Joe Biden is promising to shut down the border. Democratic candidates are condoning rhetoric liberals once deemed dangerously racist. And many of the party’s congressional lawmakers have been supportive of a border security deal considered a total capitulation to the GOP (that the GOP has since rejected as being too soft).
In the span of only a few weeks, the Democratic Party’s immigration agenda has undergone a radical transformation, shifting decisively to the right amid fraught legislative negotiations and campaigns where the issue has emerged as a political liability.
“There’s no question what they were saying when Trump was in office and after Biden got elected was much more pro-immigration, and now it’s just completely 180,” said Silky Shah, executive director of Detention Watch Network, a liberal advocacy group.