State of Our Union: Our southern border has never been less secure
Conn Carroll
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The numbers speak for themselves. More than 2.5 million immigrants were arrested for illegally crossing the southern border last year, up from 2 million the year before. Another 1.2 million illegally crossed the border without being caught in 2022, and 900 immigrants were found dead on the border.
These are all record highs.
ERIC ADAMS BORDER PLAN WOULD ONLY MAKE ASYLUM THEATER WORSE
As Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) has described it, “it’s a mess. It’s chaos. It’s crisis after crisis.”
And President Joe Biden is 100% to blame for all of this. Again, just ask Democrats.
“If you don’t deport people, they will see the border as a speed bump,” Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX) told reporters. “We have to deport people. We have to deport people who aren’t supposed to be here.”
A lot of times, public policy issues are complicated. The cause of Biden’s border crisis, however, is very simple: Biden is releasing far too many of the immigrants arrested at the southern border into the country. Immigrants from around the world now know that if they cross the border illegally and are arrested by Border Patrol agents, and if they then claim they are frightened of being persecuted if they were to be sent home, Biden will let them into the country to go wherever they want.
That’s it. That’s why immigrants are coming in record-breaking numbers: because they know Biden will let them in.
Almost all of these immigrants will eventually lose their asylum claims, although few will see their cases to the end of the legal process. But that doesn’t matter. Because since his first day in office, Biden has promised not to deport anyone whose only offense is being in the country illegally. Immigrants know that if they can just get into the country, by any means necessary, as long as they don’t commit a felony, Biden will let them stay.
“If you don’t deport people, they will see the border as a speed bump.” Cuellar is 100% right.
Now in the last few weeks, Biden has announced new border policies, promising to use Title 42 public health authority to prevent immigrants from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Haiti from entering the country. And the Department of Homeland Security issued a statement earlier this month claiming that arrests from these countries have decreased 97% in the first three weeks of January.
Biden will assuredly use this snapshot to claim he has gotten control of the southern border. Don’t fall for it.
For starters, these unofficial numbers are from just the first three weeks of the month. Mexico has only agreed to take 30,000 of these immigrants processed through Title 42 each month. That means once that 30,000 limits is reached, Biden will be releasing these immigrants into the country again.
Also, immigrants from these countries are just a fraction of all immigrants illegally crossing the southern border. If Biden is using Title 42 more on this group of immigrants, he may be using it far less on other immigrants.
Let’s wait till the full January numbers come out in mid-February. Then we can see if Biden’s new policy is making a dent.
And even if the January numbers do really go down, it will only be because Biden used Title 42 to stop releasing immigrants into the country. This would only show that the way to end the crisis would be to fully stop releasing immigrants into the country.
Biden doesn’t need Title 42 to prevent the release of immigrants into the United States. Section 212(f) of Title 8 gives him authority to “suspend the entry of all aliens” if he decides it would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
All Biden needs is the political will to use this tool.
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