Can the Biden Administration Keep the Democratic Party Together on Immigration?

In an article just published today, I spoke with journalist Frances Madison about the politics of immigration and the Biden administration for an article in Capital and Main. The entire article is worth reading, but I want to share the following excerpt based on my conversation with Madison because it highlights what I think is an important thing to watch for in Biden’s first 100 days.

Austin Kocher, a researcher who studies immigration policy and immigrant rights advocacy, says there are three prevalent frames in the discourse today: Immigrants “as a threat” to the country, which is where we are now; immigration as a mostly good “mixed bag” that calls for enforcement but also for paths to legalization and citizenship, and maybe a reduction in the numbers of people in detention and of deportations; and “an abolitionist approach” that ties in with the abolition or defunding of the police, and draws on a more radical and critical history of racial justice that views the institutions as basically irredeemable and unreformable.

“That one has taken more and more root,” Kocher says of this last strategy. “There are people in Congress that believe that ICE should be abolished and the agency’s responsibilities should be distributed elsewhere.”

As a researcher, he’s interested in identifying where the tension will be, especially in Biden’s first hundred days as president.

“I think that it’s possible,” Kocher says, “to have a healthy tension between an abolitionist perspective that sees the current system as being fundamentally racist and unjust, and the discourse most likely to be taken up and acted upon based on statements from the Biden administration, which is to make things better, or less bad.”

The worst-case scenario would be a stalemate if substantive action isn’t taken quickly, Kocher adds.

What do you think? Do you agree with this assessment? And what do you think Biden should do in the first 100 days to show that he is serious about improving America’s immigration system?

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