What the Wall Street Journal doesn’t get about the Biden border crisis
Conn Carroll
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More than 12,000 migrants were encountered on the southern border yesterday, a record-high number. To put that number in perspective, in 2019, President Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson testified that 1,000 encounters a day was a crisis.
We will never have the exact numbers for a single day, but the vast majority of those encountered by Border Patrol yesterday were assuredly released into the United States to go wherever they want. As long as they don’t commit a major felony, the Biden administration will make no effort to track them down and deport them.
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And that is why so many more migrants are coming and will keep coming. They know that if they get arrested by Border Patrol, they will most likely be released into the United States.
The Wall Street Journal thinks this problem can be solved with some minor tweaks to immigration law. They write:
“Senate negotiators have been making progress on raising the standard for claiming asylum in the U.S. The current ‘credible fear’ standard is too easily met and allows for release into the U.S. for months or years before a tribunal rules on the asylum claim. Many migrants don’t bother to show up for their hearings.”
“But Democrats are balking on ‘parole’ for migrants that has let some 1.5 million migrants be released to live and work in the U.S. in the last two years. Republicans want to limit parole authority because they think the Administration will use it as the default even if the asylum standard is changed.”
The problem is that Biden is already using his parole authority to release thousands of migrants arrested at the border into the United States every month. That 1.5 million parole number is for an entirely separate group of migrants that are never even arrested at the border. They are allowed to fly in legally (although the program itself is illegal).
The reality is that the vast majority of migrants released into the country every month never get a credible fear interview. They are just released into the country after a cursory check of their claimed identities. Let’s take a look at the most recent border numbers to see how this works.
In October, 188,778 migrants were arrested by Border Patrol for illegal entry at the southern border. Of those 188,778, only 28,334 were placed in “Expedited Removal.” It is only these 28,334 migrants placed in expedited removal that would have received a “credible fear” interview from an asylum officer.
We don’t know what percentage of those 28,334 passed the credible fear test, but it was probably low. Most migrants placed in expedited removal fail the existing credible fear standard and are deported. Tightening the credible fear standard would increase the number of deportations at the southern border, but only slightly. Most migrants who are given a credible fear interview already fail it.
So what happened to the other 160,444 migrants that were arrested?
Well, about 20,000 voluntarily returned to their home country, another 11,000 were kept by Border Patrol in detention facilities, and 6,000 were deported based on prior orders of deportation. But the vast majority of those arrested — 120,175 out of 188,788 — were simply released into the U.S. without ever having to pass a credible fear interview. Tweaking the credible fear standard would do nothing to decrease this number. Instead, these migrants were released into the U.S. through Biden’s “humanitarian” parole authority.
Until that authority is revoked, the Biden border crisis will not be solved.
And even if that parole authority was revoked, what would Biden do with all the migrants arrested?
The previous administration returned them to Mexico. And it worked.
But Biden can’t do that. Early on in the Biden administration, after it became obvious Biden’s border policies were a complete failure, there was an internal debate in the White House about reinstituting the previous administration’s “Remain in Mexico” program but doing it more humanely. But the border hawks lost that debate and the program was disbanded.
Fixing the crisis at the southern border will not be accomplished with a couple tweaks to the credible fear standard. It will require a 180-degree reversal of the policies Biden has now been implementing for almost three years.
Is it theoretically possible that Biden could completely reverse course on immigration? Sure. Anything can happen. But the reality is that DHS is staffed with hardcore open border ideologues who would quit before implementing the previous administration’s policies. It’s just highly unlikely Biden would do it.
Where does that leave Ukraine funding? I honestly don’t know.
If I had to bet, it is most likely that a small group of centrist Republicans will agree to some tweaks to the credible fear standard, and a bailout of sanctuary cities, in exchange for voting for Ukraine funding.
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This would do nothing to solve the border crisis. In fact, it would probably make it worse since Democratic-run cities would get billions to ease the pain caused by the migrant flood.
The better solution would be to pair Ukraine and Israel funding together and let the Senate and House vote on those.