Amid the faltering push for a bipartisan border security compromise, Republicans are demanding that President Biden take meaningful executive action to curb border crossings before they consider his foreign aid bill. Mr. Biden, though, claims he needs Congress to authorize him to take action. 

“Just give me the power I’ve asked [for] from the very day I got into office,” the president said to reporters on January 30, speaking indirectly to congressional Republicans. “Give me the Border Patrol. Give me the people, the judges. Give me the people who can stop this and make it work right.”

Republicans say he doesn’t need those laws, though. Speaker Johnson wants the president to restore a number of Trump-era policies, including demanding that asylum seekers remain in Mexico while awaiting approval, expelling migrants swiftly when they enter the country, and resuming construction of the border wall. 

Regarding the border wall, the president does have the power to immediately begin construction. A conservative think tank — the Center for Immigration Studies — says Mr. Biden is ignoring the expressed will of Congress by refusing to do so. On his first day in office, the president ended his predecessor’s declaration of a national emergency at the southern border, thus ending construction of the wall. 

“Not only is the Biden administration rescinding the Trump-era border policy, it is in effect nullifying the will of Congress as expressed in the 2006 Secure Fence Act to construct ‘physical infrastructure to prevent unlawful border entry,’” an expert on administrative and regulatory statutes, Robert Law, wrote. “That bill passed the Senate with broad bipartisan support, 80 to 19, including then-Sen. Biden voting in favor.”

“The result of this policy (the Biden effect) is likely a surge of illegal aliens unlawfully entering the country where the border lacks physical barriers,” Mr. Law continued.

The administration did announce last year that it would begin some limited construction of the border wall in Texas, but illegal crossings have only increased since that announcement was made. 

On the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which President Trump implemented and required that asylum seekers wait in Mexico before their immigration court dates, the Biden administration has refused to reinstate the policy, in part due to Mexican opposition. 

The administration ended the policy in 2022, which contributed, in part, to the spike in crossings during the second half of the year. Mr. Johnson says the president has the authority to reinstate the policy today, but it is complicated by Mexican partners. On Wednesday, the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would not allow the practice to restart. 

“Regarding the possible implementation of this policy for the third time, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on behalf of the Government of Mexico, expresses its rejection of the U.S. government’s intention to return individuals processed under the program to Mexico,” the ministry said in a statement. 

Another Republican demand is that Mr. Biden pare back his implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which was implemented by President Obama during his first term. The Supreme Court, though, has refused to rule on the merits of the executive policy and even pushed back on Mr. Trump’s attempts to weaken the program. 

In 2020, a majority of the court held that Mr. Trump could not “phase out” the program, as he and his administration had tried to do for years. The opinion, written by Chief Justice Roberts, states that Mr. Trump did not provide a “reasoned explanation” for his action.

On Wednesday, NBC News reported that the administration is considering some executive actions on the border, but they are unlikely to be as expansive as Republicans want them to be. 

Two administration sources did not specify the exact nature of the executive actions, but did say that more liberal members of Congress are likely to be upset with the president’s moves. 

Republicans take issue with an executive action that Mr. Biden took on his first day in office, saying that if he rescinds executive orders related to DACA, they would embrace the foreign aid the president has wanted for months. Through an executive order, Mr. Biden attempted to expand the program, but that order was later declared unconstitutional by a federal judge. That case is awaiting appeal, and Mr. Biden has said he will not rescind his executive orders. 

Another executive action Mr. Biden could take — but has so far refused to do — is to reimplement the pandemic-era Title 42 expulsion mechanism first deployed by Mr. Trump. The expulsion method was deployed as part of the pandemic national emergency, which Mr. Biden rescinded in 2022. 

The Supreme Court had ordered the president to maintain Title 42 for several months, but the recession of the national emergency led to the end of Title 42 in 2023. Several Democrats, including Senators Sinema, Bennett, Kelly, and Tester, all criticized the Biden administration for ending the program and demanded it be extended. 

The policy director for the liberal American Immigration Council, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, says that Republicans in Congress are, to a degree, refusing to recognize the reality that the president cannot deport people without the money they refuse to consider. 

“Immigration law is a mess,” he writes. “It can simultaneously be true that Congress ordered the executive to detain everyone and ALSO that Congress never really thought that it was possible so decided not to provide the funding needed for the kind of mass prison camps that would require.”

Mr. Reichlin-Melnick also says that the Republican demand for “zero” border crossings is beyond unrealistic. “At no point since the Border Patrol was created in 1924 has the United States been able to reduce crossings to zero,” he says. “Never. It is impossible. In fact, no nation in human history has ever been able to stop every unlawful border crossing — not even North Korean or East Germany.”