A Border Crisis By Design | City Journal
The cause of the current crisis is President Joe Biden s unprecedented refusal to enforce federal immigration law, which requires that all asylum-seekers be detained rather than released into the United States. The solution, therefore, is for Biden to start enforcing federal law as he is constitutionally required to do or for Congress to deny the president something else he wants until he does.
Many observers, however, seem unclear about the cause of the crisis. Praising a not-yet-released Senate immigration bill, which a trio of senators is currently negotiating with the White House behind closed doors, the Wall Street Journal editorial board writes that the President needs Congress to fix the underlying incentives at the border. But the president, not Congress, has created the incentives that have attracted so many illegal aliens, by offering a near guarantee that asylum-seekers will get released into the U.S. rather than detained as their claims are adjudicated.
Under presidents of both parties before 2021, those trying to enter the U.S. illegally at least had to evade the authorities. This hasn t been true under Biden. U.S. District Court Judge T. Kent Wetherell writes that U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) Chief Raul Ortiz testified that the current surge differs from prior surges that he [has] seen over his lengthy career in that most of the aliens now being encountered at the Southwest Border are turning themselves in to USBP officers rather than trying to escape the officers. Ortiz, whom the Biden administration selected as chief, said that aliens are likely turning themselves in because they think they re going to be released.
The difference in the number of releases under Biden and under his immediate predecessor is like the contrast between the Himalayas and a pitcher s mound. According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics, in December 2020, the last full month under President Donald Trump, the USBP released 17 aliens into the U.S. In December 2023, the most recent month for which statistics are available under Biden, the USBP released 191,142 aliens into the U.S. In other words, the USBP released 0.009 percent as many aliens into the U.S. during the final month under Trump as it did during the most-recent month under Biden for every one alien released under Trump, 11,244 were released under Biden. That s not a normal increase; it s a flash flood.
Jeffrey H. Anderson