Biden’s open borders: 1.3 million in — 28,000 out
Conn Carroll
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre gets very upset when reporters even suggest President Joe Biden has turned our southern border into an open border.
“The fact is that the removal of Title 42 does not mean the border is open,” Jean-Pierre responded to a reporter last month. “Anyone who suggests otherwise is simply doing the work of these smugglers who, again, are spreading misinformation, which is very dangerous.”
THE BIDEN BORDER CRISIS EXPLAINED
“When Title 42 goes away,” Jean-Pierre continued, “we will go back to Title 8, which allows a process to make sure that people can make their asylum claims heard. Those who do not have a legal basis to remain will be quickly removed.”
And just “how quickly” will those admitted under Title 8 be removed?
Well, we can look at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement FY 2022 Annual Report for some answers.
From U.S. Customs and Border Protection, we know that in fiscal 2022, 2.38 million immigrants were arrested for illegally crossing the southern border, with 1.08 million of them turned away under Title 42. That means 1.3 million of these illegal border crossers were processed under Title 8, most of them released into the United States to go wherever they want.
So that is about 1.3 million immigrants Biden let into the country in fiscal 2022 to seek asylum protections. And how many did Biden “quickly remove”?
According to the fiscal 2022 ICE report, just 28,204 immigrants were removed from the interior of the country. Of those 28,204, 23,013 had been convicted of a nonimmigration crime like drug trafficking, assault, robbery, etc. Another 3,710 were removed with similar pending nonimmigration charges. That means just 1,472 immigrants were removed for immigration-only offenses.
Even then, that 1,472 includes immigrants with prior deportations and immigrants convicted of other immigration offenses like immigration fraud.
So the number of immigrants removed by Biden in fiscal 2022, whose only grounds for deportation was that they entered illegally and lost their asylum claim, was far less than 1,472.
This is why record numbers of immigrants are illegally crossing our southern border and turning themselves into Border Patrol agents every day. They know that after they are arrested, they will be released into the country, and as long as they don’t commit some other crime, they will be allowed to stay forever.
White House reporters should not let Jean-Pierre get away with this evasion. Every time she claims the Biden administration is “quickly removing” those immigrants who fail to win their asylum claims, she should be forced to identify just how many of these immigrants Biden is “quickly removing” every day.
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