The border crisis is the fault of Congress for not giving the Biden Administration “more resources,” according to Presidentish Joe Biden’s own Chief of Staff, Ron Klain.
Appearing on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Klain — the real power behind the throne, according to some sources — admitted to host George Stephanopoulos that “we need to do more work at the border” and reminded viewers that “the president sent an immigration plan to Congress on his first day in office.”
“We’ve asked consistently for more resources,” Klain said.
Has the White House forgotten that their own party is still in charge of Congress? Or is today’s blame game a dress rehearsal for next year, when Republicans likely will?
Or is this hapless Administration just flailing at a poll-crushing crisis it created itself?
Of all the various crises Biden “inherited” on Day One, the border was not one of them.
In March of last year — just two months after Biden took (and I do mean “took”) office — DHS reported that “illegal border crossings are on pace to reach their highest level in two decades.
At the time, the White House claimed that the massive surge was merely a “seasonal” event — nothing to see here, move along.
But Heritage Foundation homeland security researcher Lora Ries told a different story to the Daily Signal:
If you look at the numbers, it is certainly not a seasonal flow that we are seeing right now. For example, 69,000 illegal aliens were apprehended in November of 2020, but just in February of this year, over 100,000 have been apprehended. And that’s expected to go up to over 120,000 for March.
According to the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), 2021 as a whole was even worse:
During FY 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountered 1.74 million illegal aliens, up roughly 380 percent from the 458,088 encountered in FY 2020.[5] During Donald Trump’s final three months as president, apprehensions stayed relatively stable at around 75,000 per month before skyrocketing immediately after Biden took office. However, during the first two months of the Biden presidency, apprehensions increased by more than 120 percent.
When apprehensions are up 120% but illegal crossings are up 380%, that increase in apprehensions is nothing to be proud of.
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“Biden stood at 37% approval and 58% disapproval on his handling” of the border crisis, according to Fox News, in line with various other pollsters.
Or as FAIR concluded, “In a world marked by hyper-partisanship, it’s almost impressive that the Biden administration has managed to do something so poorly that a vast majority of Americans are now united against him on the issue.”
So what happened?
Just like Biden’s Day One War on Domestic Energy Production, Biden instituted a Day One War on Sensible Immigration Controls.
One of Biden’s first acts in office was to suspend (and later permanently rescind) President Donald Trump’s successful “Remain in Mexico” policy, which had required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their immigration applications were processed. At the same time, Biden ordered the immediate termination of border wall construction.
Next month, Biden will end Title 42, which currently allows for expedited removal of illegal aliens testing positive for COVID. CNN reported last week that “Democratic senators are growing increasingly wary of the administration’s plan to repeal Trump-era pandemic restrictions on the US-Mexico border that effectively blocked migrants from entering the US.”
Congress, no matter what the White House says, did not cause the border crisis. Joe Biden did that and continues to do that.
It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to guess that Biden sent his border “plan” to Congress last year expecting that his fellow Democrats would never approve it because, just like Biden himself, there are enough Democrats in congress invested in blocking effective border controls.
This is, as I’ve said for a year now, a crisis by design.
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