Biden's Border 'Briar Patch'

'Please, please, don't fix my most serious political problem for me!'

You're Joe Biden. Suppose your goals are to a) get reelected, b) in the process let in as many migrants as you can, because you and many of your supporters think it's a good thing.  You've made impressive progress on (b), letting in migrants at a rate that’s now at least around 2 million a year,. But now goal (b) is conflicting with (a) as the massive surge of illegals at the border has become a "sucking wound" on your 2024 chances. What to do?

For many months, the great mystery of Biden's presidency has been that he didn't have an answer to this question, or even seem to feel much urge to come up with an answer. Why would he let his worst-polling issue go unaddressed? An ordinary politican would at least pretend to attack the problem. Biden seemed content to try to make the migrant influx less visible, sluicing in foreigners using obscure "parole" authority, transporting them around the country in the middle of the night, etc. That not only didn't solve the problem but actually made it worse, as more and more potential migrants saw selfies of their friends and countrymen safely living on US soil — and decided to make the trip themselves

Now, however, the mystery may have been solved. The outlines of a cunning, perhaps brilliant Biden plan have emerged. Here are its components:

1) Get the Republicans to address the problem for you! In August, the Biden White House hit on the idea of adding "border security" money to its "supplemental" aid request for Ukraine. The money (eventually $13 billion) would basically have made the current migrant-importation machine run a little smoother (more agents, more judges, etc,) without ending the mass release of people into the country.

The obvious, cynical take is that the White House hoped Republicans would fall for this non-remedy and support Ukraine aid in exchange.  A less obvious, even more cynical, interpretation is that Biden knew Republicans would not fall for his initial fake and instead would demand real reforms that would actually calm the border crisis in ways Biden couldn't (for fear of offending progressives and the Hispanic caucus).  The technical academic term for this policymaking strategy is "briar patch."  Republicans would try to screw Biden but would actually help solve his problem -- while letting him denounce them and claim to his base "the Republicans made me do it."

In fact, bipartisan negotiators are indeed talking about more serious-sounding changes--like toughening the legal standard that would be asylum-seekers must meet (from "credible fear" to "reasonable fear”),  expanding something called "expedited removal" to new locations, and allowing a president to summarily close the border without having to show a Covid-like health emergency, These all have a strong whiff of potential make-believe about them: Toughening the “credible fear” standard has been tried, for example, to little effect.. Expedited removal isn't that expedited, and Biden could just ignore any new powers to close the border.

But Republicans have a lot of leverage: Democrats are not doing this only for Ukraine, remember. They’re doing it to save themselves. Even the current wimpish group of GOP negotiators (e.g Sen. Thom Tillis) is likely to ask for changes that are unquestionably serious: limiting a President's "parole"power (which Biden has used to admit over 600,000) to what it used to be, barring would-be asylees who pass through a “safe third country"to get to the U.S., increasing capacity to detain asylum applicants pending their hearings (instead of releasing them into the U.S. with a court date years from now).

2, Capitalize on success. Or on failure.: Even if the agreed-on changes don't end the border surge, at least they'll create the appearance that the problem is being handled. "Give it time"--at least until mid-November. If the reforms conspicuously and immediately fail — if the flow increases —- Biden can say this proves the GOP's "harsh" and "extreme" measures aren't the answer.  In any case, Republicans will be co-owners of the failure.

But the Biden White House would probably want the changes to actually succeed, at least temporarily., because the fallout would heavily favor Democrats. Biden's biggest ongoing problem would recede in salience — something especially important if his opponent is Donald Trump, who rode to the White House on the immigration issue in 2016, when the border crisis wasn't nearly as acute as it is now..

Republicans might claim credit for any success as loudly as they can, but the press isn’t going to help them. They'll have lost one of their best issues the same way Bob Dole lost the welfare issue in 1996 when Clinton signed a major reform. "We helped solve this problem that you now don't care that much about" isn’t a high-traction electoral pitch.

3. Make sure success doesn't last: But wait — what about goal (b), maximizing the importation of migrants? The answer is to make changes that are effective only for a few months, until November. And there's one weird trick that might make this possible: call it The Pause.

It's a phenomenon that's happened repeatedly on the border: A tough sounding measure is announced -- eg "I'm sending the National Guard to the Rio Grande." The migrant surge actually stops, as the cartels and individual travellers pull back and wait to see if the change is real. (Who wants to be the guinea pig who tests the formerly porous border and gets sent back to Brazil?) Then, after a few months, when it's clear you can still get in -- the National Guardsmen are looking at migrants cross, not busting them -- the flow picks up again. That's what happened after even minor Biden changes. It’s also what happened after Trump was elected in 2016. Border "encounters" plummeted. But in 8 months or so they were back up to where they'd been, and rising.

If the Democrats time those 8 months right, they might make The Pause cover them all the way to December 2024, when they won't care if a surge resumes or not, because Biden will have won, or not.

There are also various tricks that, when buried in legislative text, could ensure that any effects are not too long lasting. The new restrictions on "parole" might be rescindable if the President declares a "humanitarian emergency," for example. Increased detention capacity can be left to fall victim to budget restraints and lawsuits. Any sort of "remain in Mexico” policy requires Mexico's cooperation, which a White House can simply fail to obtain. Or, the simplest but most conspicuous approach, provisions could be labeled "demonstration projects" and limited to a year or two.

The cartels will know to resume human deliveries when the time comes. But the faster speed of today's politics -- embodied in a principle readers of this site are all-too familiar with -- might let Biden create a positive impression about the border in a few months even though he's been producing the opposite reality for a few years.

4. Secretly enlist Republicans: Why would GOPs go along with a Briar Patch scheme? Well, Republican congresspersons would worry about their own reelections. Instead of defending a 'do-nothing' Congress they could boast about achieving ‘the most significant border reforms in 25 years’ (which wouldn't be saying much but sounds good).

Second, many Congressional Republicans, especially in the Senate, dream of a day when they don't have to pretend to love Donald Trump. They won't be all that unhappy if he loses and may wink at a deal that helps Biden .

Third, some Republicans may believe that a deal giving Biden border-control weapons he won't use (after November) will potentially give Trump those same weapons.**

But it will make it much more likely he never gets the chance.

__________

** — That’s why Trump himself might not try to sink a deal.