The White House will not call this a crisis. The administration tells us the border is closed and secure. They wave away concerns about their glaring culpability, blaming the previous president (whose administration massively reduced this problem), “seasonal” migration patterns (an excuse getting pulverized in real time), and risible “root causes” (see more below). The reality is that the Biden border crisis — fueled by atrocious policies and reckless rhetoric — is getting worse:
These numbers were supposed to descend after the spring due to the seasonal heat, they said. Arrow? Up, up, and up again, in May, June, and July. The last month saw more than 200K apprehensions, a number that could go up in the final analysis. And with known ‘got-aways’ included, it’s approaching a quarter of a million. In one month. I’ll remind you that House Democrats introduced a spending proposal to slash border and interior enforcement just a few weeks ago. Remember when Democrats and the media professed bottomless concern for the children — ignoring, of course, the extreme danger children often face while being smuggled north to our border by people seeking to take advantage of our weak immigration enforcement? I do. I remember when the woman now tasked with handling the border non-crisis was a mere presidential aspirant. She went to the border to preen and showboat, famously calling the ‘kids in cages’ a “crime against humanity that is being committed by the United States government.” Well guess what?
The mixed messages and clear policy incentives to send children to cross our border illegally are driving an off-the-charts crisis. Progressives would be rending their garments and posing for anguished photographs if this were happening under a Republican administration (again, Team Trump, for its faults on immigration, got a handle on the issue with successful policies). But under a Democratic administration, the fury is muted, if it exists at all. Immigration is no longer a wedge issue that can be used to make a Bad Republican look heartless. It’s now a disaster that could endanger the Democratic Party’s tenuous grip on power, so it’s generally shoved to the back burner as quickly as possible. As for the insulting “root causes” charade, how’s that going?
It seems it’s time to send the Vice President to one of the dozens of other countries of origin identified among the illegal immigrants captured at the US-Mexico in recent months, no? Perhaps we can pretend we can fix their internal problems one at a time, as the supposed “solution” to a flagrant and deliberate failure to enforce our own sovereignty. This is a choice. You know things must be bad, and the president must be really worried about the politics at play, for something like this to happen:
The Biden administration extended a Trump-era policy Monday that allows migrants to be expelled to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in holding facilities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a statement that Title 42 “shall remain in effect until the CDC Director determines that the danger of further introduction of COVID-19 into the United States from covered noncitizens has ceased to be a serious danger to the public health, and the Order is no longer necessary to protect the public health.” Title 42 allows Customs and Border Protection officials to expel undocumented migrants to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in holding facilities.
It’s bad and getting worse. I’ll leave you with this:
Not just “over” 180,000; an estimated 25,000 over the expected 180,000 — not counting tens of thousands of got-aways. But there’s no crisis at the closed and secure border, they tell us.
