President Trump has achieved a truly historic success in largely solving the massive border crisis under the last administration, but the very strength of his success also introduces a danger: forgetfulness and complacency.
The border crisis did not emerge spontaneously. A sophisticated network of advocacy organizations, donors, litigators, and policy shops advocated for the policies that gave birth to it, and many of these groups are now fighting Trump’s deportation agenda. More importantly, they remain well positioned to influence the next Democratic administration.
Conservatives may soon need to remind Americans just how bad the border crisis became, because the infrastructure that enabled it under Biden shows no signs of disappearing—or changing its mind.
In fact, many prominent Democrats seem not just eager to fight deportations, but intent on protecting the very nonprofit groups that arguably inspired the crisis.
A Window Into the Left’s Influence Campaign
When President Biden took office, he shifted border priorities from day one. He issued a deportation moratorium. He reversed President Trump’s orders beefing up enforcement of immigration law. He blocked the construction of the border wall. He reversed Trump’s restriction on immigration from countries of terror concern.
The Department of Homeland Security’s unwillingness to pursue visa-overstay cases provides an important case study that reveals the pipeline likely behind much of the last administration’s open-borders approach.
Under Biden, Immigration and Customs Enforcement received 3.1 million leads about immigrants who had overstayed their visas—and only arrested eight people for doing so. Out of 3 million leads, it only investigated less than 500.
According to the OIG report, when ICE received the 3.1 million leads, it categorized only 3.3% of them (104,049) as potential national security and public safety concerns. Of these, ICE deemed 21,885 leads viable for investigation. The 496 investigations represent 2% of the leads viable for investigation.
You don’t get a tiny fraction like that through mere incompetence. Indeed, the OIG report traced this phenomenon back to a September 2021 enforcement-priorities memorandum from DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Here’s where things get very interesting. Three months before that memo, a coalition of dozens of immigration activist groups—many of whom had fed staff into key positions of influence in the Biden administration—had directly asked DHS not to prosecute visa overstays.
I can’t prove that the immigration groups caused the policy, but I’ll lay out the evidence I do have, and lead the conclusion up to you.
The We Are Home Campaign
Launched in January 2021, We Are Home brought together dozens of immigration-advocacy organizations, including America’s Voice, Immigration Hub, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
These aren’t just your run-of-the-mill activism nonprofits. Few organizations on the Left have the clout of the ACLU.
Immigration Hub may sound innocuous, but it represents the confluence of donor money, policy influence, and government staffing. The group published an “Immigration Big Book” of left-wing policy recommendations for Democratic candidates in 2020, and its 2024 version claimed that 271 of its policies were adopted in the Biden administration.
Emerson Collective, the massive company founded by Apple cofounder Steve Jobs’ widow Laurene Powell Jobs, incubated Immigration Hub, giving it essential funds and clout.
On June 16, 2021, three months before Mayorkas’ memo, the We Are Home campaign sent an email to Mayorkas titled “Recommendations for the Use of Prosecutorial Discretion.”
The document urged DHS to presume certain categories of migrants merited prosecutorial discretion and should generally not face arrest, detention, or removal.
“DHS should decline to arrest or initiate proceedings against people who became deportable because of conduct (including unauthorized entry, visa overstay, or contact with the criminal legal system) that occurred over 3 years prior” to ICE deportation proceedings, the email states.
By the time Mayorkas drafted the memo, multiple figures associated with the We Are Home coalition groups already held influential policy positions inside the administration and the White House.
Nathaly Arriola directed We Are Home before becoming a special assistant to President Biden. Ur Mendoza Jaddou directed DHS Watch at America’s Voice before taking the helm at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Tyler Moran and Esther Olavarria, both affiliated with Immigration Hub, later held senior White House immigration-policy positions. Andrea Flores went from deputy director of immigration policy at the ACLU to the White House National Security Council.
Jaddou led the team that shaped the makeup of DHS under Biden, and Olavarria and Flores also served on that team.
Lora Ries, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Border Security and Immigration Center, told me, “The campaign was the administration—the same people.”
Why Is This Relevant Today?
President Trump has rescinded the Mayorkas memo, and these groups are out of power. But there’s ample reason to think that Democratic leaders eyeing a presidential bid in 2028 are likely to ally themselves with these groups.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, for instance, recently signed a bill that explicitly aims to protect immigrant-serving nonprofits. The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a California nonprofit that openly operates an “immigrant political power project,” co-sponsored the legislation and testified in support of it. CHIRLA was also a member of the We Are Home campaign.
The bill’s supporters say they aim to protect these nonprofits from violent threats and harassment, but current laws already do that. The bill comes in the wake of scrutiny because many immigrant-serving nonprofits helped settle illegal aliens across the country under Biden, often taking taxpayer funds in doing so. This Immigration Industrial Complex deserves scrutiny, and the law will make that scrutiny harder.
The fact that Newsom, long rumored a major 2028 presidential contender, is not just disagreeing with Trump’s policies but signing laws to protect the Immigration Industrial Complex suggests that the Left has learned very little from the border crisis under Biden.
We Are Home also wasn’t an isolated effort. The Center for American Progress, which supplied more than 70 staffers to the Biden administration, urged DHS to treat immigration as “an asset to be managed rather than a crime to be enforced against.” I can hardly think of a more apt description of how the Biden administration operated on immigration—and I doubt the Center for American Progress will be much less influential under another Democratic administration.
FROM MY DESK
📚Reading: “The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: Deluxe Pocket Book Set” by J.R.R. Tolkien
The Lord of the Rings is a fantastic read, whether you’ve seen the Peter Jackson films or not. I love reading it in these pocket-size books with leatherette covers. They’re both classy and portable.
📰Worth your time: The Hidden Cost of Socialism? The Innovation It Never Creates by Liana Graham
🍪Eating: Chessmen Butter cookies. These are delicious, and very low guilt—only 5 grams of sugar for 3 cookies!
We Have to Keep Fighting for Trump’s Success
Conservatives often assume political victories are permanent, but they rarely are.
President Trump proved the substance of what he said on the campaign trail in 2024: we didn’t need new laws so much as a new president to solve the border crisis. The problem is, we also know how much a president can do to undermine border security even without changing the law.
Trump solved the border crisis, but he hasn’t gotten rid of the infrastructure that enabled it in the first place. The groups remain active. The donor networks remain funded. The policy shops remain influential. The personnel pipelines are ready in waiting for a new administration.
If a Democrat takes the Oval Office in 2029, he or she is unlikely to build immigration policies from scratch.
Americans cannot afford to forget the Biden border crisis, because the organizations that helped create it appear determined to ensure they get another chance.
This article is a commentary on news initially published on The Daily Signal.
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