Since the chaos along our southern border peaked last May, there has been a precipitous decline in the flow of Central American economic migrants posing as asylum seekers entering the country illegally. Construction of additional border fencing and stepped up enforcement by Mexico at its own southern border have certainly played a significant role in alleviating the crisis, but it is another program implemented by the Trump administration that has had the greatest impact.
The Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), first rolled out in January 2019, require migrants who want to seek asylum in the United States to wait in Mexico pending their immigration court hearing in the U.S.
Rather than address any element of the ongoing Biden border crisis, House Democrats spent their time moving legislation that only worsens the already grave situation at our southern border. The NO BAN Act jeopardizes our national security and public health, while the Access to Counsel Act further overwhelms our immigration courts and creates unnecessary burdens to already strained immigration authorities. Passage of both bills reveal how detached House Democrats are from properly addressing the nation’s most pressing immigration matters.
In a Jan. 22 speech, President Joe Biden not-so-boldly declared, “There’s nothing we can do to change the trajectory of the pandemic in the next several months.”
Biden was selling himself short. On at least one front, America’s southern border, the administration has moved to elevate, not flatten, the COVID-19 infection curve.
In an effort to build stronger relations with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries, the Biden administration recently announced that it would spent $310 million in the region to help address the so-called “root-causes” of illegal migration. While this figure may look impressive on paper, it does not effectively address the Biden Border Crisis that is negatively affecting countries in the region. Officials from this region continue to denounce the Biden administration’s immigration approach, and so it must put a halt to its border crisis before relations become even more fractured.
White House COVID-19 response leader Dr. Anthony Fauci could not answer why the Omicron variant screening process for individuals arriving lawfully to the United States is different than the process for those arriving unlawfully at the southern border. Fauci claimed it was a “different issue.” Why he views these two groups differently is unclear, but what is clear is that COVID remains rampant at the southern border with virtually non-existent mitigation protocols in place.
A video showing an altercation between Border Patrol agents and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) leadership in Laredo, Texas, is making rounds on social media. The interaction was seen as unprecedented, and the optics were disastrous for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz. This video, however, is just the tip of the iceberg. Spats among frontline workers and Biden’s DHS leadership are a widespread, recurring pattern with no end in sight.
The latest video from Laredo reveals a major problem: The employees of the nation’s largest federal law enforcement agency do not have faith in its leaders.
To kick off the “Home Curfew” initiative, immigration authorities will immediately place 100-200 illegal aliens under house arrest in Houston and Baltimore with the goal of enrolling another 400,000 this year. Enrollees will generally be required to remain at home from 8 p.m. until 8 a.m., with the exception for those with work authorization or extraordinary circumstances.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) simply does not have the bandwidth to ensure that illegal aliens are complying with the program. It only has about 6,000 agents—many of whom are already assigned to different missions and responsibilities. Having every one of those agents (the best-case scenario) monitoring the whereabouts of potentially 400,000 illegal aliens is not only impossible, but downright dangerous.