AOC leads bipartisan charge against Biden’s executive order to stop border crossings: ‘Doing Trump impressions’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has come out against President Biden’s reported plans to issue an executive order to curb record-setting migrant crossings on the southern border — a move the “Squad” lawmaker said would put him in league with his likely 2024 opponent, former President Donald Trump.

“Doing Trump impressions isn’t how we beat Trump,” the Bronx and Queens pol said on X late Wednesday. “Seeking asylum is a legal right of all people. In the face of authoritarian threat, we should not buckle on our principles — we should commit to them.”

“The mere suggestion is outrageous and the President should refuse to sign it,” she added.

The congresswoman was responding to a CNN report that Biden, 81, may tighten asylum screening standards — and shut down the border if more than 8,500 migrants cross in a single day or 5,000 enter every day on average over a week-long period.

The president is focusing on the border as public polling ahead of the Nov. 5 general election shows it is the top concern of voters and an issue they would prefer being handled by Trump.

Illegal border crossings have broken records in each year of Biden’s term, with more than 7.2 million in total crossing the southern border since the president took office, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.

As many as 85% of those border crossers are subsequently released into the country to await immigration court hearings, creating a backlog of more than 3 million cases.

Another 1.8 million known so-called “gotaways” have evaded arrest when entering the US.

If elected, Trump plans to resolve the crisis with mass deportations and the involvement of the US military on the southern border, the Washington Post reported.

The White House has blamed the former president and his allies in Congress for torpedoing a bipartisan Senate bill with a similar provision to the proposed executive order, which is also akin to the Trump-era Title 42 policy that was used to rapidly expel migrants at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another provision of the potential executive order would implement a “last in, first out” policy for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to prioritize recent migrant admissions for deportation, US officials told NBC News.

Biden has already paid politically for his administration’s border policies, with House Republicans impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for failing to enforce federal immigration law earlier this month.

Other GOP lawmakers have mocked Biden for asking Congress to give him the “power” to secure the border, saying his executive actions created the migrant crisis — and he could unwind them at any point.

“That’s nice that President Biden is ‘considering’ taking action to end his border crisis,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said Thursday in response to the reports. “But what is he waiting on? President Biden could end this crisis today.”

“Americans have lost faith in this President and won’t be fooled by election year gimmicks that don’t actually secure the border,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) added in a Thursday statement. “Nor will they forget that the President created this catastrophe and, until now, has refused to use his executive power to fix it.”

“These reports also underscore just how brazenly and intentionally President Biden misled the public when he claimed he had done everything in his power to secure the border,” he said. “Specifically, the President’s alleged desire to invoke Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which the White House dismissed using for months, is particularly telling.”

Instead, Johnson went on, Biden should reinstitute the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy and end allowances for humanitarian parole that have fast-tracked tens of thousands of entries from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Biden in 2021 rolled back Trump’s “Remain in Mexico policy, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which forced asylum seekers and other migrants to await their immigration hearings south of the US border.

He also tried to thwart further construction of the 45th president’s border wall — before reversing that decision by waiving 26 federal laws to complete sections in the highly trafficked Rio Grande Valley.

Ocasio-Cortez blasted Biden for making that call last October, saying he should “reverse the course” and “take responsibility.”

“The Biden administration was not required to expand construction of the border wall,” she said at the time, “and they certainly were not required to waive several environmental laws to expedite the building.”