Letter: Inaccurate analysis of immigration policies

In a recent column, Byron York stated that President Biden took a "veiled swipe at the infinitely more effective border policies of his predecessor, President Donald Trump."

But, did former President Trump accomplish that? First, Mr. York cites more than 2 million illegal border crossings were confronted by authorities in 2022. That number is misleading, since many of those confronted were repeat offenders. Trump did not significantly decrease the flow of encountered illegal border crossings in 2017, 2018 or 2020 compared to Obama. In 2019, the flow doubled.

Second, Trump failed to achieve his goal of building a border wall that would be paid for by Mexico. His GOP Congress rejected Trump's request to fund a wall. So, he used "national emergency funds" to build only 80 new miles of wall plus 372 miles of replacement barriers.

Third, Mr. York seems to have forgotten that Trump's administration implemented a zero tolerance policy of undocumented migrants in the U.S., which led to a family separation policy where children were taken from parents and placed often in well documented cages.

Fourth, the Trump administration made it much more difficult to process asylum claims. The backlog of asylum cases stretched to 1.82 million by July 2022. The cases could take up to four years to adjudicate. Trump's "stay in Mexico" order required all those seeking asylum to have to stay in Mexico. His policies shrank the numbers of refugees permitted to come to the U.S. shrank to its lowest level since 1980.

Finally, Mexico has violent drug cartels and is the third worst country involving human trafficking. So, detainees were forced to stay in an unsafe country facing lengthy asylum court processing.

Given these circumstances, just how effective were Trump's policies?

Arthur Pitz

Elmhurst