Is it only “inhumane” when a Republican President does it or is Biden acting just as bigoted as he claimed Trump was? The short answer is that Trump was doing what needed to be done to secure the border using whatever means he had at his disposal. Biden entered office with the “do the opposite of what Trump does” plan on everything which meant reversing many border security programs and policies designed to keep the American people safe.
Now, with a court order, and an ongoing border crisis no one talks about anymore, the Biden administration is restarting this terribly effective Trump policy again:
The Biden administration has reached a deal with the Mexican government to restart the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” program that requires asylum seekers to wait outside U.S. territory while their claims are processed, U.S. and Mexican officials said Thursday.
Implementation of the program, formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), will begin Monday at one border location and quickly expand to seven cities, U.S. officials said in a separate court filing. A federal judge in Texas ordered the Biden administration in August to negotiate the reinstatement of the MPP with Mexican authorities.
“Mexico has demanded a number of humanitarian improvements as conditions of agreeing to accept enrollees,” said one U.S. official, including guarantees that asylum seekers will have access to legal counsel and that their humanitarian claims will be processed within six months.
This is the only sane and rational thing to do. If you let people enter the United States, then make them promise to return to court in six months, you’ll never see them again. The mere act of forcing them to stay in Mexico while their asylum claim is processed is enough to dissuade some of them from coming at all.
At best, this is a strong concession that Trump, not Biden, had better border policies that were neither inhumane nor ineffective. Biden’s been forced to come back around to that viewpoint, even after it took months of a border migrant surge to prove the point.
One humorous aspect of the restart is that the Biden administration previously went all-in on trashing the policy, yet now has to reverse course and eat crow:
The return of the MPP is awkward for the Biden administration, which is still formally preparing to end the program even as it brings it back under court order.
“Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas has repeatedly stated that MPP has endemic flaws, imposed unjustifiable human costs, pulled resources and personnel away from other priority efforts, and failed to address the root causes of irregular migration,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
The issue is that, unlike Biden’s open border policy, this might mean fewer people would try to cross the border illegally, which the White House views as a failure for some reason. In their world, more unfettered immigration is good, despite the risk of Covid spread and other problems.
Don’t look now, but Biden is continuing to employ another Trump-era tactic as well. The use of Title 42, a provision in public health law used to expel immigrants during times of national health crisis:
The Biden administration will continue to use the Title 42 public health law — which allows U.S. authorities to rapidly “expel” most border crossers — as its primary border management tool. In recent weeks, the administration has increased the percentage of migrants returned to Mexico or sent home on “expulsion flights” under Title 42, which generally does not afford asylum seekers a chance to apply for U.S. humanitarian protections.
It’s amazing that after trashing the Trump policies, calling him a bigot, and referring to anything he did at the border as “inhumane,” the Biden administration has now been forced to admit defeat, and adopt similar policies to stem the disastrous tide of ongoing illegal migration from Central and South America.
Recent weeks have been tough on Biden as courts continue to shoot down his vaccine mandates and the border crisis requires more action and attention than he would like to give it. There was no excuse days ago when Biden, backed by Dr. Anthrony Fauci, announced new travel restrictions on passengers coming to the United States, yet completely balked at questions about illegal immigration at the southern border. It’s a double-standard of epic proportions that this administration has been forced, kicking and screaming, to address and mitigate.
