Opening doors, hardening borders: Inside Biden’s strategy on mixed migration and the lessons learned for Europe
When former U.S. President Joe Biden took office in 2021, he pledged to rebuild a safe, orderly, and humane migration system after four years of restrictive measures under the first Trump administration. From the outset, his administration sought to expand legal migration pathways, while also addressing domestic political pressure to maintain control at the border.
The Mixed Migration Centre’s latest report, Opening doors, hardening borders, examines this complex and often contradictory legacy. It shows how the Biden administration expanded regular migration channels on an unprecedented scale while simultaneously restricting access to asylum and reinforcing border enforcement. The ultimate result was a steep decrease in irregular arrivals, but it came late and at the cost of deepening the system’s fragility. For Europe, which faces its own debates over how to better address the challenges of irregular migration, the U.S. experience offers both inspiration and caution.
Reversing the Trump legacy and the limits of early reform
Biden’s first months in office were marked by efforts to symbolically and substantively distance his administration from Trump-era policies. He suspended the “Migrant Protection Protocols” (MPP) and terminated “Asylum Cooperative Agreements” (ACAs) with Central American governments, both of which had externalised asylum processing and left applicants stranded in unsafe conditions.
The administration also promised to address the “root causes” of migration from Central and South America, mainly economic insecurity, corruption, and violence, by reactivating development aid to Northern Triangle countries and launching a regional framework led by Vice President Kamala Harris.
But regional realities quickly outpaced these early efforts. Venezuela’s ongoing crisis, instability in Haiti, Nicaragua, and Cuba, and the socioeconomic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic had transformed mixed migration across the Americas. The number of migrant and asylum-seeker arrivals at the U.S.-Mexico border drastically increased, reaching 1.7 million in late 2021 and 2.3 million in 2022. 
Confronted with political pressure from both conservatives and centrists, Biden shifted toward a dual strategy: tightening border restrictions while expanding legal pathways for migration.
A record expansion of legal pathways and regional cooperation
Between 2021 and 2024, over 5.8 million people entered the United States regularly through new or expanded channels. Chief among these was the CHNV parole programme, offering temporary admission for nationals of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, alongside new family reunification initiatives, labour visa adjustments, and parole schemes for Afghans and Ukrainians fleeing conflict.
The CHNV programme allowed approved applicants with financial sponsors to fly directly to the U.S., avoiding perilous land routes. By 2024, it had admitted more than 529,000 people and substantially reduced irregular crossings from those nationalities.
At the regional level, the United States launched the Safe Mobility Offices (SMOs) in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Ecuador in April 2023. The centres were jointly run by governments, the U.N., and civil society to screen applicants for protection or migration options. As documented in MMC research on SMOs, these offices represented a novel experiment in regional migration governance: offering alternatives to irregular movement while coordinating between destination and transit countries.
In parallel, the administration sought to reassert regional and international leadership through the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection, launched at the 2022 Summit of the Americas. The declaration emphasised shared responsibility, economic support for host countries, and humane border enforcement. These principles align with the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which the U.S. had initially refused to sign in 2018.
A border increasingly closed to asylum
Despite these expansionist initiatives, the Biden administration simultaneously implemented measures that sharply curtailed access to asylum at the border. For those who did not qualify under the new schemes, the border became increasingly difficult to reach and even harder to claim asylum at.
The most contentious policy was the continued enforcement of Title 42, a public health order permitting rapid expulsions without due process. Although Biden had campaigned on restoring asylum rights, his administration maintained the policy until May 2023.
It was replaced by the Circumvention of Lawful Pathways (CLP) rule, which rendered individuals ineligible for asylum if they crossed irregularly or failed to secure an appointment through the CBP One app, which became the sole means of requesting an asylum appointment at the border.
Interview with an expert at a research institute
In 2024, as elections loomed, the “Securing the Border” policy further restricted access, suspending asylum during periods of “high arrivals.” Meanwhile, U.S. support for Mexican enforcement intensified, enabling authorities to intercept migrants farther south, reducing encounters at the U.S. border but heightening risks of abuse and extortion in transit and undermining the right to seek asylum under international law.
Interview with a former migration official under the Biden administration
Short-term solutions, long-term fragility
The administration’s heavy reliance on executive authority made these achievements inherently fragile. Most new pathways, including CHNV parole and family reunification, were established through presidential orders, rather than congressional law. Within weeks of the 2025 change in administration, many were rescinded, leaving millions at risk of losing status or facing deportation.
As one expert cited in the MMC report observed:
“executive immigration policy is the only immigration policy that currently exists really […] What that means is that whoever holds the presidency is crafting immigration policy in the direction that they want. It’s not a state policy. It is that specific President’s policy. It will last for that President’s term”.
Missed reform and muddled messaging
Beyond policy design, the administration also struggled with narrative control.
Despite early promises to overhaul the asylum system, the White House failed to use its initial political capital to push through structural reform when Democrats held both chambers of Congress.
Systemic bottlenecks in asylum adjudication and reception persisted, fuelling backlogs and public frustration. As one expert noted, “capacity, not arrivals, was the real crisis.”
Instead of reshaping the debate, the administration ceded it to its critics. Conservative media cast rising encounters as chaos; advocates accused the government of betrayal. Attempts to appease both sides through restrictive rhetoric combined with selective humanitarianism alienated both camps and eroded trust.
“ The things that [the Biden administration was] doing weren’t satisfying to anybody. They weren’t satisfying to civil society, immigrants rights groups. They were certainly not satisfying to the border security hawks. And so think that it all just exploded under the Biden administration and has created a really perilous environment for people who want to move today, or even people who are already here having begun these processes because they are scapegoats to a system over which they have no control ”.
Interview with an expert at a non-governmental organization
Lessons for Europe
Europe faces similar challenges in how to better respond to irregular migration, aiming to tighten the borders, striking deals with transit countries, while also feeling pressure to address a strong demand for migration labour.
The US experience offers several takeaways:
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Legal pathways work if broad and sustained: Biden’s expansion of regular routes proved effective in reducing irregular crossings for those eligible. But narrow eligibility and political fragility limited long-term impact. Europe should ensure that its own schemes are inclusive, predictable, and embedded in law, not politics.
- Externalisation carries costs: Cooperation with Mexico reduced arrivals, but at the expense of asylum rights. Europe’s similar reliance on North African and Western Balkan partners may deliver short-term results, but risks outsourcing protection and eroding humanitarian norms.
- Technology can manage, not solve, migration management: The CBP One app provided a more organised response at the border, but also excluded those without access or tech literacy. Digital pre-screening tools could serve as a model for Europe, but must be designed to avoid becoming barriers to asylum.
- Narrative shapes policy legitimacy: Public support depends on coherent communication. The U.S. case demonstrates that technocratic success is meaningless if public trust is lost.
- Durable reform requires legislation: Biden’s heavy use of executive action achieved flexibility but not permanence. Europe’s own migration architecture should prioritise institutional and legislative foundations, ensuring continuity beyond electoral cycles.
Conclusion: Opening doors, hardening borders
Biden’s migration legacy is one of contradictions. His administration delivered an unprecedented expansion of regular pathways, yet paired with, until then, unprecedented restrictions on asylum.
In doing so, it achieved short-term order but built on shaky ground. The reliance on executive authority, limited eligibility criteria, and shifting narratives left both migrants and institutions vulnerable to reversal.
These vulnerabilities became clear with the change in administration. Within months of returning to power, President Trump dismantled nearly all of the legal and humanitarian pathways created under Biden, reinstated strict border controls, and expanded deportations. The speed and ease with which this reversal occurred exposed how fragile policy gains can be when not anchored in law or bipartisan consensus.
For Europe, the U.S. experience serves as both a model and a warning. It highlights the potential of regular pathways to align humanitarian and migration management goals. At the same time, it also shows the risks that arise when coupling initiatives in these areas with deterrence and externalisation.
As European governments implement the new Pact on Migration and Asylum, the central challenge will be balancing access, protection, and political legitimacy. Sustainable migration governance cannot rely on temporary fixes or rhetorical shifts.
If the U.S. case shows anything, it is that the same doors that open new opportunities can just as quickly slam shut, unless they are built to last.