The Biden-Harris ‘Root Causes’ Strategy, Decoded: Part Two
The end of deterrence and the turbocharging of pull factors as illegal migration goes global
By Andrew R. Arthur on August 16, 2024
See Part One
In my last post, I examined Vice President Kamala Harris’s duties running the administration’s “root causes” strategy, which has focused exclusively on illegal migration from the “Northern Triangle” nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. I’ll now explain that strategy in the context of the administration’s efforts — or lack thereof — to address “pull factors” drawing migrants to come here illegally and offer some basic border math to explain how futile this limited root causes strategy has been.
The End of Deterrence. Deterring would-be migrants from entering the United States illegally has been the cornerstone of every administration’s border-security strategy prior to the Biden-Harris administration. The purpose of such deterrence is to minimize and negate the effect of the key pull factors drawing would-be migrants to come here illegally: the opportunity to live and work in the United States.
Deterring would-be illegal migrants has been the cornerstone of every administration’s border-security strategy prior to Biden-Harris.
Border deterrence can take many forms, but three are key: Border Patrol staffing and infrastructure, migrant detention, and prosecution.
Prior to FY 2021, the Border Patrol regularly published statistics on the number of agents serving at the Southwest and Northern borders, but the current administration holds those numbers close as a sort of national-security secret. Anecdotally, however, I have been told that Border Patrol’s Southwest cadre has essentially remained static or slightly declined from the roughly 17,000 agents there in FY 2020.
https://cis.org/Arthur/BidenHarris-Root-Causes-Strategy-Decoded-Part-Two
