Jim Hartman
Courtesy Photo
The Border Patrol is overwhelmed.
Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz reports his officers encountered 1 million illegal border crossers since Oct. 1, 2021. That’s a big increase over fiscal year 2021, when there were 1.734 million encounters in the entire year.
With 1 million in just the first half of the year, and with peak migration months ahead, a record-setting human deluge at the southern border is a certainty.
The increased flow of illegal border crossers rose measurably from the day Joe Biden took office. Biden campaigned on a platform of allowing more illegal crossers to stay in the Unites States, making good on that promise by permitting hundreds of thousands of migrants to remain here and relocating them on secret flights to cities all over the country.
The border has been in crisis since Jan. 20, 2021, but now Biden will have a tsunami of illegal border crossers from around the globe on his hands.
That will result from the Biden administration’s announcement that Title 42 will be lifted, the Trump-era measure that allowed the U.S. to turn back illegal border crossers on grounds of protecting against COVID-19.
Left-wing activists and open border advocates have been pushing Biden to end Title 42 from his first day as president. Biden resisted in his first year in office, but he’s now succumbed to their pressure.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced the repeal of Title 42 with implementation to begin May 23. It’s expected to create a huge crush of illegal crossers at the border, a forecast the White House doesn’t dispute.
The Biden administration openly acknowledges a looming disaster. The New York Times reported “homeland security officials… describe contingency plans for managing as many as 18,000 encounters a day at the border.”
With 18,000 illegal crossers a day, that would result in more than 3.2 million in the next six months. Even if the number is half that, it would result in a self-induced border catastrophe the Biden administration is completely unprepared to manage.
Several Senate Democrats, many who are vulnerable and up for reelection in their states, are pushing back against Biden’s decision to terminate the use of Title 42 to expel migrants at the border.
Arizona Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan and Montana Sen. Jon Tester have co-sponsored legislation with six Senate Republicans that would delay ending Title 42 until the Biden administration has a comprehensive replacement plan in place to secure the border.
Manchin has described repeal of Title 42 as a “frightening decision” and that Title 42 has been “essential” in combating COVID-19 and controlling migrant flows.
Despite her willingness to sign onto letters calling for a reversal of the Title 42 policy when it was used under former President Trump’s administration, Nevada Democrat Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has now changed her tune.
“This is the wrong way to do this and it will leave the administration unprepared for a surge at the border,” Cortez Masto said in a statement. “The administration is acting without a detailed plan,” she added.
The Nevada Democrat’s comments come after a June 2020 letter to President Trump – signed by her and 33 other Senate Democrats, including Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – which critically characterized Title 42 as a “CDC asylum ban.”
Senate Republicans are now holding up a repurposed $10 billion COVID-19 aid bill over their right to have a vote reinstating Title 42. Republicans contend the two issues are related since the administration was asking for additional money to combat COVID-19 while at the same time lifting the public health rule at the border.
The Senate returns April 25 to confront the out-of-control southern border crisis.
Email Jim Hartman at lawdocman1@aol.com.
