It has been more than a week since President Joe Biden took executive action on the border, reportedly to help stem the flow of migrants into the United States. Part of the plan is to turn back migrants and asylum seekers once 2,500 people have crossed per day. But is it working?
Border Still Overflows With Migrants
When the president announced his new plan, the media went crazy, publishing articles that praised its hard-line policies and alluding to a swift end to the immigration crisis. Is that the truth? The numbers show otherwise.
Liberty Nation News detailed the new border policy once it was enacted and explained that migrants were supposed to be barred once their numbers reached 2,500 per day but would be in effect only when the border was overwhelmed. On Thursday, June 6, two days after enforcement began, there were around 10,000 migrants in Border Patrol custody, about four times what the policy was supposed to allow. Video taken by the New York Post also showed “hundreds of migrants from mainly China and Turkey still crossing the border unhindered into California, then rounded up by Border Patrol,” the outlet reported.
Obviously, new policies take time to start working. But when a cutoff number on how many immigrants seeking asylum can cross the border is pinpointed, and that number is dramatically exceeded, it suggests the plan is failing. And failing huge. In San Diego, CA — the top illegal crossing area — Customs and Border Protection processing centers are at 237% capacity, The Post explained.
How the administration came up with the cap is not clear, especially when for years, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the average daily number of illegals crossing into the United States has been far more than that. In December, for example, there were more than 8,000 individuals in a day.
CNN conducted an analysis and found that the last time the daily encounters at the southwestern border were less than 2,500 was in January 2021. But that was also during the COVID pandemic, with travel restrictions in place. Also, this does not count the encounters at southern coastal ports, which also are covered under Biden’s new policy. Setting the bar at 2,500 per day does not do much to stem the flood of migrants into the country, though. Before 2019, the average was 1,500 or lower, so setting the limit at nearly double that seems counterproductive.
Biden is not gaining a lot of support, either. César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández, an immigration law professor at Ohio State University, complained about the executive action to The Hill:
“Those are various tentacles of a significant rightward shift, which frankly I think should not be a surprise because Biden is himself a political creature of the 1980s and 1990s, when Democrats were quite aggressive in trying to outflank the Republican Party from the right on a host of issues.
“These are people who have a political sensibility about migration that was different from the one that we find ourselves in now. But it’s hard to step away from your upbringing. I think the Joe Biden of 2020, who was so critical of the Trump administration, was much more of a deviation than the Joe Biden that we’ve seen in the last 12 months.”
It’s no secret that Biden’s numbers have been dropping in the polls and that the border crisis is a top concern for Americans. The crush of migrants at the border doesn’t seem to be diminishing at all, and there’s concern that even more will be seek to enter illegally. So far this year, more than 170,000 migrants crossed the Darien Gap, which connects Panama to Colombia, a 2% increase from this time last year when 167,000 immigrants made the crossing. That, by the way, was also a record number of travelers.
As the 2024 presidential election gets closer, some officials warn migration could see an uptick as the undocumented are concerned that if Donald Trump is elected, stricter immigration policies will be put into place. A new government in Panama will come into power on July 1, and it is expected to harden the country’s border security to halt migration.
Advocates for stronger border control have suggested the president is only trying with this late-breaking executive action to make it seem like he’s doing something to derail mass migration into the United States. Up until this point, his entire presidency has been promoting open borders. Unfortunately for Biden, most Americans have observed how little he has done to protect our southern border, and many consider his new policy to be a matter of too little, too late; smoke and mirrors; and a flimsy band-aid over a gaping wound.
