The Biden administration’s welcome wagon for illegal aliens will get turbocharged in 2022 as the White House considers the best way to end Title 42 pandemic restrictions on immigration. That policy — in place since March 2020 — prevented more than a million illegal aliens arrested at the border from being allowed to enter the country to await a legal decision on their status as refugees and asylum seekers. Instead, they were returned to Mexico or put on flights back to their homeland.
BuzzFeed News is reporting that the policy may end as soon as April. And the Department of Homeland Security is warning about a huge surge of illegals trying to cross the border once the policy is lifted.
DHS officials in particular planned to stress to Mexico that if Title 42 is no longer in place, the agency will need to return to processing immigrants who cross the border without authorization through normal, pre-COVID practices, which would allow them to seek asylum and protection within the US. Prior to Title 42, immigrants apprehended at the border could apply for asylum and their claims were evaluated to determine if they could remain in the country to pursue their cases.
But those prepandemic practices could “seriously strain” border resources and lead to a challenging humanitarian situation in northern Mexico, the draft DHS document warns. Department officials also express concern about “historically and unseasonably high” numbers of immigrants crossing the border without authorization.
In other words, it will be a human tidal wave that will break the ability of the government to care for the new arrivals.
Related: Jim Jordan: House GOP Will Prioritize These 3 Investigations Next Year
Despite the pandemic restrictions of Title 42, the number of deportations of illegals caught at the border has already plummeted to a 26-year low. And DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has issued a directive to make sure that once the restrictions are lifted, the government will decriminalize the act of crossing the border illegally unless the illegals “pose a threat to national security, public safety, and border security.”
In a seven-page memo, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that ‘[t]he fact an individual is a removable noncitizen … should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them” and vowed to “use our discretion and focus our enforcement resources in a more targeted way.”
The Washington Post reported Friday that since issuing the memo, Mayorkas has met with ICE personnel to emphasize that message to them.
“As the annual report’s data reflects, ICE’s officers and special agents focused on cases that delivered the greatest law enforcement impact in communities across the country while upholding our values as a nation,” ICE acting director Tae Johnson said in a statement accompanying the report.
Apparently, the “greatest law enforcement impact” doesn’t include enforcing the law. How that upholds our “values as a nation” is a mystery.
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