Can Biden Use Trump’s Signature Issue — Immigration — Against Him?

President Biden’s decision this week to seal the border temporarily to most asylum seekers was a striking policy shift. It sharply divided his party, invited comparisons to policies backed by former President Donald Trump and made him the owner of the most restrictive immigration measure ever to be carried out by a modern Democratic president.

It also aligned him with a broad swath of the public on a key issue in an election year.

A confluence of hyperbolic rhetoric from Republicans, led by Trump, and a surge in illegal border crossings in recent years has pushed immigration and border security to the forefront of the nation’s election-year psyche, turning immigration into a top concern for voters on both sides of the partisan divide — and a major liability for the president.

Biden’s executive order, which took effect at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday, is expected to be the subject of lawsuits that could result in courts halting it. But he and his allies believe the order will help them politically anyway, by allowing them to portray him as willing to take steps that Trump personally blocked earlier this year. In doing so, they hope to neutralize an issue that the former president has made a major focus of his campaign.

“If you’re a good elected official or a politician, you’re going to listen to what the people are saying, and this is what the people are talking about,” said Representative Tom Suozzi, Democrat of New York, who won his House seat in a narrowly divided district on Long Island in part by campaigning on the very same topic, and who was among the officials who joined Biden at the White House for the announcement. “It’s part of the overall effort to not just neutralize but to show the Republicans for their hypocrisy.”

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