Fraudulent Biden Immigration Policy is an exercise in 'futility'!

 

State of Our Union: Border crisis belies Biden's quiet executive push to rewrite immigration policy

By Anna Giaritelli, Homeland Security Reporter washingtonexaminer.com January 31, 2023

President Joe Biden will take the podium for his third State of the Union address under unprecedented circumstances in U.S. immigration policy.

The Biden administration will soon have reformed more immigration policies in a little over two years in office than in any four-year period of previous White Houses.

"The interesting thing about it is that no one knows," said Migration Policy Institute senior fellow Muzaffar Chishti. "That's because everything on immigration, the oxygen on immigration, is sucked by what's happening at the border."

Biden signed 403 executive orders compared to 472 that his predecessor, former President Donald Trump signed in all four years, according to an MPI report published days before the annual congressional address.

But the big wins for Democrats over the past two years are not enough to distract the public from the crisis at the southern border.

Since Feb. 1, 2021, more than 5.2 million people have been encountered attempting to enter the United States without authorization, including repeat crossers who were caught more than once. Encounters thus far are higher in Biden's two years than in former President Barack Obama's eight years in office.

"Under President Obama we averaged 27,124 apprehensions per full Januarys in office. Under President Trump, we averaged 34,807 apprehensions per full Januarys in office," said Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, in an email.

"Under President Biden we are on pace to average 137,540 per full January which includes this January in which we're on pace to hit approximately 127,200 apprehensions," said Judd.

Republicans have lambasted the Department of Homeland Security for nearly two years for not doing enough to deter unlawful migration and stop relying on "catch and release" policies at the border that they say serve as an incentive to immigrants knowing they might get let go into the U.S.

In January, the DHS announced the expansion of a parole program that requires immigrants from top-sending countries Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to seek refuge from outside the U.S., not at the border.

A Washington Examiner analysis of border data revealed that 87,138 immigrants from those four countries were apprehended in December, but that number dropped to 2,600 in January as a result of the parole program, potentially setting up the White House for its first noteworthy decline in illegal immigrant encounters. However, citizens of Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela only made up one-third of the 220,000 total apprehensions of all nations encountered last month.

"We're only on pace to be a few thousand down this January from January 2022, and we're quite a bit higher this January than we were in January 21," said Judd. "We set records for apprehensions in each calendar year in '22 and '21. And while apprehensions are down a small amount from January 22 to January 23, gotaways this January are up from last January."

Gotaways is a Border Patrol term used to describe noncitizens who came over the border illegally and evaded police apprehension but were observed on camera or through other technology passing over the border.

The challenge for Biden will be out-messaging the border crisis with news about his actions in Washington.

"He knows that the border challenge is damaging his presidency," said Chishti. "Unless we get the border under some semblance of control, his achievements in other areas are not going to be that noticed."

Cities and states far north of the southern border have asked the federal government for assistance in responding to several thousand immigrants dropped off on their streets over the past year.

The fewer than 40,000 immigrants that Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) bused through a voluntary program to New York, Chicago, and Washington were a drop in the bucket for how many people have been dispersed across the country out of sight.

The concern from regions of the country that have never been accustomed to dealing with the fallout of such a crisis has forced the entire country to absorb the reality at the southern border, where 1.5 million people who came across have been let out on the street since Biden took office.

"The busing episode has brought all the underbelly of the immigration debate to the forefront," said Chishti. "Even though this is a microcosm of that problem, now people have a better representation of what the problem is."

Biden's lesser-known policy changes include reforms speeding up the time necessary to process claims of asylum seekers at the border and legal immigration applications for immigrant hopefuls overseas.

"In certain actions, he has come through with those promises. And then in other areas, there's a lot more work to be done," said Maribel Hernandez Rivera, the American Civil Liberties Union deputy national political director and director of the equality division. "We need him to not only say the right thing but to make sure that there is the right solution and the right action."

Hernandez Rivera praised Biden for calling on Congress to provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrants who entered the country unlawfully as minors or are temporarily protected from being removed from the country under federal programs.

"President Biden has said asylum is a human right," said Hernandez Rivera. "But he has fallen sort. While he has created a parole process, which allows people seeking asylum to apply from their home countries for temporary permission to enter and stay in the U.S., he has closed access to asylum to many who need protection."

Biden has also spoken against the use of Title 42, a pandemic-era public health protocol that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention implemented in March 2020 and permitted federal law enforcement at the border to immediately turn back any person who illegally entered the country or sought asylum at a port of entry.

But the administration has been unsuccessful in its attempts to end that policy due to court actions. Instead, Biden has gone about exempting classes of immigrants from being expelled, ultimately leading to just 20% of the 700,000 people who were encountered at the southern border between October and December to be sent back to Mexico while nearly all others were released into the U.S., Chishti said.

"The administration has also closed some private immigration detention centers," said Hernandez Rivera. "But there are many more that need to be closed. Immigration detention is not the answer."

The ACLU official said one of Biden's top two accomplishments was reining in U.S. Customs and Border Protection employees for the ways it claimed the federal agency had abused its power. In one example, federal police from CBP were recently banned from engaging in vehicle pursuits of suspected human smugglers.

The second victory was rooting out racial bias throughout the immigration system, including how Haitian immigrants were treated during the 2021 influx at the border compared to European or Latino immigrants.