Illegal border crossings have skyrocketed under the Biden administration. More than 212,000 migrants attempted to enter the southern United States for the second consecutive month – a 13% increase over June. For comparative purposes, in July 2020, there were 40,929 encounters. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas made the announcement akin to admitting there is, in fact, a crisis. Imagine that.
Now, the Biden folks – under the management of their border czar, Vice President Kamala Harris, of course – are probably going to do a couple of things to reaffirm their more lenient policies. First, repackage the crisis as a reaction to kids being let out of cages and blame the pandemic. Second, come up with an actual plan – instead of relying on wishful, pandering, or impossible promises.
Publicly, Mayorkas concedes, the border is “one of the toughest challenges we face.” But privately, in a leaked audiotape, his words sent chills down the spine:
“A couple of days ago, I was down in Mexico, and I said look, you know, if, if our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose, and this is unsustainable. We can’t continue like this, our people in the field can’t continue, and our system isn’t built for it.”
Title 42 Is Liberally Greased Up
During the tirade against former President Trump’s border policy, open borders folks decried the administration’s invocation of a World War II-era loophole: Title 42, a 1944 public health statute to close the border to “nonessential” travel indefinitely. As the current president put it, the use of good old 42 was “the moral and national shame of the previous administration.”
Then-Sen. Harris defamed the obscure 42 as an unconstitutional “executive power grab” that had “no known precedent or clear legal rationale.” But it’s being used near-daily by Border Patrol under the sculpted nose of the border Czarina. By Mr. Biden's direction, border authorities used Title 42 to expel 530,000 hopeful migrants, including 16,000 children migrating alone. Then there are the 9,500 unaccompanied minors sitting in U.S. border jails today. But, of course, no one is the wiser without the constant hammering by the activist media, who have remained silent on all immigration issues of late.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sued the Trump administration for the use of Title 42. A month or so back, Lee Gelernt at the ACLU claimed, “The Biden administration’s use of Title 42 is flatly illegal. There is zero daylight between the Biden administration and Trump administration’s position.”
Gelernt is torqued because the Biden administration is defending Title 42 in court. That’s worth a repeat: Biden’s people are defending Title 42 in court eight months into the new administration.
But They Said They’d Open the Borders
The administration is currently between a rock and a very unfriendly hard place. Sensing blood in the water, Republicans are hammering away at what they perceive as failed policies and a cluster of missteps on the “unsustainable” immigration crisis. Progressives are angry at being fooled once again in believing the promises of the old guard, and the border Democrats abandoned by the party are speaking out. It’s all coming together in a perfect storm of “oh crap” that has Homeland as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rockers – and Americans demand action.
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Read more from Sarah Cowgill.
