Biden faces renewed border pressure as Title 42 hangs in the balance
Haisten Willis
President Joe Biden has faced criticism for his handling of the southern border since the early days of his term, but with Title 42 potentially expiring and record numbers of immigrants crossing each week, the issue may finally be attracting more widespread attention.
The Supreme Court has temporarily paused lifting Title 42, a pandemic-era policy allowing the government to expeditiously expel millions of immigrants from U.S. borders, but politicians from both sides of the aisle are questioning the White House‘s preparedness for what happens if and when it goes away.
BIDEN SLAMMED BY FELLOW DEMOCRAT FOR NOT FIXING THE BORDER CRISIS
Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), an outspoken border-district Democrat, harshly criticized Biden last week for refusing to visit the border.
“I don’t know why they keep avoiding the border and saying there’s other things more important than visiting the border,” Cuellar said in an interview with CNN.
He later told CBS the White House has “been playing” on border security since Biden took office, saying a $3 billion Biden administration funding request is “mainly for food and shelters, processing, transportation, but it doesn’t really talk about security.”
Over the weekend, El Paso’s Democratic mayor, Oscar Leeser, declared a state of emergency due to the continued influx of immigrants, which is expected to get worse with the expiration of Title 42 immigration rules.
“I said from the beginning that I would call it when I felt that either our asylum-seekers or community were not safe,” Leeser said at a press conference Saturday in announcing the declaration. “And I really believe that today, our asylum-seekers are not safe as we have hundreds and hundreds on the streets, and that’s not the way we want to treat people.”
Those two developments led to a series of questions from the White House press corps during Monday’s briefing.
“The removal of Title 42 does not mean the border is open,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response to one inquiry. “Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply doing the work of the smugglers.”
Despite her reassurances, Jean-Pierre was asked repeatedly about the southern border, an issue that hadn’t previously drawn much attention inside the Brady Press Briefing Room. The term “Title 42” was mentioned 19 times on Monday, either by Jean-Pierre or a reporter, and the press secretary appeared before a screen showcasing the administration’s efforts to secure the border.
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But one way or the other, Title 42 will end, says the Heritage Foundation’s Lora Ries, and the administration needs to come up with a viable replacement.
“Agents will continue to use [Title 42] to expel some illegal aliens but only sporadically,” she said. “Title 42 is a public health crisis authority issued by the CDC for COVID in March 2020. It will come to an end. What the past two years has shown us is border agents need a general authority to quickly expel illegal aliens when a border or other crisis exists, not just a public health crisis.”
Ries says illegal immigrants migrated to every single House district in the contiguous 48 states over a one-month period earlier this year, meaning every district is a border district. Nonetheless, she thinks Biden will not change course unless “his power and/or pocketbook are at risk.”
Polling shows that Biden is far underwater when it comes to handling immigration, with just 36.8% approving, per the RealClearPolitics average.
But the situation could get far worse for the president as more attention is paid to the southern border.
A Harvard-Harris poll found that most respondents vastly underestimate the number of illegal border crossings in fiscal 2022.
The true number, between 2,378,944 Border Patrol encounters and an estimated 600,000 illegal crossers who slipped through without any contact, is nearly 3 million in a single year. But 87% of poll respondents said they believed the number was lower, with roughly one-third thinking the number was below 250,000 and more than half believing it was under 500,000.
Informed of the true figure, 67% of respondents agreed they wanted “new, stricter policies to reduce the flow of people coming across the border.”
For now, the Supreme Court’s pause on the end of Title 42 may buy the White House a few more days before even more people begin flooding across the border. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) has promised the border “is going to be total chaos” once the order is lifted.
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In spite of the headwinds, the White House insists it has things under control.
“In plain English, to migrants who might be thinking about it, what should they do after Wednesday [if Title 42 is lifted]?” a reporter asked Jean-Pierre on Monday.
“I just laid that really clear,” she responded. “It would be wrong to think that the border is open. It is not open. And I just want to be very, very clear about that.”