My name is David Bier. I am the Director of Immigration Studies at the Cato Institute, a nonpartisan public policy research organization in Washington, D.C. For nearly half a century, the Cato Institute has produced original research showing that free markets and individual liberty make the United States a wealthier, safer, and freer country.
In a free society, markets incentivize people to contribute to the welfare of others through their work, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Thanks to freedom, America isn’t a fixed pie—it’s a growing pie. It is exactly for these reasons that so many people from around the world come to the United States, and it is exactly for those same reasons that we should let them come legally.
As the policy advisor for a former member, vice chairman, and later chairman of this subcommittee, I am honored to be invited to speak with you today about efforts to restore America’s immigration system.
President Trump shredded enforcement of US immigration law.
Former President Biden inherited an immigration system obliterated by four years of intentional sabotage. By January 2021, President Trump’s administration had shattered the enforcement of nearly every aspect of US immigration law. From January 2017 to January 2021, nearly 500 policies—both large and small—were implemented to disrupt the US immigration system’s operations.1 The Trump administration financially mismanaged this system by imposing a series of unfunded mandates that introduced new requirements and exclusions that had no basis in US immigration law.
During this four-year period, the Trump administration constantly undermined the rule of law, ignored court orders, and abandoned even the pretext of carrying out its responsibilities to enforce immigration law.2 It illegally spent appropriated money meant to provide proper care for immigrant detainees on dog food and night vision goggles for Border Patrol.3 It illegally diverted funding from the military to build a border wall.4 More than 30 times, courts found that the Trump administration’s policies were implemented illegally; however, the assault on the rule of law was so relentless that many changes were not stopped.5
By January 2021, President Trump had:
added more than 500 new pages to immigration forms, delaying applications and imposing unnecessary costs on the government;6
banned immigrants from 13 countries for spurious “security” reasons, separating thousands of US citizens from their spouses and children;7
banned legal immigrants—mainly US family members—unable to prove they will have high incomes;8
banned what he called “nonessential” travel from Mexico and dozens of countries;9
banned legally requesting asylum at the southwest border;
suspended visa operations fully or partially at more than three-quarters of US consulates;10 and
banned most immigrant visa applicants and most skilled temporary workers, absurdly deeming them an economic “threat”;11
By his last full month in office, Trump had obliterated legal immigration:
cut total grants of legal permanent residence by 54 percent;
cut immigrant visas for prospective legal permanent residents by 78 percent;
cut nonimmigrant visas by 82 percent from their 2016 average;
cut refugees entering legally from abroad by 92 percent; and
cut asylum seekers lawfully entering at ports of entry by 93 percent.
The Trump administration seized the opportunity to shut down legal immigration during the pandemic further, but all these cuts started before the pandemic. Legal permanent residents were already down 17 percent from 2016 levels; immigrants were down 27 percent; asylum seekers at ports of entry were down 56 percent; refugees were down 79 percent. President Trump slashed nearly every category of legal migration both before and after the pandemic.12 Although he had already declared that the pandemic closures were “over,” legal immigration was still banned into 2021—even after vaccinations began.13
Trump also decimated the enforcement of immigration laws. By his last month in office, Trump:
closed almost all immigration courts for removal proceedings;14
reassigned many Border Patrol agents from the border to the interior of the US;15
forced Border Patrol to use Title 42 expulsions, which removed consequences for all border crossers, including for public safety threats, and led to more arrests (graph);
cut prosecutions for illegal entry by 87 percent;16
removed requirements to target solely public safety threats in the interior, deprioritizing criminals;17
reassigned Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from terrorism and smuggling cases to track low-level visa overstay offenders;18
doubled arrests of noncriminals living in the US interior and reduced the share of criminal arrests;19
cut Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests by 26 percent;
cut ICE removals by 54 percent to the lowest level in the history of the agency;
cut ICE detention by 61 percent to the lowest level in decades; and
released more than 58,000 detained noncitizens who had been convicted of crimes, including nearly 9,000 with violent crime convictions.20
During his term in office:
Border Patrol arrests of criminals tripled (see graph), reversing a decade of progress on deterring criminal crossings;
Border Patrol arrests increased 64 percent from December 2016 to December 2020 to the highest level for any December in 21 years;
Border Patrol evasions increased 75 percent from December 2016 to December 2020; and
the share of people entering Customs and Border Protection custody who entered illegally—rather than legally—increased from 74 percent to 98 percent.
Of course, the architects of this disaster went beyond simply dismantling the US system. They also decided to use immigration law to torment children. They separated children from their parents and pretended that the law required this outcome. However, they only ever prosecuted 32 percent of crossers at most, allowing numerous adults without children to avoid prosecution to prioritize locking up parents.21 They deliberately targeted children. US attorneys were reporting that “sex offenders were released” back to Mexico to make room for prosecuting parents with children.22 Ultimately, the courts found this policy of targeting children to be unconstitutional.23
President Biden restored the enforcement of US immigration law.
President Biden entered office facing a shredded immigration system. After President Trump’s intentional dismantling, it took the Biden administration a monumental effort to get the system operating at all. Congress generally failed in its duty to appropriate the necessary resources to undo the disaster, leaving the administration to undertake unprecedented reconstruction on its own. Although Biden often acted too slow and too timidly in the face of this challenge, his actions were critical to saving the immigration system from the brink of near-total collapse.
During his four years, President Biden:
reunited hundreds of children separated from their parents;
ended discriminatory travel bans that separated families based on their birthplace;
reopened consulates around the world to new visa applicants;
ended the immigrant visa ban and refused to renew the nonimmigrant visa ban;
ended the nonessential travel bans, saving the US tourism industry;
streamlined visa processing for renewals by waiving interviews;
allowed some applicants to renew their visas without leaving the United States;
cut red tape for legal immigrants adjusting their status;
reduced unnecessary denials of skilled temporary workers;
restored immigrant visa processing to pre-Trump levels;
increased nonimmigrant visa processing to pre-Trump levels;
restored refugee processing abroad to pre-Trump levels (graph);
increased processing of asylum seekers and parolees entering legally at ports of entry; and
doubled US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) application processing capacity.
President Biden led the US immigration system out of an unprecedented calamity. But it took time to implement his vision, and he faced unprecedented challenges. The United States had the hottest labor market in the world, attracting migration from around the world to the US border. Border Patrol arrests, which had already reached the highest level in 21 years before he took office, rose even faster as the US economic recovery outpaced the world, and various disasters forced people to flee their homes.24
Biden’s administration led a worldwide response to the migration crisis by signing the historic Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection. This agreement brought together cooperation from 22 countries to coordinate a robust response to international migration.25 From Day 1, President Biden surged additional resources to the border and increased the capacity to detain, process, and remove individuals at the border. During his four years in office, Biden:
reopened immigration courts and set records for removal orders issued;
removed or expelled three times as many people as Trump;
removed a similar percentage of recent border crossers as Trump, despite historic increases in the flow;
reversed Trump’s ICE detention capacity limits and doubled the ICE detainee population;
increased air removal flights by 55 percent over 2020 levels;
negotiated broader expulsion deals with foreign countries;
obtained cooperation from countries to stop through-migration;
ended Title 42, restoring consequences for illegal entry; and
prioritized criminal arrests and reduced releases of convicted criminals by half (see graph).
After four years, Biden restored enforcement:
Border Patrol encounters with criminals fell by 57 percent from December 2020 to December 2024;
Border Patrol overall encounters fell 33 percent;
evasions of Border Patrol fell 42 percent; and
The share of US Customs and Border Protection encounters with people who crossed illegally fell from 98 percent to 49 percent—meaning most people seeking to enter were crossing legally at the end of his term.
Not only did Biden receive little help in this effort, but his restoration of border security enforcement was actively obstructed by partisan state attorneys general and misguided lower court decisions. Courts held up policies meant to prioritize criminals and rescind Title 42, leading to thousands of additional encounters by criminals and thousands of additional evasions of Border Patrol. Immediately after the end of Title 42, evasions of Border Patrol fell by 77 percent. If the states had not intervened to block the repeal of Title 42, the drop in evasions could have started earlier, and there would have been about 600,000 fewer evasions or gotaways than there were.
President Biden used his parole authority under section 212(d)(5)(A) of the Immigration and Nationality Act to establish innovative and orderly ways for immigrants to migrate safely and legally to the United States. He introduced a cell phone application called CBP One to permit some people seeking safety to schedule interviews to cross the US border legally. Separately, he created processes for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Ukraine to enter the country legally if sponsored by someone in the United States. These provisions have successfully reduced illegal entries from those countries, with most people seeking safety at the US border doing so legally.
Trump is already undermining US law enforcement, security, and prosperity.
Immediately upon taking office a second time, President Trump announced an agenda to undermine the enforcement of America’s laws further, encourage illegal immigration rather than legal immigration, and threaten US security. He has already:
stopped processing asylum seekers for lawful entry at US ports of entry in Mexico, forcing them to cross illegally;
suspended refugee resettlement entirely for refugees abroad, including for Afghans who backed the US military and Iranian Christians in route to the United States;26
deprioritized criminals and public safety threats, opening all people without legal status to arrest, detention, and removal;
prioritize misdemeanor illegal entry criminal cases over other criminal prosecutions;
declared an “invasion” under the Constitution, even though this would authorize states to make war and open the potential for habeas corpus to be suspended;
stated that he had the power to suspend all US immigration law, incoherently claiming that he must suspend the law to enforce it;
denied US citizenship to the children of certain noncitizens (even many who are here lawfully) who were born in the United States, despite the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship;
declared a national emergency at the border, even though illegal immigration is falling and significantly lower now than it was when he was last in office;
implied he will invoke the Alien Enemies Act to remove people without proving in immigration court they are removable noncitizens, even though a foreign government is not invading the US as the law requires; and
moved to illegally block law enforcement grants intended for local policing and public safety for cities that fail to cooperate with his agenda.
Trump’s policies endanger the rights of Americans by undermining due process and focusing on mass deportation rather than public safety. Nearly six million US citizens have US citizenship by birthright but also have parents without legal status.27 Millions more, including former Vice President Kamala Harris, were born to parents with temporary legal statuses. Mass deportation could also separate three-quarters of a million US citizens from their spouses.28
Mass deportation means everyone is a target. When everyone becomes a potential target for deportation, it means that no one truly is a target. This approach will undermine public safety by diverting resources away from serious criminal threats. Studies show that illegal immigrants are half as likely to have committed serious crimes warranting incarceration in the United States compared to US-born Americans.29 Over the last ten years, they were 26 percent less likely to commit and be convicted of homicide in Texas.30 Illegal residents in Georgia have a much lower incarceration rate for homicide and all other crimes than the total population of Georgia.31
There are numerous instances where immigrants have assisted law enforcement in stopping criminals or preventing crimes. For example, two foreign students intervened to stop a sexual assault at Stanford, later testifying against the rapist at trial.32 Another immigrant tragically lost his life stopping a rape in Virginia.33 In South Carolina, a video filmed on a Dominican immigrant’s phone played a crucial role in a homicide conviction.34 In Miami in 2015, a Colombian immigrant drove his van between an officer and an active shooter, saving the officer’s life.35 A significant source of funding for local police departments comes from the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program. Byrne was a New York City officer killed while guarding a Guyanese immigrant who had repeatedly reported criminal activity in his community.36 The immigrant then again risked his life to testify against Byrne’s killers.
Immigrants without legal status also can help stop crimes. An unauthorized immigrant working as a convenience store nightwatchman stopped a burglary in Texas.37 Another in New Mexico chased down a child abductor, safely returning a 6‑year-old girl to her parents.38 Two asylum seekers in New York City stopped a stabbing in 2024.39 Such incidents are not uncommon. Over the past decade, about 100,000 unauthorized immigrants have obtained legal status through their cooperation with law enforcement.40 Currently, local agencies have about 355,000 pending requests for unauthorized immigrants seeking legal status based on their cooperation with law enforcement.41
Immigrants who have come are overwhelmingly contributing to American society. The Congressional Budget Office estimates they will lower US deficits by a cumulative $1 trillion and increase the US economy’s size by nearly $9 trillion over 10 years.42 Extending the analysis to look at the effects over the course of the immigrants’ lifetimes shows a cumulative reduction in costs to the federal government of about $5 trillion.43
Reforming the immigration system would do the most to stop violations
Unfortunately, the US immigration system does not facilitate lawful migration; instead, it hinders it and encourages illegal immigration. The fundamental legal immigration framework dates back to 1924, and the last significant update occurred in 1990. Each year, about 97 percent of the millions of applicants are rejected.44 The available categories for legal immigration are extremely narrow. A more effective approach would be to deregulate legal immigration, allowing immigrants to enter as long as they do not pose a security threat and meet other basic criteria.
With this system, immigrants could arrange travel directly to their destinations without imposing additional costs on border communities. They could immediately start working and contributing to the US economy. Such a system would also enable Border Patrol to secure the border against criminals. Congress should start by mandating that CBP continue to expand the parole sponsorship programs to other countries in the Americas while eliminating the current caps on those programs.
Appendix: Key Charts and Tables
