This often gets forgotten but by all appearances, Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS sec, facilitated mass migration illegally but avoided ever being called anti-democratic, authoritarian, or whatever else people are called for doing deportations. (So importations are more democratic than deportations I guess somehow??). No one gave him a mandate to do the CHNV program flying people in, to spend money building a highway in Panama, to grant parole to alleged asylum seekers, etc. It's surprisingly missing from all this passionate debate about authoritarians, populism, and the end of the rule of law.
Mayorkas had exactly the same thin mandate as Trump appointees, and was also unpopular, but he wasn't trying to claim his mandate was so strong that he could ignore courts and the constitution.
If Germany gave you a visa, would you consider it necessary to start a debate about whether such actions were authoritarian? How about if when you got there, they locked you up without trial?
But he did! The CBO calculates 8.7 million immigrants in excess of normal levels under his watch. It’s a plainly visible policy change in charts: https://images.app.goo.gl/9N5K5DQjcfcj542a8. Biden didn’t have the mandate to do that.
How did that happen? It was because Biden and Mayorkas did not “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” He ignored laws that required him to keep immigrants out. He also interpreted the law in ways that were not “faithful” to Congressional intent. For example, he took a law that allows parole on a “case-by-case” basis, and gave blanket parole to hundreds of thousands. But then judges will say that these blanket protections must be revoked on a “case by case” basis.
People are prattling on about the Impoundment Act and whether Trump has statutory authority to reorganize executive departments. Meanwhile, Obama created an entire amnesty program (DACA) nowhere in the INA, after failing to get the same amnesty through Congress. All of this stuff about “the rule of law” is rank hypocrisy from people who don’t believe in rules or law.
Course he did, by your own arguments not only did he have precisely that mandate as the president that people voted for [on a manifesto of broadening pathways to citizenship], but nobody else should have had any right to try to stop him.
It's interesting that you regard Biden's administration pursuing a policy in their manifesto (but ceasing part of the parole-in-place programme as soon as the unelected judges of a state court ordered them to do so) to be a more egregious violation of the rule of law than Trump rocking up in El Salvador to sneer at the idea of abiding by a rare unanimous Supreme Court verdict. Much like your insistence that whereas Trump has a mandate to disregard court orders, Biden didn't even have a mandate to undo executive orders on border control he said he was going to undo, the "rank hypocrisy from people who don't believe in rules of law" displayed in this exchange is all yours...
> Course he did, by your own arguments not only did he have precisely that mandate as the president that people voted for [on a manifesto of broadening pathways to citizenship], but nobody else should have had any right to try to stop him.
Sorry, I was unclear. I was mirroring the language in the post to which I was replying, which assumed that the margin of Biden’s win meant he didn’t have a mandate. I think Biden had a mandate to do most of what he did. My only quibble would be that Biden didn’t campaign on opening the border, but Trump clearly campaigned on mass deportations.
And yes, I view the introduction of millions of illegal immigrants as being the more egregious violation of the law than what Trump is doing. The former reflects millions of instances of the administration violating american law and americans’ right to determine the kind of society in which they want to live. The latter applies to a small number of individuals, and reflects mostly administrative flubs involving people who are undisputedly non-citizens.
I think letting in millions of people illegally was extremely serious and Biden did not campaign on that. Although Mayorkas always played it down so no one ever accused the two of being authoritarian. I don't know if that's because the media favored the de facto open borders or if it's because Mayorkas was good at speaking in bureaucrat-ese so he was always incognito. I think there was an intentional plan to open the border and it wasn't a charitable cause. I think we both know the purpose was ultimately to change the voter base to be more favorable, among other reasons. If that isn't an authoritarian power move, I don't know what is.
Now regarding Kilmar, probably yes his rights were violated as happens routinely. I am not sure I am going to lose sleep over it because millions of people came here in one of the largest human migration events in history and we're still at this point where we can't talk about that but instead we debate about whether this clerical error was the event that turned us into a fascist dictatorship. I think it's all disingenuous. I don't know if there's a term for it in the law but our country created an extraordinary legal situation and there's bound to be mistakes made and I think significant political bias is present among judges and lawyers in what should be a neutral court. Do they really care about rights or is this more about keeping immigrants here at any cost?
Actually in 2018 Trump deported an elderly guy who may have had dementia who was accused of being a Nazi war criminal, his name was Jakiw Palij you can look it up. There wasn't strong evidence he was evading war crimes though and he wasn't accepted as a citizen anywhere in Europe because of border changes. I suspect his rights were violated in some way but no one cared for obvious reasons. None of the lawyers you see now jumped to defend this guy. So might there be political concerns ahead of rights? absolutely.
