There were 10,000 illegal alien encounters at the border on Sunday alone, according to the border patrol. Estimates up and down the southern border indicate that at least 150,000 illegal aliens are prepared to cross the border at midnight when the pandemic-era program Title 42 will end.
The Biden administration isn’t ready. Not by a long shot.
Orders have gone out to all border patrol sectors. If there’s no room in shelters provided by NGOs, agents are to begin a “safe” release of illegal aliens to city streets. CBP facilities to house newcomers are already bursting at the seams and with NGO shelters already strained, it’s likely that thousands of illegal aliens — perhaps more — are going to be released at bus stops, gas stations, supermarkets, and in towns and cities across the border.
Those small towns and cities aren’t ready, either.
The potential for a humanitarian disaster is right in front of us. Large numbers of desperate people all trying to cross the border at once leave little room for error.
“The dam is about to break,” one Border Patrol source said.
The mass releases will only happen if NGOs run out of space, but officials believe that is likely. Officials have made 26,000 apprehensions and seen over 7,000 “gotaways” in just 72 hours, according to Border Patrol. That comes ahead of the end of the Title 42 public health order on Thursday, which is expected to be accompanied by an even bigger wave of migration on top of the already overwhelming numbers authorities are seeing.
The Biden administration has put into place several policies that they hope will stem the flow of illegals. There will be restrictions on families arriving at the border and single adults will be turned back if they transited through another country before arriving at the U.S. border. But asylum seekers will, with few exceptions, still be processed and released.
The predominantly single adult migrants are expected to be encouraged by the belief they have a greater chance of being admitted into the U.S. once the order ends. The Biden administration has said that is misinformation and has warned that it is stiffening penalties for illegal entry while urging migrants to use expanded legal pathways instead. However, the prospect of mass releases into the U.S. interior of those who have illegally entered the U.S., after crossing multiple countries to do so, is likely to undercut that narrative.
But even with the new policies, there’s going to be mass confusion at the border.
The administration’s new policy will automatically reject asylum seekers who illegally cross into the U.S. without first seeking protection in a country they traveled through.
It’s a notable change from the U.S.’s longtime policy of giving people the right to seek asylum regardless of whether they crossed the border illegally. Title 42 also prevented migrants from seeking asylum, but was tied to public health concerns.
The new policy is expected to let more migrants be rapidly deported to their home countries or Mexico — and comes with severe penalties, including a five-year ban on re-entry.
Zoom in: There are many reasons migrants from Central and South America are overwhelming border communities now — but experts and officials say smugglers and cartels are part of the problem.
They often pounce on widespread confusion about U.S. border policies to recruit and exploit customers, experts say.
There was no way to avoid this situation after Biden lifted the pandemic emergency. With no pandemic, it was hard to justify using pandemic restrictions to limit illegal crossings at the border.
Related: Mexican President Calls DeSantis Illegal Immigration Bill ‘Immoral’
There are still policies the Biden administration could implement that would improve the situation, including tightening up asylum eligibility in order to prevent those border crossers from trying to game the system. But the open borders lobby has Biden in their hip pocket and he’s not likely to change America’s liberal asylum policies — unless Congress forces him to.
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