About a month ago I wrote a column about President Biden's "Open Borders" policy, predicting that his policy would result in tens of thousands of undereducated, unskilled, poverty-stricken migrants – including thousands of unaccompanied minors – from Mexico and Central America arriving at our southern border seeking asylum, and that's exactly what's happening. Biden won't call it a border crisis, but I will, and it's getting worse with each passing day.
Let's face the facts, today's illegal immigrants are the "wretched refuse of their teeming shores" that American poet Emma Lazarus wrote about in the 19th century, the kind of immigration we don't need in the 21st century, but the Biden administration is inviting them to come to our country in droves. All they have to do is show up at the border to enjoy our generous hospitality, including millions of dollars worth of "free" stuff ranging from healthcare to public education for their kids, at taxpayer expense.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the number of unaccompanied children crossing the border rose 63 percent to 9,297 – more than 3,000 per day – in February, and Border Patrol agents made nearly 100,000 arrests last month. Most of the illegal kids are temporarily detained in border holding facilities, a situation Democrats like President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris described as "kids in cages" when ex-President Trump was in the White House. Now, however, the same facilities have suddenly become "compassionate" and "humanitarian." Go figure!
Biden's Press Secretary Jen Psaki and his Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas haven't discouraged this wave of illegal immigration. In fact, they've encouraged it. Their message (and I paraphrase) is: "Don't come right now; come later." You don't need to speak Spanish in order to translate this message. "Our borders are open," it says, "come one, come all." And that's what they're doing in droves, overwhelming our Border Patrol and holding facilities on our side of the border.
A reliable news source, Axios, recently reported that Biden has been warned "that the number of migrant kids is on pace to set a record, and there aren't nearly enough beds to accommodate them," so they're being sent to unsuspecting cities throughout the U.S. although some of them are COVID-positive and many of the older teenagers have criminal records.
Although the mainstream media tell us that these kids and their families are merely seeking better lives, as millions of immigrants have done throughout our nation's proud history, the truth about these unaccompanied minors is far different than the Biden administration and the media would have us believe. That's because many of them are rent-a-kids who are brought to the border by violent Mexican drug cartels in hopes they'll be admitted to our country as refugees. And once they're here, their families aren't far behind.
In other words, these kids and their families are exploited by the cartels. Biden administration officials love to talk about compassion and "family reunification," but they never mention the cartels and the drug and human trafficking they bring with them. " And moreover, Biden's "catch-and-release" policy means that tens of thousands of illegal immigrants are being released into cities throughout the U.S. But not to worry because the Biden administration has plans to legalize more than 11 million illegal immigrants.
A recent New York Post editorial said "the new border chaos is a crisis of Biden's own making," adding that the president's rhetoric "is creating a migrant surge that risks running out of control," but I think it's already out of control. We need to secure the border before discussing comprehensive immigration reform, which is badly needed.
Guy W. Farmer is the Appeal's senior political columnist.
