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Biden’s dishonest border crisis victory lap — it hasn’t been fixed!

By Mark Krikorian

Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security declared victory over the border crisis this week as a result of recent policy changes. They may come to wish they hadn’t.

With Eric Adams and other sanctuary mayors bemoaning the effects on their cities from a tiny sliver of the border surge, the administration responded with Biden’s short drop-in at the border, and certain policy changes. Those measures, billed as “New Border Enforcement Actions,” included applying Title 42 automatic expulsions to border-jumpers from four countries that had been exempt: Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti.

That’s good as far as it goes. The number of people from those four countries arrested crossing the border illegally has reportedly dropped more than 90% over the past week. Illegals from those four countries made up about 38% of all border arrests in December, so if they’re out of the picture then January could see the lowest number of apprehensions since February 2021, when the new administration sparked the border crisis. The Biden-friendly media duly reported this new storyline, and can now go back to ignoring the border.

But while the administration and its media groupies may not be interested in the border, the border is interested in them. There are two reasons the border crisis isn’t over yet.
First, the arrest numbers will go back up. Border-jumpers from the other 190-odd countries of the world in December totaled “only” 137,000, which is low by the ridiculous standards of the Biden administration, but is still nearly double the number from December 2020, the last full month under Trump.

The four countries Biden targeted did send a lot of illegal immigrants in December, but even that’s a new development; two years previously, they accounted for barely 5% of border arrests.

And just because wannabe illegal migrants from those four countries have decided (for now) to hold back, it doesn’t mean those from other countries are sitting still. While the totals are lower, the number of border-jumpers in December from India and Turkey, for instance, were triple the year before; Peru nine times higher; Colombia 10 times, China 14 times, Ecuador 24 times higher.

And the threat to expel border-crossers from the four countries is based on Title 42, a COVID-related measure that the administration is actively trying to end. What happens when it succeeds, as it eventually must? And anyway, Mexico has agreed to take back only 30,000 illegal immigrants from those countries per month — what happens to Mr. 30,001? He’ll be released into the U.S., of course.