https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens...rms-alternative-detention-program-11643754041
Biden’s Southern Border Crisis Isn’t Going Away
The administration lets a crisis fester, and the Democratic Party will pay a political price.
When is Joe Biden going to realize that Donald Trump didn’t lose the election in 2020 because of his stance on illegal immigration? The Biden administration doesn’t seem much interested in the havoc on our southern border, but the problem isn’t going away. If anything, the situation has been worsening.
Mr. Biden’s overall job-approval rating is in the low 40s. That’s worrying enough for Democrats, but Americans think even less of how the president is handling immigration, with only 36% of respondents voicing satisfaction in a recent CBS News poll. Obviously, people other than Fox News viewers are paying attention to the crisis. And what they’ve seen over the past year, in addition to White House indifference, is record levels of illicit border crossings, overflowing detention centers and, more recently, video footage of illegal immigrants being ferried (in the dead of night) from the southern border to New York, Florida and other parts of the country.
The administration doesn’t deny that this is happening. When pressed last week, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki matter-of-factly explained that when undocumented individuals can’t be immediately removed from the country, they “are placed into immigration proceedings, and one of those avenues could be placement in an alternative-to-detention program in the interior of the United States.” That, folks, is the administration’s current policy for handling illegal immigration.
Predictably, the results have been a disaster. Apprehensions are a proxy for unlawful entries. When border apprehensions are up, it means we’re experiencing higher levels of illegal immigration. In the last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, there were a record-breaking 1.7 million arrests at the border. For all of 2021, there were just shy of two million, far above the previous record of 1.6 million set in 2000. Worse, there is every indication that the administration is on pace to make history again. Reuters reports that “border officials are preparing for as many as 9,000 border arrests per day by the spring, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials, which would be significantly larger than last year’s peak.”
Biden’s Southern Border Crisis Isn’t Going Away
The administration lets a crisis fester, and the Democratic Party will pay a political price.
When is Joe Biden going to realize that Donald Trump didn’t lose the election in 2020 because of his stance on illegal immigration? The Biden administration doesn’t seem much interested in the havoc on our southern border, but the problem isn’t going away. If anything, the situation has been worsening.
Mr. Biden’s overall job-approval rating is in the low 40s. That’s worrying enough for Democrats, but Americans think even less of how the president is handling immigration, with only 36% of respondents voicing satisfaction in a recent CBS News poll. Obviously, people other than Fox News viewers are paying attention to the crisis. And what they’ve seen over the past year, in addition to White House indifference, is record levels of illicit border crossings, overflowing detention centers and, more recently, video footage of illegal immigrants being ferried (in the dead of night) from the southern border to New York, Florida and other parts of the country.
The administration doesn’t deny that this is happening. When pressed last week, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki matter-of-factly explained that when undocumented individuals can’t be immediately removed from the country, they “are placed into immigration proceedings, and one of those avenues could be placement in an alternative-to-detention program in the interior of the United States.” That, folks, is the administration’s current policy for handling illegal immigration.
Predictably, the results have been a disaster. Apprehensions are a proxy for unlawful entries. When border apprehensions are up, it means we’re experiencing higher levels of illegal immigration. In the last fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, there were a record-breaking 1.7 million arrests at the border. For all of 2021, there were just shy of two million, far above the previous record of 1.6 million set in 2000. Worse, there is every indication that the administration is on pace to make history again. Reuters reports that “border officials are preparing for as many as 9,000 border arrests per day by the spring, according to two Department of Homeland Security officials, which would be significantly larger than last year’s peak.”