Enforce the border laws on the books
More than 6 million immigrants have been arrested after illegally crossing the southern border since President Joe Biden entered the White House, almost triple the number who did so under the previous administration, and we still have nine months to go.
Biden has released more than half of those immigrants into the country to go wherever they wish. These 3 million have overwhelmed communities from New York City to Washington, D.C., to Chicago to Denver. Even large cities with millions of people cannot house, feed, educate, and provide healthcare for the tens of thousands of immigrants flooding their neighborhoods.
Denver has chosen to furlough city employees with no pay so it can afford services for the immigrants. Chicago has closed community centers for migrant housing. New York has done the same with high schools. Immigration is now the top priority for most voters, and they overwhelmingly disapprove of the job Biden has done on the border.
The solution is actually relatively simple. Just ask Biden’s latest Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens. Owens told reporters last week, “We need to be able to enforce the immigration laws that are on the books and hold people accountable whenever they choose to break the law.”
“If there’s no motivation to do it the right way — and the right way is causing people to have to wait a little bit longer — naturally they’re going to choose to come between the ports of entry,” Owens continued. “We need to take that off the table and make sure everybody’s coming through the front door, and that allows us to get back to securing the border.”
Owens is right. The only way to secure the border is to start holding people accountable when they break the law. Biden is doing the opposite. When migrants break the law and cross the border, Biden rewards them with unfettered access to the United States and a promise not to deport them unless they commit a major felony. That’s why so many are coming. They know Biden will let them in and let them stay.
Asked what consequences he would like to see for illegal border crossers, Owens said, “Jail time.” While the sentiment is in the right place, there is simply not enough capacity to jail all migrants illegally crossing the border.
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The key is to deny them entry. That is what the previous administration did with its “Remain in Mexico” program, and it worked. After almost tripling from 58,317 border apprehensions in January 2019 to 144,116 that May, Remain in Mexico brought the number down to 52,546 by September. In contrast, over 300,000 migrants were apprehended crossing the border last December alone.
Biden has the power to enforce existing immigration laws and restore order to the border, but he does not want to. He is choosing chaos. If voters don’t remove him from office this November, the crisis will continue.
