LAREDO, TEXAS – U.S. Border Patrol agents apprehended another large number of individuals inside a tractor-trailer during a failed human smuggling attempt in north Laredo, for the second time this week. July 15, 2020. Photo provided by: U.S. Customs and Border Protection
In The New York Sun, Michael Barone makes the case that Joe Biden has it well within his power to stem the flood of illegal immigrants at America’s southern border right now. Barone writes:
What’s been missing these past couple of months from the coverage of and debate over the failed immigration bill? Some important basic facts and lots of historical context.
First, basic facts. Coverage in left-leaning newspapers and even in the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial page has suggested that without new legislation, the Biden administration would lack the legal authorization to reduce the record number of illegal immigrants crossing the southern border and remaining in the United States.
The record is not in doubt. Customs and Border Protection has reported 302,000 immigrant encounters in December, the highest in history. Similarly, the total for the first three months of the fiscal year — October, November, and December 2023 — was 785,000 encounters, again a historical high. There’s no escaping the fact that illegal border crossings have been at record levels during the Biden administration.
Alos there’s no escaping — though in journalism, there’s been plenty of evading — the fact that this surge of illegal immigration is the direct and predictable result of changes in regulation and administrative practice by the Biden administration.
For instance, the president long boasted of signing on his first day in office an executive order repealing President Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. That policy was the product of Mr. Trump’s pressure on President Lopez Obrador in response to a significantly smaller border surge.
President Biden should be able to undo by executive order the policies he put in place by executive order. Any order issued on Day 1 of an administration should be revokable just as rapidly by the same administration.
Evidently, some of Mr. Biden’s advisers agree. According to the left-leaning Axios website, Mr. Biden “has considered … an executive order that would dramatically stanch the record flow of migrants into the Southwest,” to be issued before his March 7 scheduled State of the Union address.
So the claims that Republicans, by opposing the Senate measure the Senate never passed, have prevented Mr. Biden from effectively enforcing the border are incorrect. And the reason for Republicans’ skepticism about whether Mr. Biden would use enhanced border control authority is obviously justified by Mr. Biden’s refusal to use the authority he currently has.
Mr. Biden has let in this record surge of illegal immigrants. He could cut it off.
Read more here.
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