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“More than 6,000 Haitians and other migrants have been removed from an encampment at a Texas border town, U.S. officials said Monday as they defended a strong response that included immediately expelling migrants to their impoverished Caribbean country and faced criticism for using horse patrols to stop them from entering the town.” AP News
Here’s the most recent data on apprehensions at the southern border. CBP
Here’s our recent coverage of the border. The Flip Side
The right blames the Biden administration’s mismanagement for the surge in migrants, but praises the decision to return the migrants to Haiti.
“Biden threw out a Trump agreement with the Northern Triangle countries requiring those countries to take in migrants. Then Biden selectively stopped applying rules that allowed U.S. officials to return illegal crossers in the interest of controlling the spread of COVID-19. Then Biden stopped giving many illegal crossers a so-called ‘notice to appear’ in court at a later date, allowing them to enter the U.S. with no commitment to pursue a legal process…
“And in the campaign, of course, Biden pledged to halt all deportations, all of them, for 100 days. Together, Biden's actions sent a clear message: Come to the U.S., cross the border illegally, and you can stay…
“The surge at Del Rio is just the latest disaster that is Biden's border policy. It's not an accident. It is not an unintended consequence. The president and his top aides formulated these policies knowing full well they would create powerful new incentives for would-be migrants to cross illegally into the U.S. And now it's happening, more and more and more.”
Byron York, Washington Examiner
“Administration officials constantly say that the border is closed, but in important respects it is open. They blame misinformation spreading among migrants, and it’s true that unfounded rumors abound, but the basic perception that our enforcement has major, easily exploited holes is correct…
“They blame circumstances, but it’s not as though terrible conditions — poverty and rank misgovernment — are new in countries to our south. No, the new factor in the equation is President Biden and his determination to blow up Trump policies that had gotten control of the border…
“The administration granted so-called temporary protected status, a protection from deportation, to Haitians residing in the United States as of May 21 of this year. Then it extended it again to include Haitians residing here since July 29 — sending the message that new arrivals might get the status on a rolling basis. Haitians also knew family units have been getting through… Unless and until the Biden team realizes that swift exclusion from the US has to apply to almost everyone, the ‘challenges’ at the border won’t let up.”
Rich Lowry, New York Post
“The problem is the incentives of American policy. U.S. law, at least as interpreted by the courts, allows migrants to claim asylum even if they are coming solely for economic reasons. They can then be released into the U.S. to work until their asylum claims are heard by overwhelmed immigration judges. Once here they know they have access to healthcare, education for their children, and in some states Covid checks (up to $15,600 in New York)…
“The predictable result of all this has been the biggest migrant surge in some 20 years. Border apprehensions in August were nearly 209,000, and the hot summer is supposed to be the slow season. Apprehensions so far in 2021 have been 1.32 million. The Biden Administration keeps saying the border is closed, though that won’t matter if it doesn’t work to change U.S. law. The White House won’t do that because it is petrified of upsetting the Democratic left, which wants any migrant to be able to enter the U.S. at any time and for any reason. This is politically unsustainable.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
Regarding the decision to return the migrants to Haiti, “I don’t know where this sudden change of heart came from at the White House, but it’s a welcome sign. After the border crossing by the overpass was shut down, Haitians continued to find other places to cross, traveling as much as two miles along the border in either direction. But in a surprising show of solidarity and cooperation, both Federal and Texas law enforcement officers lined the border and began turning the migrants back to Mexico…
“It’s a rare day when we get to shower much praise on Joe Biden in terms of immigration policy. In fact, I can’t think of one other instance since he took office. But this operation is at least a step in the right direction. If the Biden border crisis can somehow be brought back under control, that will be far better than anything we’ve seen thus far.”
Jazz Shaw, Hot Air
The left criticizes the Biden administration for inconsistent and inhumane immigration policies, and argues against returning migrants to Haiti.
The left criticizes the Biden administration for inconsistent and inhumane immigration policies, and argues against returning migrants to Haiti.
“The U.S. government is able to quickly expel migrants without giving them a chance to file their asylum claim because of a Trump-era CDC rule called Title 42. The directive, which was established in March 2020 and overrides all other federal laws, uses an obscure 1944 public-health statute to justify indefinitely closing the border to ‘nonessential travel,’ even though the statute had never been used to regulate immigration before…
“Last year, Vice-President Kamala Harris was one of the senators who signed an open letter criticizing the policy. ‘A public health crisis does not give the Executive Branch a free pass to violate constitutional rights,’ the senators wrote to then–Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf. But once President Biden came into office, the administration quietly kept the rule — even after repealing other harmful Trump-era anti-immigration policies.”
Andrea González-Ramírez, The Cut
“Just four months ago, the Department of Homeland Security designated Haiti for temporary protected status. The rare designation applies to immigrants in the United States who are temporarily unable to safely return to their home country because of conditions of extreme political upheaval, conflict, or natural disasters. The U.S. government thus asserted, in no uncertain terms, that Haiti was not a safe place…
“Conditions have not improved, and yet a mass deportation of historic size to the beleaguered Caribbean nation continues at extraordinary pace. Haiti remains beset by the aftermath of another devastating hurricane, gang warfare, and an acute political crisis…
“The July assassination of Haiti’s President Jovenel Moïse, which plunged the country into political disarray, involved U.S.-trained Colombian mercenaries. It is another great, unbroken American tradition: to destabilize foreign nations and then forego all obligations to the mass migrations that the U.S. helped produce.”
Natasha Lennard, The Intercept
“Biden’s actions seem especially bizarre in the present moment. The rapid deportation of the throng at Del Rio — using a dubious loophole to prevent them from applying for political asylum — would happen at the same time that U.S. authorities are rushing to vet tens of thousands of hastily airlifted Afghan refugees for a shot at the American Dream. In our land of illogic, perhaps some of the same planes that helped folks crammed onto a Kabul tarmac escape the Taliban will now ferry the people crammed under that Texas bridge back to the bullet-ridden streets of Port-au-Prince…
“Of course, getting immigration policy right is a complicated dance, but that doesn’t mean that Team Biden should be sashaying in the wrong direction. Now is the exact moment for the administration to work harder on expanding the border facilities and the infrastructure — more immigration judges and courts to process these cases, for example — to treat our brothers and sisters seeking a better life with the dignity they deserve.”
Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer
“Some have argued these deportations are necessary for reform efforts to succeed. ‘I am extremely pro-immigration,’ writer Matthew Yglesias tweeted Saturday, ‘but I don't think you create a durable pro-immigration politics by stigmatizing all efforts to enforce immigration law.’ Josh Barro, an Insider columnist, agreed. ‘In fact, demonstrating that we can enforce the rules we make is essential to convincing people to agree to more permissive rules,’ he wrote…
“That's probably not true. Would-be reformers have already tried and failed to build support for their agendas through immigration crackdowns. Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama both sent National Guard troops to the border. Bush also wanted to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented migrants, while Obama hoped to give ‘DREAMers’ a permanent status in this country. In each case, immigration hawks in Congress blocked the reform despite the crackdown…
“Reform would be popular, however. Polls have long demonstrated Americans have a generally favorable view of immigration, and support for more immigration has actually increased in recent decades.”
Joel Mathis, The Week
