While it is true that Biden is bending to Republican pressure over the so-called border crisis — quite literally relying on Trump-era legislation — border fascism has for decades been a bipartisan commitment.

Democrats couch their border logics in the neoliberal language of management and order, rather than explicitly racist “America First” slogans. The maintenance of the border — a racist tool that serves capital and divides labor — has the same disastrous, deadly effects no matter what rhetoric justifies it.

As the American Civil Liberties Union noted of Biden’s executive order, it “will severely restrict people’s legal right to seek asylum, putting tens of thousands of lives at risk.”