“Look, it’s worse now than it, frankly, has been in at least 20 years, if not ever,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas admitted to Border Patrol agents in the Yuma Sector of Arizona earlier this week. “I know the policies of this administration are not particularly popular with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection,” Mayorkas added, all but admitting the chaos on the southern border is his fault. “But that’s the reality.”
The reality is that the southern border is in total chaos. The latest data from the Department of Homeland Security show a record-high 178,840 migrants arrested illegally crossing the border this December, bringing the total for 2021 to a record high of 2,033,863.
Just over half of these migrants were returned to Mexico under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Title 42 public health authority. But of the approximately 1 million remaining migrants arrested, almost all of them were let into the country with just a promise that they would one day report to an immigration court and apply for asylum.
These are only the numbers of illegal immigrants who were actually caught. With the Border Patrol agents tied up feeding, transporting, and processing tens of thousands of migrants making meritless asylum claims every month, untold numbers have slipped into the country completely undetected.
Once in the United States, neither those apprehended nor those who slipped in undetected face any threat of deportation as long as Joe Biden is president and Mayorkas is the DHS secretary.
“We have fundamentally changed immigration enforcement in the interior,” Mayorkas bragged just days before December’s apprehension numbers came out. “For the first time ever, our policy explicitly states that a noncitizen’s unlawful presence in the United States will not, by itself, be a basis for the initiation of an enforcement action.”
Literally billions of potential migrants from around the world are very familiar with Biden’s “fundamentally” new immigration policy, which is why more than 2 million migrants were arrested illegally entering the country in 2021. It already looks like that number will rise next year.
Republican states are fighting back against Biden’s complete abandonment of immigration enforcement. Led by Missouri and Texas, states won a federal court order directing the Biden administration to reinstate former President Donald Trump’s wildly successful “Remain in Mexico” program.
Questioned by Border Patrol agents about this, Mayorkas admitted, “The numbers are not where they need to be. I agree with that.” Mayorkas then reportedly said implementation has been slow because the Biden administration is still negotiating with Mexico on how, when, and where to return migrants.
But is the Biden administration negotiating in good faith?
Asked to respond to DHS data showing that only 300 migrants had been processed through the Remain in Mexico program since it reopened, a DHS spokesperson responded, “DHS continues to fight in the courts, including in a pending challenge before the Supreme Court.” So just how hard is Biden really working with Mexico to revive Remain in Mexico if he is also desperately fighting to end it in court?
Border Patrol agents put their lives on the line defending our nation’s sovereignty every day. They deserve an honest and coherent immigration policy or else their jobs are both dangerous and meaningless. The public also deserves a coherent policy, and Biden is not delivering one. This is why the vast majority of voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of immigration and border security.
When Democrats are punished for Biden’s border incompetence this November, one of Republicans’ first orders of business should be a thorough investigation of Biden’s border policies — and possibly the impeachment of Mayorkas.
