What happens when Biden’s immigration record comes into focus on the debate stage?

Voters say that immigration is the top problem facing the United States. I asked three experts how the president should address his record on the hotly contested political issue.

Joe Biden, then a candidate to become the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, debated fellow Democratic candidates in Washington, D.C. ,on March 15, 2020.Erin Schaff/NYT

Let the spectacle begin.

President Biden and former president Donald Trump will meet in Atlanta on June 27 for the first of two planned in-person debates before the November election.

Two months ago I wrote about the usefulness of presidential debates, which I had been dreading. Could another face-to-face showdown between two candidates the country already knows a lot about offer any meaningful insight for undecided voters? Odds are that it won’t.

While I’m still dreading the debate, that doesn’t mean I won’t be tuning in. And the theme I’ll be watching most closely is immigration, cited by many voters as their top issue and what many political observers say is Biden’s Achilles’ heel.

Now that the president has a public opportunity to defend his record on migration challenges, I asked three experts how Biden should go about it.

For context, Biden is going into the debate fresh off announcing two major measures: a restriction on asylum at the US-Mexico border and an expansive plan to legalize individuals without legal status who are married to US citizens. Meanwhile, Trump’s plan on immigration can be boiled down to a three-word slogan: Deport them all.

For Mike Madrid, a longtime political consultant who cofounded The Lincoln Project and is the author of “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Transforming Democracy,” the thing that Biden has done that’s unique is that “he’s trying to accomplish comprehensive immigration reform through executive action,” he said. Biden first addressed border security but he didn’t stop there, Madrid said. “He now has the credibility in a way that no candidate since [Ronald] Reagan has to say there’s a comprehensive fix. ‘And if US Congress won’t do it, then I’m going to do it,’ ” Madrid said the president should say.

Indeed, in the past three years, Biden has been the most active immigration president. He has carried out more than 530 executive actions on immigration, more than Trump completed during his term.

“It’s important to say he started with border security,” Madrid told me. “Most Americans will be with Biden if you start the conversation by saying ‘border security’ and then implement an orderly process to give migrants and refugees a consistent, reliable process to follow.”

Rick Swartz, founder of the National Immigration Forum in the 1980s and a lawyer who litigated major immigration rights cases, told me that the important thing for viewers to understand is the difference between the visions of Trump and Biden when it comes to immigration. Biden should frame his approach as one that upholds “the dignity of human life, the security of our homeland, and the rule of law … versus Trump’s dehumanizing un-Christian chaos,” he said.

“Biden should also tell a story about farm or health care workers. What if immigrants disappeared?” Swartz said. “Americans don’t much like immigration, but they do like the immigrants they know.” It wouldn’t be hyperbole for Biden to describe the dramatic ripple effects a mass deportation plan would have on the economy.

Another significant issue to watch during the debate, one that is closely related to immigration, is the candidates’ messaging to Latino eligible voters, estimated at 36.2 million and expected to be pivotal. According to Madrid, there are more registered Latino voters than the Democrats’ 2020 margin of victory in each swing state.

“I think [Biden] needs to launch a Latino housing plan,” Madrid said. “One in 5 Hispanic men works in residential construction.” And yet Latinos have a housing affordability problem, he said.

Clarissa Martinez De Castro, vice president of the Latino vote initiative at UnidosUS, told me that Latino voters’ primary concern is economic issues, like inflation and the cost of living. That’s according to a new national poll of Latino registered voters by UnidosUS. “Employment has not quite been the issue for Latino voters. It’s more the wages that those jobs pay.” In fact, Martinez De Castro added, “Latinos are kind of overemployed and underpaid.”

The poll also found that immigration is Latinos’ top “non-economic” issue and that Latino voters are hearing much more from Republicans than Democrats on it. But the gap is not as large among Latino swing voters, Martinez De Castro said. The debate is “definitely an opportunity” for Biden to not only paint his vision on immigration “but paint the contrast” with Trump. “Even though people are concerned about what’s happening at the border, I think cruelty is the dividing line,” she said.

That’s why UnidosUS has been “pushing Republicans to moderate their rhetoric and their actions on immigration,” Martinez De Castro said. “And to Democrats, we’ve been saying, ‘you need to lean in on the issue.’ It seems like the White House’s approach was, ‘let’s hope it goes away.’ ” But with Biden’s last two executive actions, “maybe there’s a change where the administration is going to lean in on this.”

She’s right. In the debate, I’m hoping to see the president lean on his record on immigration and make an economic, cultural, and moral case for more immigrants, not fewer.