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The Biden campaign was warned that his border policies could lead to chaos prior to winning the 2020 election, according to The New York Times, as policy advisers signaled to the former president and his team in a memo that Joe Biden's plans, coupled with the realities at the time, could cause a major spike in crossings.
"A potential surge could create chaos and a humanitarian crisis, overwhelm processing capacities, and imperil the agenda of the new administration," an August 2020 memo written by Biden's policy advisers to the president and his inner circle before he won the election read, according to The New York Times.
The memo cautioned that Biden's promises, along with the pandemic and demand from Trump's first term would cause a spike in crossings.
The advisers gave the president some options, according to the Times, including one that would have made it easier to reject asylum claims quickly, holding migrants in "reception centers" and requiring some to wait in Mexico.
An aerial image shows migrants waiting along the border wall to surrender to US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Border Patrol agents after crossing the Rio Grande into the United States on the US-Mexico border in El Paso, Texas, on May 10, 2023. Former President Joe Biden looks on after he delivered his farewell address to the nation from the Oval Office of the White House on Jan. 15, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Image; Mandel Ngan - Pool/Getty Images)
A representative for former President Biden did not immediately return a request for comment to Fox News Digital.
Biden's quick action upon entering office included a 100-day pause on deportations, halting the construction of the border wall, suspending President Donald Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy and limiting the categories of illegal immigrants that could be arrested.
The New York Times reported that Biden's team shared disagreements on how quickly the president pushed these immigration actions.
As crossings skyrocketed under Biden, his advisers continued to offer plans to deter migrants from coming to the U.S. However, Biden's team had political worries.
"They were a little too sensitive to criticisms from the left," Cecilia Muñoz, who worked for the Obama administration and served as a domestic and economic policy adviser for Biden's transition team, told The New York Times.
Former President Joe Biden speaks to the media after signing the Social Security Fairness Act at the White House in Washington, D.C., January 5, 2025. (CHRIS KLEPONIS/AFP via Getty Images)
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Andrea R. Flores, who served as director for transborder security at the National Security Council in the former president's administration, was tasked with creating a memo for Ron Klain, Biden's chief of staff at the time, with suggestions on how to deter migrants from coming to the U.S.
Flores said officials were in disagreement over the options to outline to Klain, so, she told the Times, "the memo died."
Scott Shuchart, a senior policy adviser at ICE who worked during Biden's administration, told the Times that the former president "had no strategy, because they had no goal."
He added, "All they had was wishing the problem would go away so that they could focus on the things they cared about."
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Immigrants line up at a remote U.S. Border Patrol processing center after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border on Dec. 07, 2023 in Lukeville, Arizona. (John Moore/Getty Images)
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A report by the Pew Research Center published in August showed that the unauthorized immigrant population in the U.S. soared to an all-time high of 14 million in 2023 in the middle of the Biden administration.
Hanna Panreck is an associate editor at Fox News.
