How immigration and border security dominated 2024 and decided an election

In January, the U.S. remained in the throes of a migrant crisis that had exploded in 2021 and continued to roil the country throughout 2022 and 2023. In December 2023, encounters at the southern border hit a new record with more than 250,000 encounters in a single month.

It was a month that saw top Cabinet officials head to Mexico to attempt to persuade Mexican officials to do more to stop the flood of migrants heading north. As the presidential race, as well as congressional races, got into full swing in the early months of 2024, it became clear that the issue was likely to dominate the news cycle. Then-candidate Donald Trump promised to launch a mass deportation operation if elected, while President Biden touted a sharp drop in encounters since the beginning of the year as he also signed an executive order limiting asylum entries in June.

The bill included increased funding for border agencies as well as an emergency authority to shut down entries at the southern border when encounters exceed a rolling seven-day average of 5,000 encounters. It would also expedite work permits for migrants and tighten asylum screening language.

Conservatives said the bill would codify high-border encounters, but the Biden administration and both the Biden and Harris campaigns would cite the bill as a bipartisan solution to the crisis that former President Donald Trump was rejecting for political purposes. 

In February, the death of Laken Riley, a Georgia college student, would bring the issue of migrant crime back to the headlines. Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan illegal immigrant who had been released into the U.S. in 2022, was charged with her murder.

While immigration activists would point to stats suggesting that immigrants commit fewer crimes than American citizens, those talking points appeared to do little to stem the outrage about the deaths of people at the hands of illegal immigrants who conservatives argued shouldn't have been let into the country in the first place.

She would also move away from past statements in which she called for the decriminalization of illegal border crossings and for the closing of immigration detention centers. She had also mulled ICE starting again "from scratch."

The Biden administration's use of humanitarian parole to bring in thousands of migrants via the CBP One app, both at the southern border and by approving their travel into the U.S. from four countries, blew up during election season amid reports about how Haitian migrants were affecting towns throughout the U.S.

While that claim was unsubstantiated, the impact of mass migration on towns in Ohio and elsewhere continued to be an issue until Election Day.

Harris repeatedly hammered Trump on his failure to support the bipartisan border security bill, but the gap never really closed between the two as Trump continued to assign the border crisis to her leadership as "border czar."

Trump would ultimately win the November election, and as he accepted victory, he reiterated his promise to voters.

"We're going to fix our borders. We're going to fix everything about our country," he said.