As we reported last week, President Biden’s immigration and border policies have caused a trainwreck of a crisis at the U.S. southern border. The number of arrests and border crossings is up to record levels, beating numbers not seen since the early 2000s. The numbers had diminished greatly under President Trump’s deportation policies but immediately surged back to unsustainable levels with lax border enforcement from the Biden administration.
With the more than 10,000 Haitian migrants encamped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, and tens of thousands more reportedly on the way, members of the President’s own party are starting to demand swift action to restore a sovereign border between the United States and Mexico.
Reports are also surfacing that while few Haitians are being deported, most of the thousands waiting for processing under the bridge in Del Rio are simply being sent by bus to other regions along the U.S./Mexico border, then released into the United States with no questions asked.
Democrats in Texas are getting nervous watching their hopes of turning Texas blue in 2022 get dashed by the incompetence and carelessness of Biden’s immigration policies:
“They’ve completely bungled it from the jump,” said Colin Strother, a long-time Democratic operative in Texas. “There has been a real human cost, and there’s going to be a massive political cost in 2022.”
It’s left Democrats across the spectrum frustrated with the administration’s handling of both the humanitarian crises in the region and the volatile politics surrounding migration along the U.S. southern border.
While moderates and liberals have long expressed support for Biden’s vision to create a fair and humane immigration system after four years of former President Donald Trump’s restrictive policies, many agree — albeit for different reasons — that Biden’s current strategy isn’t working.
It’s not that Democrats want to stem the tide of migration from Central and South America into the United States, they almost universally support that, but they also don’t want to lose elections due to the optics.
Watching thousands and thousands of people stream across the Rio Grande river, walking right onto U.S. soil unabated, then expect the Biden administration to give them a nod and wink and let them loose will create blowback from voters, on all sides.
One particular group of concern for Democrats is Latino voters, who make up a sizable portion of the electorate in Texas and other border states. Latinos, like most Americans, are not happy with the images of lawlessness they’re seeing at the border:
More than 50 percent of registered Latino voters in the Lone Star State say they disapprove of the job President Biden has done — as over 12,600 illegal immigrants remain under the Del Rio International Bridge along the southern Texas border and the ongoing immigration crisis rages on Biden’s watch.
Fifty-four percent of Latino voters in Texas disapprove of Biden’s job while only 35 percent approve, according to a new poll by the Dallas Morning News and University of Texas-Tyler.
If Democrats lose more and more Latino voters to the GOP, as was the case under President Trump, they can kiss dreams of a blue Texas goodbye.
Rather than try to address the issue, and remove incentives for thousands of migrants to invade the U.S. southern border, Democrats in Congress are trying to pass a mass-amnesty which will only serve to draw more and more people heading north, likely by design:
The desperate situation at the southern border calls for urgent action by the White House and Congress. Instead, congressional Democrats are obstinately pushing forward their plan to use the partisan budget reconciliation process to pass amnesty for what could be millions of individuals.
Thankfully, the Senate parliamentarian did not buy Democrats’ argument that amnesty should be part of their “human infrastructure” bill and wisely shot it down. However, they are vowing to try again.
As noted by the story, the Senate Parliamentarian shot down attempts by House Democrats to include amnesty in a budget bill, despite attempts to rename illegal aliens as “human infrastructure,” an almost Orwellian term of dehumanizing an entire population of human beings down to widgets on a factory line.
Dozens of governors from across the country have called on the Biden administration to do something about the problem which, they say, is turning into a dangerous and embarrassing international humanitarian crisis:
A letter released Monday signed by 26 Republican governors, including Doug Ducey of Arizona, Ron DeSantis of Florida, and Greg Abbott of Texas, asks Biden to schedule a meeting at the White House within the next 15 days so they can have an “open and constructive dialogue regarding border enforcement on behalf of U.S. citizens in our states and all those hoping to become U.S. citizens.”
The governors said border apprehensions are up almost 500% compared to last year, and that approximately 9,700 illegal apprehensions have prior criminal convictions. They said more fentanyl has been seized this fiscal year than the last three years combined and that cartels and human traffickers are making millions by smuggling people and drugs across the border.
The governors should know since their states are on the front lines of this crisis. Their schools, hospitals, and social safety net systems will be the first to take the brunt of thousands of people entering the country illegally. Their towns and cities are being overrun and overpopulated, as is happening around the country where migrants are being bussed and dropped off.
The Biden administration has been quick to blame the problem on seasonal migration, which is something that does indeed occur. However, the numbers have never been this bad, and were significantly lower under Trump’s immigration policies despite occasional seasonal increases:
Border crossings began creeping up last year and rapidly surged at the beginning of this year, stretching the resources of immigration agencies and causing some politicians to warn of a mounting crisis. The Biden administration has blamed this uptick on seasonal trends as well as poverty and violence in Central America, but some Republican critics argue more people are making the harrowing trek to the U.S.-Mexico border because Biden has promised to undo many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
How do Democrats expect to win on this issue? The lawlessness is enough to make your stomach church as people flow freely from Mexico into the United States. The Biden administration is far more concerned with you wearing a Covid mask at the grocery store than they are with the number of people and spreadable diseases crossing the southern border every day. No vaccine passport is required if you walk across the Rio Grande, but make sure you have it ready if you land at JFK.
There is no denying that these people – they are people, not “migrants” – are seeking a better life and free stuff from America. Yes, some or more of them will work, but how do we absorb them into society when many of them are uneducated, need immediate health care, and need basic assistance to survive. Our border is collapsing and the Biden administration is overseeing the decline with an approving eye.
