Biden’s Mixed Immigration Legacy: Border Challenges Overshadowed Modernization Advances

However history judges the Biden presidency, immigration will be a critical factor. Joe Biden entered office promising not only to undo what he described as the harsh immigration policies of his predecessor, now President-elect Donald Trump, but also to create new opportunities for millions of long-resident unauthorized immigrants to secure legal status. As Congress continued its three-decade old pattern of inactivity on immigration reform, Biden was unable to deliver on legalization for even small portions of the estimated 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants in the United States. And the administration’s approach at the U.S.-Mexico border, which experienced record irregular arrivals of asylum seekers and other migrants, was sharply decried by liberals and conservatives alike. Immigrant-rights advocates claimed that Biden’s border policies doubled down on the Trump approach. And conservatives charged the administration’s strategy invited chaos by permitting several million people arriving without authorization to enter the United States.

To be sure, the Biden administration demonstrated a record level of activity on immigration, advancing 605 immigration-related executive actions as of December 6, according to Migration Policy Institute (MPI) calculations—far more than the 472 in Trump’s first term, which was seen as uniquely active on the issue. Through these executive actions, the Biden administration restored legal immigration levels that had fallen due to the COVID-19 pandemic and earlier Trump initiatives, as well as rebuilt refugee resettlement to numbers not seen since the 1990s. The Biden administration was also estimated to have naturalized nearly 3.5 million people, the most in any presidential term; more than doubled the length of work authorizations; and recrafted interior enforcement priorities to target national security and public safety threats, and recent border crossers. Additionally, the administration extended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to 1.7 million potential new beneficiaries (although far fewer received the status), offering them work authorization and protection from deportation. To decrease the pressure of irregular arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border, the administration established new humanitarian pathways and orderly processes for migrants to enter the United States, and built a new network of cooperation with governments across the Americas.     

Despite these developments, the country’s attention throughout Biden’s tenure was focused on the Southwest border, where authorities carried out 8.6 million migrant encounters from January 2021 through October 2024 (many were of repeat crossers). Biden was hounded by a strong public perception that the border was uncontrolled. Even when the administration further narrowed access to asylum at the border in June, the measure was seen as too little, too late.

Although a combination of carrot-and-stick processes and Mexico’s stepped-up enforcement quelled some border pressures, MPI estimates that as of July more than 5.8 million migrants had been paroled in or otherwise allowed entry to pursue asylum applications and other immigration cases. At times of high arrivals, overwhelmed authorities often had to release migrants into the country due to a lack of asylum screening and other processing resources. In recent months, as encounters have decreased, so too have releases.

The trend of states taking action to combat or undermine federal immigration policy, via litigation or other means, accelerated during the Biden presidency. In this regard, Biden’s efforts were often frustrated by political opposition and novel policies such as the busing of migrants from the border to interior cities undertaken by Texas and Arizona.

This article reviews the Biden administration’s track record on immigration. It focuses on events at the U.S.-Mexico border and in the U.S. interior, changes to the legal immigration system, and how the administration’s efforts were complemented or impeded by state and local governments.

Haunted by the Border

Upon entering office, the Biden administration sought to end Trump-era policies, including the Migrant Protection Protocols (also known as Remain in Mexico), which forced asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while their U.S. cases proceeded, and Title 42, a public health authority invoked during the COVID-19 pandemic that permitted the immediate expulsion of migrants without an asylum screening. Administration efforts to end both policies were met with litigation by Republican-led states; Remain in Mexico was wound down in August 2022 and Title 42 was expanded to apply to migrants of additional nationalities and endured until May 2023. During the three years the expulsions policy was in use, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) expelled migrants at the Southwest border 2.9 million times, of which more than 2.5 million (or 86 percent) occurred under Biden. All the while, the number of encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border climbed sharply, to a historic high of nearly 2.5 million in fiscal year (FY) 2023, although many of these were repeat crossers, with a monthly high of nearly 302,000 encounters in December 2023 alone (see Figure 1).

The long delay in ending Title 42 was due, in part, to the dramatic changes in migration patterns and litigation preventing termination by the administration. The current U.S. border enforcement system was built on historic patterns of unauthorized immigration involving mostly Mexican male single adults attempting to enter clandestinely and seek work. Beginning about ten years ago, the pattern changed and unaccompanied minors and migrant families from northern Central America accounted for a pronounced share. This trend has sharply increased since 2021, as many irregularly arriving migrants have come from elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere and farther afield, often seeking asylum in the United States (see Figure 2). While migrants from beyond Mexico and northern Central America comprised just 12 percent of irregular arrivals at and between ports of entry in FY 2020, they accounted for 51 percent in FY 2023—for the first time representing the majority. This diversification of nationalities poses significant new challenges for DHS, given insufficient resources to readily decide asylum cases and the inability or difficulty of removing nationals to many countries.

DHS has been further challenged by the flows’ changing composition, with many recent arrivals comprised of families or unaccompanied children seeking humanitarian protection and facing differing detention and other treatment due to court orders and government practice. In FY 2022, for example, the Border Patrol encountered unaccompanied children 149,000 times at the U.S.-Mexico border, the most ever.

Faced with immense public scrutiny and political pressure, the administration shifted approach in fall 2022 and unveiled options to incentivize legal crossings and disincentivize irregular ones. That October, the government allowed Venezuelans abroad to apply for humanitarian parole if they had a U.S.-based sponsor and could pay for their own plane ticket to the United States. To incentivize this process, the administration simultaneously expanded Title 42 to include expulsions of Venezuelans to Mexico (because of icy U.S.-Venezuelan diplomatic relations, Venezuelan removals are typically limited).

This parole process was expanded in January 2023 to include Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans—three nationalities with rising arrivals and that the U.S. government also faces difficulty removing because of diplomatic and other constraints. In exchange for the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, and Venezuelan (CHNV) process allowing in up to 30,000 of these nationals per month, Mexico agreed to accept an equivalent number of removed migrants of these nationalities monthly (though the removals did not approach the entries in scope). As of October 2024, nearly 532,000 individuals had arrived in the United States via the CHNV parole process. Also in January 2023, the administration introduced a new function to the CBP One scheduling app allowing migrants traveling through certain parts of Mexico to schedule an appointment at an official U.S. post along the border to be screened for entry. As of this writing, the app allowed for up to 1,450 appointments per day; 860,000 migrants had scheduled an appointment through October 2024.

These orderly pathways were paired with increased border enforcement that significantly limited access to asylum. In May 2023, after ending Title 42, the Biden administration enacted the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways rule. Under this rule, migrants (except for unaccompanied children) who do not use the CBP One app and arrive at the border irregularly are presumed ineligible for asylum unless they applied for and were denied asylum in a third country, with limited options to overcome the presumption of ineligibility.

This June, the administration further limited asylum access with its Securing the Border rule, withholding asylum when there have been at least 1,500 average Southwest border encounters per day over the prior 28 days. Since implementation of the rule, average daily border encounters have remained above this threshold, and as of this writing asylum remained mostly inaccessible between ports of entry (except for unaccompanied children). Migrants can still apply for the lesser protections of withholding of removal and those under the Convention against Torture, however very few individuals have been allowed into the country to pursue those claims. After the lifting of Title 42, the administration also ramped up expedited removal, which provides speedy processing—and significant limits on access to protection—for those who recently arrived without authorization. 

This new enforcement regime contributed to significantly decreased irregular border arrivals. The Border Patrol recorded 1.5 million encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in FY 2024, the fewest since FY 2020. Meanwhile, arrivals to legal ports of entry increased because of the CBP One app. However, the impacts have been uneven across nationalities. For example, most Cubans, Haitians, and, increasingly, Venezuelans arrive at ports of entry and use the CBP One app (in FY 2024, 98 percent of Haitians, 91 percent of Cubans, and 49 percent of Venezuelans encountered at the border arrived at a port of entry, compared to 4 percent, 1 percent, and 2 percent, respectively, in FY 2021), while those from northern Central America, whom Mexican authorities can more easily deport, tend to cross irregularly and face limited access to humanitarian protection. Migrants from other countries may also face barriers using CBP One because of the app's limited languages or because they do not know that crossing irregularly can harm their asylum case.

Enforcement Moved from the Interior to the Border

The administration focused priorities for interior immigration enforcement to individuals posing a threat to national security, public safety, or recent border crossers, narrowing what had been the Trump administration’s targeting of all unauthorized immigrants. Additionally, resources from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the agency responsible for interior arrests and deportations, were redirected to help manage the pressure of increased migrant arrivals at the Southwest border. In May 2023, in response to an increase in family arrivals, ICE began the Family Expedited Removal Management program permitting processing for fast removal without detention. As of August, approximately 2,600 people had been deported through the program.

Amid increasing migrant encounters and subsequent releases into the country so individuals could pursue a claim in immigration court, ICE’s nondetained docket, which monitors migrants in the country without authorization, more than doubled, from 3.7 million cases in FY 2021 to 8.1 million in FY 2024 (see Figure 3).

Still, by October, the administration had equaled the Trump administration in number of deportations, including removals and enforcement returns: approximately 1.5 million had been carried out from FY 2021 to FY 2024, most of them originated from the border.

Pressure in the Interior Shifted Politics

While the Biden administration gradually developed a strategy for managing the U.S.-Mexico border, addressing the ripple effects in the U.S. interior proved difficult, and public opinion shifted as scenes of migrants sheltering in government-provided housing or on the streets became commonplace. Facing backlash from both parties, the administration moved slowly to deploy its limited tools. Congress continued allocating hundreds of millions of dollars annually to the Shelter and Services Program to support new arrivals, but resources fell well short of covering what cities, states, and nongovernmental organization (NGO) providers were spending.

The federal government and its implementing partners distribute refugees resettled from abroad strategically, but no such system exists for border crossers, many of whom lack U.S. connections. Moreover, since 2022, the state of Texas bused more than 100,000 migrants to cities including New York, Chicago, Denver, and Washington, DC without advance notice to officials or service providers. Already facing housing crises, state and local officials across the country called for more federal coordination and reimbursement for the high costs of supporting migrants. Although busing has slowed as irregular immigration has decreased, these cities are still adapting to recent migrant arrivals.

In response, the Biden administration expanded TPS and expedited work permit adjudications to allow migrants to more quickly work lawfully. The administration extended TPS to a record number of unauthorized immigrants, including to 472,000 Venezuelans in September 2023. Combined with designations for other countries, 1.7 million unauthorized immigrants became newly eligible for TPS under the Biden administration, although about 864,000 held the status as of March 2024. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) also took measures to speed up processing work permits and other applications, and extended the validity of work permits from two to five years for many categories. These initiatives significantly decreased processing times, with asylum seekers’ work permits issued in as little as two weeks, down from a high of nine months in FY 2022.

Nevertheless, the sheer number of recent arrivals meant that DHS staff were spread thin. The rapid evacuation of Afghans in 2021 and the creation of humanitarian parole processes for Ukrainians and later for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans resulted in the arrival of hundreds of thousands of parolees and other humanitarian migrants with “twilight” statuses for which there is no automatic path to permanent legal residence. In combination with the continuation and expansion of other temporary protections such as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), approximately 3.4 million migrants received some form of twilight status, though some may have received multiple statuses (see Table 2). Consequently, humanitarian organizations stretched themselves to assist these migrants and USCIS pulled officers to process applications, increasing wait times for other case processing. The tenuous nature of twilight statuses became evident in October, when the Biden administration announced it would not extend parole for CHNV parolees, putting many at risk of losing work authorization and being deported.

The Biden administration focused primarily on policies for recent arrivals rather than the long-resident unauthorized population, for which only Congress can provide a pathway to permanent residence, although on its first day, it sent Congress draft legislation to provide many of these immigrants a pathway to citizenship. MPI estimates 11.3 million unauthorized immigrants lived in the United States as of mid-2022. But after a bipartisan Senate border security bill failed in early 2024, the administration announced it would establish a parole process for approximately 550,000 unauthorized immigrants who were married to or stepchildren of U.S. citizens. The move was partly meant to appease immigrant advocates who had decried the administration’s asylum restrictions and lack of measures specifically for the long-term unauthorized population even as recent border arrivals were getting work permits and, in some cases, temporary housing and other benefits. However, the parole process was almost immediately blocked by a federal court in Texas.

Legal Immigration Surpassed Prepandemic Levels

Legal immigration admissions recovered from COVID-19-era lows and reached new highs under the Biden administration, although backlogs at USCIS simultaneously climbed to record levels and processing wait times stretched to years for certain applications as new filings mounted (see Figure 4). The State Department issued 11.5 million visas in FY 2024, outpacing previous records. Approximately 4.3 million noncitizens became lawful permanent residents (LPRs, also known as green-card holders) from FY 2021 to FY 2024, according to preliminary estimates. Additionally, a record 1.1 million international students attended U.S. colleges and universities in the 2023-24 academic year, accounting for nearly 6 percent of the total student population. Long wait times at certain consulates abroad persisted, but the State Department reduced wait times from pandemic-era peaks when many consulates closed temporarily.

In a significant achievement for the Biden administration, naturalizations also reached new highs. From FY 2021 to FY 2024, nearly 3.5 million immigrants became U.S. citizens, by far the most of any single presidential term (see Table 3). Processing times improved over this period; USCIS took a median of five months to process naturalization applications in FY 2024, down from 11.5 months at the start of Biden’s term.

Finally, the Biden administration also fulfilled a campaign promise to rebuild refugee resettlement from historic lows under the Trump administration, reaching more than 100,000 resettlements in FY 2024 (see Figure 5). This 30-year high included the most ever refugees from the Western Hemisphere, some of whom were processed through newly established Safe Mobility Offices in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala.

Agencies Remain Overextended and Underfunded

Still, many adjudication functions are more overwhelmed than ever. New applications have increased but funding from Congress has not kept pace. In FY 2023, the budget for the immigration courts (formally the Executive Office for Immigration Review, or EOIR) was just 9 percent of the ICE budget. The backlog in the immigration courts has increased over the past decade, going from 656,000 cases pending in FY 2017 to 3.6 million at the end of FY 2024 (see Figure 6). The USCIS backlog has steadily increased as well, with 9.2 million applications pending as of July, including 1.3 million asylum cases, up from 290,000 at the end of FY 2017. The agencies have sought to reduce these backlogs, including by allowing online submissions of more applications, and EOIR in July launched an online portal for applicants without lawyers. USCIS also increased application fees for the first time since 2016 to hire more staff and expedite processing.

Escalating Role of the States

In the absence of congressional action on immigration over the past three decades, immigration policy has increasingly been set by the executive branch, which in turn has elicited a backlash and litigation from across the political spectrum. Republican-led states filed 16 multistate lawsuits challenging almost every major Biden administration action on immigration. This pattern has escalated since the Obama administration; however, the U.S. Supreme Court has recently limited litigants’ ability to block immigration policies.

In Garland v. Aleman Gonzalez in 2022, the high court held that U.S. immigration law limits lower courts’ ability to issue class-wide injunctive relief against certain enforcement policies. In United States v. Texas, the court in 2023 held that states lack standing to challenge the executive branch’s immigration enforcement priorities. Justices have also expressed concern about lower court judges using nationwide injunctions to block policies well beyond their courts’ territorial jurisdiction. Together, these decisions may put limits on such litigation in the future. At the same time, the court’s 2024 decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overturning the “Chevron” deference to agency determinations has created uncertainty about whether executive actions will be more vulnerable to court challenges.

Still, states have taken an expanded role in immigration matters, ranging from increasing enforcement to expanding reception for new arrivals. In March 2021, Texas launched Operation Lone Star and deputized the Texas National Guard and local law enforcement for immigration matters, including preventing migrants from irregularly entering the United States and carrying out arrests for trespassing, before handing migrants over to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Operation Lone Star, which has to date cost the state about $11 billion, also involved busing migrants from Texas to interior U.S. cities, as described above. The operation has continued unchecked by the federal government, even as tensions escalated to historic levels in early 2024 when the Texas National Guard blocked U.S. Border Patrol agents from entering Shelby Park in the city of Eagle Pass. The Justice Department alleged the move violated federal law and Texas eventually granted access to the park.

At the state legislative level, in 2023 Florida implemented SB 1718 which, among other provisions, penalizes employers for hiring unauthorized workers and criminalizes transportation of unauthorized immigrations. Impacts have been felt in economic sectors including agriculture and construction; employers have reported that many workers have left the state. Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas also passed laws to establish state-level deportation authority, though these efforts are being challenged in the courts.

While some states have joined Texas and Florida in seeking to crack down on unauthorized migration, other states and cities have adapted policies to meet new arrivals’ varying needs in the absence of greater federal assistance. Initially, many cities scaled up emergency responses with temporary shelters, rapid response networks, and large clinics for legal and social services. Over the last several months, as border encounters have dropped, cities have started looking towards longer-term service infrastructures. Denver, for example, in April created the Denver Asylum Seekers Program specifically for migrants who did not enter the United States using the CBP One app and therefore likely must wait longer for work authorization. The program provides access to legal services, employer connections, and rental assistance. Chicago and New York have consolidated offerings from their NGOs and city agencies, creating a full-scale network of services for new arrivals from the border. Still, cities have placed strict limits on temporary housing stays, amid a broader affordable housing crisis.

The differing state approaches are likely to continue. Some states have already promised to assist ICE with Trump’s promised mass deportations, while others have worked to strengthen so-called sanctuary policies limiting cooperation with ICE.

Two Lenses to View Biden’s Legacy

The administration’s immigration legacy may be seen through two lenses. Viewed through the lens of legal immigration, the administration finally brought an archaic, bureaucratic, paper-based system into the 21st century through innovative use of technology and more efficient case processing. That led to high numbers of noncitizens receiving temporary visas, green cards, humanitarian protection, work authorization, and refugee resettlement, as well as the most naturalizations ever. But the system remains in need of further reform, with huge potential for improvement if additional resources are provided.

Looking at border control—the primary lens for much of the public—the Biden administration confronted an unprecedented challenge in terms of the number and profile of arriving migrants and tried to respond with an outdated system that was totally outmatched. The approach had detractors across the political spectrum: for immigrant advocates, the administration represented a new low for its limits on humanitarian protection; for immigration hardliners, it was greenlighting an open border. The administration tried to appease both camps, but ultimately failed to satisfy either one. As with the legal immigration system, much higher levels of funding—which only Congress can give—could have provided the resources and infrastructure that might have come close to meeting the need. In a polarized political landscape, lawmakers never rose to the occasion.

Thus, despite the significant power of the presidency, any administration requires Congress to fully effectuate its agenda. Although he entered office with Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate, Biden was never able to muster enough legislative support for key parts of his immigration agenda. In addition to not providing the funding commensurate with need, Congress ignored proposals to provide legal status and a pathway to citizenship for all or even some of the country’s unauthorized immigrants.

Trump now takes office with Republicans similarly controlling both houses of Congress, and it remains unclear whether his prospects for budgetary and other support will be achieved at the levels he seeks, due to Republicans' narrow majorities. Given how central the issue of border security has been to Trump’s campaign, he may have more leeway in advancing his legislative agenda on immigration, potentially setting his second term up to be more active than either his first or Biden’s. A significant part of Biden’s immigration agenda was focused on overturning Trump’s policies; as Trump returns to office, it seems likely that a sizable amount of Biden’s accomplishments could be similarly undone.

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