigration and border security have steadily climbed the ranks of issues most important to voters ahead of November, and, on its face, Biden’s order marks a clear move to the right compared to his immigration policies over the past three-plus years.

Multiple Democratic operatives tell the Washington Examiner that Tuesday’s executive action could help Biden “flip the script” on the issue with moderate voters and shame congressional Republicans for “bowing to Trump” in tanking the Senate’s bipartisan immigration reform package earlier this year.

“Republicans wanted to play politics on the border, and this is where it landed them,” one strategist close to Biden’s campaign claimed. “Heading into November without any of the credit for addressing this decadeslong problem.”

Announced in a White House ceremony Tuesday, Biden’s order will shut down border access and allow the federal government to deport incoming immigrants, with some exceptions, whenever the seven-day rolling average exceeds 2,500 encounters and keeps the border closed until the two-week average dips back down below 1,500.

For reference, the average number of daily border encounters for April came in above 4,300, and nearly every seven-day period since Biden reversed former President Donald Trump’s COVID-19-era immigration restrictions also topped the new 2,500 daily threshold.

While he had resisted taking new executive action, Biden said Republicans forced his hand for scuttling the Senate immigration deal that had support from the Border Patrol union.

“Congressional Republicans had an opportunity to support the fairest and toughest set of reforms in decades and they chose to put partisan political interests ahead of the fixing our immigration system in securing our borders,” one senior administration official told reporters. “Congressional Republicans have proven that they do not care about securing our border because, frankly, if they did, they would have supported the bipartisan agreement.”

The president echoed that tune during remarks delivered at the White House on Tuesday afternoon.

“I’ve come here today to do what Republicans in Congress refused to do: take the necessary steps to secure our border. Four months ago, after weeks of intense negotiation between my staff, Democrats and Republicans, we came to a clear, clear bipartisan deal, the strongest border security agreement in decades,” he stated in a nationally televised address. “Then, Republicans in Congress all but walked away from it. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to.”

Still, Biden does run the risk here of further alienating the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, which has already taken serious issue with the president’s handling of the war in Gaza.

The American Civil Liberties Union said Tuesday that it plans to sue the Biden administration to block the implementation of the order, arguing it takes “the same approach as the Trump administration’s asylum ban.”

Meanwhile, liberal lawmakers, including Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Ro Khanna (D-CA), joined immigration activists for a press conference on Capitol Hill to “denounce President Biden’s harmful and xenophobic executive action.”

“This is not the immigration policy that our country needs. It violates human rights. It goes against American values of welcome,” the coalition wrote in a statement. “It is not a solution for the challenges we face at our border. He should reverse the action immediately and work to expand access to lawful pathways and restore access to asylum.”

Senior administration officials argue that Biden’s order in no way mirrors Trump’s immigration bans, as the president has specifically carved out exceptions to the rule for “lawful permanent residents, unaccompanied children, victims of a severe form of trafficking, those who face an acute medical emergency or an imminent and extreme threat to life and safety, and other non-citizens who have a valid visa or some other lawful permission to enter the United States.”

Furthermore, senior administration officials say that, when in effect, the order will not apply to immigrants “who use a safe and orderly process such as the CBP One mobile application to enter the United States at a port of entry in an orderly manner or pursue another lawful pathway to come to the United States.”

But not all Democrats reacted negatively to the order. A number of Democratic lawmakers from Southwest and Western states have ramped up calls for the president to address the border in recent months, and a group from that region, including Rep. Mike Levin (D-CA) and Sens. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), lauded Biden for taking action on the border.

Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ), the New Democrat Coalition Immigration and Border Security Task Force chairman, was one of the lawmakers who joined the president at his Tuesday announcement and later claimed that “Biden is taking decisive, commonsense action to restore order at the southern border at a time when Congressional Republicans continue to use it as a political football.”

Several Democratic lawmakers from Eastern states additionally backed Biden’s order, including Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) and Reps. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Trump and his allies reacted to Biden’s order, which had been rumored to be in the pipeline for weeks, by seeking to frame it as both not doing enough to stem the flow of immigrants into the country and a hail mary attempt to salvage Biden’s underwater approval ratings.

“Crooked Joe Biden has totally surrendered our Southern Border,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Millions of people have poured into our Country—and now, after nearly four years of his failed, weak leadership, Crooked Joe Biden is pretending to finally do something about the border — but in fact, it’s all for show because he knows we have a debate coming up in 3 weeks.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has insisted for months that the president address the border crisis through executive action, but he and the remainder of the House Republican leadership team called Biden’s order an “election-year stunt.”

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“President Biden’s Executive Order is nothing more than a desperate political stunt to try and stabilize his plummeting poll numbers,” the statement reads. “This Executive action does nothing to end parole abuses or catch-and-release. It continues the administration’s abuse of the CBP One app.

“It does not reimplement President Trump’s successful Remain in Mexico policy,” it continues. “It provides no new resources for border patrol. It does nothing to deport the millions who have poured over our open border every year since Biden took office. And it will still allow scores of additional illegal immigrants to flood into our country before any so-called shutdown authority kicks in.”