Chaos is coming to the southern border
Washington Examiner
More than 190,000 immigrants were arrested while crossing the southern border in March, a 500% increase from President Donald Trump’s last March in office. It was the second-highest number of arrests for the month of March on record, and it marks 25 consecutive months that apprehensions have surpassed 150,000, also a new record.
And things are only going to get worse, much worse, and fast.
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Less than a month from Wednesday, on May 11, President Joe Biden said he will stop using Title 42, the primary tool his administration has used to keep what little semblance of order is left on the southern border.
According to internal Department of Homeland Security estimates, once the Border Patrol loses its authority to return immigrants back to Mexico through Title 42, daily apprehensions are expected to double to almost 13,000, meaning a record-high 400,000 immigrants will be arrested illegally crossing the southern border every month.
The current record for arrests in one month is just 252,000, from this past December. And once these immigrants are arrested, the plan is to just let them all in. Although the vast majority of them will eventually lose their asylum claims, almost none of them will ever be deported, and many of them will end up receiving welfare benefits such as Medicaid, food stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
Just last week, while Biden was traveling with his son Hunter in Ireland on the taxpayers’ dime, the White House announced that the 580,000 immigrants who crossed the southern border before they turned 18 and were given Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status by President Barack Obama would be made eligible for Medicaid and Affordable Care Act benefits.
When the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, Obama swore its benefits would not go to immigrants who had crossed the border illegally. That promise is now definitively broken.
Furthermore, Biden has been admitting tens of thousands of immigrants every month through a completely illegal “parole” program that releases immigrants to go wherever they want into the country after just a 15-minute interview. Congress specifically amended the statute governing immigrant parole in 1996 to limit the power of presidents to parole immigrants into the country. Biden is arguing in federal court that this statute actually empowers him to parole an infinite number of immigrants into the country.
Once these immigrants have been paroled, they are no longer illegal immigrants under federal law but instead considered “qualified aliens.” This new legal designation entitles them to many of the same welfare benefits available to any citizen, including Medicaid, food stamps, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. There is no time limit for these immigrants once they are in the country. Biden can simply extend their parole as long as he wants, for as long as he is president.
Most immigrants are not coming to the U.S. for welfare benefits. As the epidemic of child labor already caused by Biden’s border crisis shows, even the youngest immigrants who cross the border illegally do so to find work. But even while they are working, they are still eligible for and do take advantage of welfare programs. This is why even blue cities such as New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., have been pleading with Biden to do something to stem the tide of illegal immigrants flooding into their communities.
After months of decreasing the use of Title 42, Biden stepped up enforcement in January and February, and the enforcement worked. The number of illegal border crossings fell. But now that the weather is warming, more immigrants are coming. And Biden is about to lose Title 42 altogether.
Unless Biden makes a huge new shift back to proven policies such as “Remain in Mexico,” a border already in crisis is only going to get worse.