Fox News’s Ugly Eruption Over Biden Immigration Move Has a Hidden Tell

Yes, implementing the policy on a lawful case-by-case basis is complicated, and Republicans may sue. But put simply, Congress created the executive discretion Biden is using. Dozens of legal scholars have signed a new letter defending the move as a faithful exercise of that authority in keeping with the law’s intent to give administrations tools to treat certain migrants humanely in unforeseen circumstances.

Marielena Hincapie, a visiting scholar at Cornell Law School, points out that “parole in place” was used by the administration of President George W. Bush to grant protections to undocumented spouses of individual military families, and President Barack Obama made it policy for those families more broadly. “Now Biden is extending this long-established policy used by Republican and Democratic administrations to benefit America families,” Hincapie said.

Given all that history, there’s something highly revealing about the Fox and MAGA descent into such vile demagoguery. Miller, Trump, and others enthuse about launching mass deportations, but they often describe this as the removal of a dangerous, amorphous enemy class within. Biden’s new move highlights that many of those people are deeply connected to U.S. communities and to countless American families. These real people are harder to demagogue, so Republicans are shouting: Look over there at the border instead!