An Inconvenient Truth: Biden’s Border Failures Directly Led to the Minneapolis Crisis

(AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough, File)

National anger over the crisis unfolding in Minneapolis is intense, and much of it is rightly directed at the Trump administration for its openly authoritarian approach to immigration enforcement.

But another culprit is getting a pass.

What is unfolding is the logical outcome of a political failure that began years earlier. Joe Biden lost control of the southern border, his party denied the consequences, and Donald Trump returned to power with an entitled sense of political permission to govern through force, which he readily embraced.

Border encounters surged to historic levels during Biden’s presidency. Millions of migrants were encountered, released, paroled, or avoided capture altogether. The legal distinctions mattered inside the administration. They meant little to voters, who saw disorder, mounting strain on local communities, and a president who never projected command of the problem.

Biden dismantled Trump’s draconian yet effective border enforcement and replaced it with nothing durable. He failed to pair humanitarian reform with deterrence, rapid asylum adjudication, expanded detention capacity, or credible consequences for illegal entry. He repeatedly insisted the border was secure as the numbers climbed and the strain spread from border towns to major cities.

Immigration stopped functioning as a policy debate and hardened into a symbol of Democratic incapacity. Trump seized on that reality without effort or hesitation.

The failure deepened as Biden’s cognitive decline became harder to conceal. His inner circle closed ranks. Advisors and party leaders shielded him from challenge and blocked any meaningful succession process. Biden ran for reelection by inertia. A competitive primary never materialized. The truth reached voters only after a disastrous debate confirmed what many had already suspected.

Biden withdrew too late to reset the race. Kamala Harris inherited a national campaign with roughly one hundred days to run against a revitalized Trump. The collapse of the timeline was self-inflicted. It reflected a culture that prioritized proximity to power over the stakes Democrats said justified everything. The irony is unavoidable: Biden’s refusal to accept a one-term presidency helped produce the very outcome he warned most gravely against—the return of Trump and the threat he posed to American democracy.

Trump returned to office empowered and unrestrained. Within a year, his hastily expanded paramilitary force, ICE, was operating with excessive force and minimal restraint.

Minneapolis followed. The Trump administration launched an aggressive ICE operation that treated the city as hostile ground. Federal agents carried out raids with minimal coordination and maximal force. One civilian was shot during a mistaken raid. Another was killed in a confrontation federal authorities later conceded should never have escalated. Masked agents demanded proof of citizenship in public spaces. Tear gas filled downtown streets. Observers who filmed were warned, “You didn’t learn from what just happened.”

Washington framed the operation as enforcement. Residents experienced it as occupation.

An ICE recruitment ad released during the operation featured the line “We’ll have our home again,” a refrain drawn from a white nationalist anthem. The signaling was overt. The intent was unmistakable.

Michelle Goldberg recently argued in a New York Times column that “Resistance libs were right” about Trump’s authoritarianism. Minneapolis bears that out. Trump now governs with a paramilitary force willing to test how far lawless power can go. What skeptics once dismissed as hysteria has matured into policy.

Trump and his administration bear direct responsibility for Minneapolis. They chose escalation. They tolerated lethal outcomes. They treated enforcement as spectacle and intimidation.

Biden’s failures made that presidency possible. His border collapse created the political opening. The denial surrounding his decline eliminated any chance of correction. Together, they enabled the very outcome Democrats warned against.

Authoritarianism advances through tolerated lawlessness against designated enemies. Minneapolis marks one of those advances, paid for by years of denial and a refusal to govern honestly when it still mattered.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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