probablyasocialecologist:

US policy under Biden has headed substantially in the same direction Trump set it to. This was maybe most dramatic in immigration, where Trump’s actions had provoked the most sustained, passionate, and vocal outcry. While soaking up positive press for reversing some of Trump’s most high-profile outrages, Biden kept in place others that were widely denounced as cruel, racist, and even fascist and white supremacist: the “Remain in Mexico” policy that condemned asylum seekers to violence and other danger while they waited for a decision; the Title 42 measure that’s effectively (and illegally) ended asylum at the southern border, and which Biden has used to expel more people than Trump; and the ongoing caging of migrant children.

Despite officially “pausing” construction of Trump’s border wall — the most visceral, outrage-inducing symbol of Trump’s immigration vision — Biden has, in reality, kept on building it, and will be passing it on to the next Republican president to finish the job. While deportations have slowed, Americans who have spent their whole lives in the United States are still being banished to “homelands” they never knew, and for relatively minor crimes. At one point, Biden even attempted to keep Trump’s record-low refugee cap of fifteen thousand, having to reverse course upon a rare instance of backlash. He’s doubled that number since, in a similarly rare instance of following through on a campaign promise.

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