For twenty years, Democrats have told Americans that our immigration system is too complex to fix without new laws, new budgets, or new bipartisan miracles that never arrive. Then Donald Trump came along and proved them wrong. He used the same laws, the same agencies, and the same Congress — and suddenly the federal government could enforce the border, almost instantly.
The difference wasn’t legal authority. It was will.
Democrats have the right values but an allergy to action. They talk about fairness and humanity but seem unable to make the machinery of government actually work. Republicans, meanwhile, are ruthless about power — and wrong about nearly everything else. America is stuck between two broken parties: one that can’t govern and one that shouldn’t.
“Give Me the Authority”: The Three-Year Lie
From January 2021 through early 2024, as more than 7.2 million people attempted to cross the southern border, Joe Biden had one consistent answer: I need Congress to act.
Encounters with migrants at the southwestern border rose to over 1.7 million in FY 2021, 2.2 million in FY 2022, and 2.4 million in FY 2023. Cities across America strained under the influx. Democratic mayors begged for federal help. Republicans hammered Biden relentlessly on the crisis.
(All figures in this essay refer to the southern border with Mexico, which is the focus of America’s immigration debate.)
Biden’s response never changed: Congress must pass comprehensive reform. I’m doing everything I can with limited authority. Republicans are blocking solutions.
By early 2024, facing certain electoral defeat, Democrats finally negotiated. A bipartisan group of senators — including Republican James Lankford — spent months crafting a border security bill. Biden publicly stated the bill would give him “new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed” and that he would exercise that authority immediately if it passed.
Read that again. After three years of chaos, the President of the United States claimed he was waiting for Congress to give him authority to control the border.
The Republican Sabotage Narrative
In February 2024, the bill failed on a 49-50 vote, far short of the 60 needed. Republicans walked away from the deal at the urging of GOP presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump, who opposed the bill because he was centering his reelection campaign on immigration.
Democrats had their story ready. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer declared: “Trump told his MAGA allies to kill it in its tracks so he could exploit the issue on the campaign trail. And Senate Republicans blindly and loyally followed suit.”
Senator Chris Murphy argued Republicans were blocking the bill to “make the border less secure, for Trump’s political benefit.” Media coverage amplified the message: Republicans sabotaged border security to help Trump’s campaign. Democrats tried to fix the problem. Republicans chose chaos.
Shortly after the vote, Biden stated that “Senate Republicans put partisan politics ahead of our country’s national security.”
It was a clean narrative. Compelling. Widely believed.
It was a lie.
Biden Proves He Lied
Four months later, in June 2024, Biden signed Presidential Proclamation 10773 using Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to suspend entry at the southern border.
No Congress. No new legislation. No Republican cooperation. Just executive action using authority that has existed since 1952.
The same Section 212(f) Trump had used. The same authority Obama had used. The same legal framework that had been available since Biden took office in January 2021.
And it worked — crossings began to decline.
So the question isn’t whether Biden had authority to control the border. He proved in June 2024 that he did. The question is: Why did he wait three years and 7 million border crossers to use it?
Many Republicans had argued all along that “the president already has all the legal authority he needs to do what needs to be done, including closing the border.” Democrats and media allies dismissed this as bad-faith obstruction.
Turns out the Republicans were right.
The Real Reason: Coalition Management Over Governance
Biden couldn’t use executive enforcement authority in 2021 because the progressive base would have revolted. The same activists who called Trump’s border policies “fascist” and “cruel” weren’t going to accept similar actions from a Democratic president.
Using Section 212(f) in his first year would have required Biden to explain why enforcement that was “racist” under Trump became acceptable under Democrats. It would have meant admitting that border control requires... controlling the border.
So Biden chose differently: preside over chaos while claiming powerlessness. Negotiate legislation you don’t actually need so you can blame Republicans when it fails. Let the border collapse while maintaining progressive credentials.
Only when polls showed electoral catastrophe did Biden suddenly discover emergency powers he’d possessed since day one.
The bipartisan bill was theater. A prop to create the appearance of trying while setting up Republicans to take the blame for an unfixable crisis. Except the crisis was fixable. Biden proved it by fixing it with executive action the moment his survival demanded it.
Trump Showed Total Control Is Possible
Then Trump took office and proved near-total border control is possible using the exact same legal framework.
Fiscal Year 2025 saw only 238,000 Border Patrol apprehensions at the southern border—the lowest since 1970. And more than 60% of those occurred in Biden’s final three months before Trump took office.
During Trump’s first eight full months in office, southern border apprehensions fell to fewer than 9,000 per month—a fraction of the 200,000+ monthly encounters Biden averaged during his peak crisis years.
How? Trump ended catch-and-release, used Section 212(f) to suspend entry, detained everyone apprehended, and resumed Remain in Mexico protocols. The same tools Biden had. The same authorities that had existed for decades.
Trump didn’t invent new legal powers. He didn’t restructure the federal bureaucracy. He didn’t pass a single law. He just used existing authority without apology or internal angst.
The Numbers Tell the Story
Biden (2021-2024):
7.2+ million southern border encounters in 3 years = ~2.4 million per year average
Far fewer removals until 2024
Catastrophic failure
Trump (Jan-Sept 2025):
Under 9,000 apprehensions per month at southern border = ~100,000 annual rate
Near-total suppression
System essentially sealed
Same laws. Same border. Same agencies. Different will.
This Is the Execution Game
The border is the perfect case study for why Democrats lose on competence. Not because they lack authority—Trump proved the laws work. Not because they lack resources—the same agencies and budget were there all along.
They lose because they’d rather manage internal coalition politics than govern. They’d rather preserve progressive credentials than solve problems. They’d rather claim Congress must act than use the authority they already have.
The bipartisan border bill wasn’t about solving the crisis. It was about creating political cover. Democrats could negotiate it knowing Republicans would kill it, then spend 2024 saying “we tried.” The fact that Biden didn’t actually need the bill—proved by his June 2024 executive action—exposes the entire exercise as cynical theater.
When Biden finally used Section 212(f), he proved two things: the authority existed, and he’d refused to use it for three years. That’s not incompetence. That’s choosing coalition management over governance. That’s choosing to blame Republicans rather than act. That’s choosing to fail rather than risk progressive backlash.
And when Republicans then use those same authorities ruthlessly and effectively, Democrats act shocked—as if they didn’t just spend three years proving enforcement was possible, they simply refused to do it.
Every time Democrats fail to govern, Republicans don’t just win elections. They win arguments. The border proved America doesn’t have an immigration crisis that can’t be solved. It has a Democratic Party that won’t solve it until political survival demands it—and by then, the damage is done.
The Party of Good Intentions and Bad Management
Immigration is only one example. Look across the Democratic map and you see the same pattern: deep moral conviction paired with bureaucratic paralysis.
Democrats talk about compassion for migrants — and then preside over chaos that discredits the very idea of compassion. They campaign on safety and reform — then let cities become case studies in dysfunction. They promise equity in education — then let teachers’ unions trap poor children in failing schools.
They say housing is a right, but fight every apartment building proposed in their own neighborhoods. They demand a clean-energy future, but can’t get solar farms or transmission lines permitted because the paperwork never ends. It’s as if good intentions have become a substitute for competence.
Republicans: The Modern Confederacy
None of this means the Republican Party is a viable alternative. Today’s GOP is the modern version of the Confederacy — a coalition built on resentment, hierarchy, and submission to power. The plantation owners have changed names: now they’re billionaires, lobbyists, and right-wing media barons. But the structure is familiar — a tiny class of rulers and a mass of citizens kept loyal by anger and myth.
The geographic core tells the story. The states that seceded to preserve slavery — the old Confederacy — now form the unshakeable Republican base. Same states. Same hierarchy. Same insistence that some people deserve power while others deserve subjugation. The through-line from 1861 to 2025 isn’t subtle.
Republicans are masters of discipline. They act with unity, precision, and will. But it’s all in service of a darker vision — one where democracy is negotiable, rights are conditional, and cruelty is strength.
Democrats, by contrast, believe in democracy, equality, and pluralism. But belief alone isn’t enough. If you can’t make systems work — if you can’t govern effectively — then the public eventually stops caring about your virtues and starts craving order.
A Government That Works, Not Just One That Cares
What Americans want is not less compassion, but more competence. People don’t reject progressive ideas because they’re too kind — they reject them because they don’t work. When liberal policies collapse in execution, it doesn’t just hurt the cause; it strengthens the case for the illiberal. Every time Democrats fail to govern, Republicans don’t just win elections — they win arguments.
To believe in democracy is to believe in delivery. It means building things, enforcing laws, managing trade-offs, and accepting that moral seriousness requires managerial seriousness. The next generation of Democratic leaders won’t save the country with better speeches or hashtags; they’ll save it by proving government can function again.
The Choice Ahead
America doesn’t need a party that lectures; it needs one that delivers. The right has power without principle. The left has principle without power. Somewhere between cruelty and chaos lies the country most Americans want — competent, compassionate, and capable.
Until Democrats learn to execute their own ideals, they’ll keep losing to people who execute on none at all.