President Biden.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Getty Images, iStock)

If a picture paints a thousand words, two pictures tell the story of President Biden's dilemma on immigration and the border. In recent days, there has been considerable focus on the image of a border patrol agent on horseback chasing a Haitian migrant in Del Rio, Texas. While the details are disputed — Whip or rein? Excessive force or standard operating procedure? — it is beyond debate that to many observers the image resembled ugly chapters in our country's racial history.

Then take any number of pictures of the scene in that Texas city — huddled masses under the bridge, people streaming in, litter and unsanitary toilets, clearly overwhelmed local, state, and federal authorities — many other Americans see something else: chaos and lawlessness. People watching this unfold on television or the internet, much less actually living in beleaguered border towns, are going to dislike what they see.

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W. James Antle III

W. James Antle III is the politics editor of the Washington Examiner, the former editor of The American Conservative, and author of Devouring Freedom: Can Big Government Ever Be Stopped?.