To restore order at the border, Democrats must fund enforcing the law, not handouts to cities and migrants
By Andrew R. Arthur on January 19, 2023
New York Post, December 19, 2022
President Joe Biden inherited what his first Border Patrol chief called “arguably the most effective border security in” history. Operational control rapidly disintegrated, however, as Biden reversed nearly all of President Donald Trump’s successful border policies without implementing his own promised “guardrails” to prevent a wave of illegal entries.
With Title 42 possibly ending this week, sanctuary-city mayors like Eric Adams are calling for federal aid for what’s expected to be an even bigger deluge. To restore order, taxpayers should demand the administration detain all illegal entrants — as the law already requires — and Congress pay for detention beds, not border-related handouts to municipalities and migrants themselves.
In the decade between fiscal year 2011 and FY 2020, agents at the southwest border apprehended 4.27 million illegal migrants — 1,170 per day, on average. Under Biden, Border Patrol has apprehended more than 3.785 million migrants at the US-Mexico line — 5,933 per day, or roughly six times Border Patrol’s capacity.
Of all the Trump-era border policies that Biden eliminated, the most prominent and effective was the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), better known as “Remain in Mexico.”
The Department of Homeland Security determined in an October 2019 assessment that MPP was “an indispensable tool in addressing the ongoing crisis at” the border and “restoring integrity to the immigration system.” Nonetheless, Biden’s Department of Justice has been fighting efforts by states affected by illegal immigration to force DHS to reimplement Remain in Mexico since April 2021.
https://cis.org/Oped/restore-order-border-Democrats-must-fund-enforcing-law-not-handouts-cities-and-migrants
