Reuniting families at the border will encourage more to come.
When will they learn?
“If you thought Joe Biden’s people would slip a 3-by-5 card in his hand before his first presser last week—one encouraging him to discourage the migrants who are flooding the southern border of Estados Unidos—you missed your guess. Those of us who assumed he’d at least talk a harder game when it comes to the border were left slackjawed by some of his comments.”
—our editorial, March 29
AND THE hits keep coming. One has to wonder why. Is this president so determined to be the anti-Trump that he’ll do anything, even the wrong thing?
Messaging from the Joe Biden administration is consistent. Whether it be inflation, the vaccine, or losing a war, its focus stays the same. That’s usually good. Until the message isn’t.
On his first day in office, President Biden signed an executive order pledging to reunite families of illegal immigrants separated at the southern border “to the greatest extent possible.”
In his first (and last) press conference in March, he all but told illegal immigrants the border was open: He said he wouldn’t apologize for treating people kindly at the border. And assured illegals that his administration would take care of their kids. In other words, he only made matters worse.
Last week, on the front pages of papers, is this from the wire: “The Biden administration said Monday that four families who were separated at the Mexico border during Donald Trump’s presidency will be reunited in the United States this week in what Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas calls ‘just the beginning’ of a broader effort.”
Don’t doubt how the message is playing in Latin America.
We don’t think anybody expected the Biden administration to do anything other than reunite a couple of these families. And maybe not noise it around, but even let a few of them stay here during processing/waiting for court.
But what happened to being discreet, especially in order to save lives? And these almost weekly announcements of how well the new administration is treating illegal immigrants only puts the lives of illegal immigrants in danger. We don’t expect “Stop or we’ll shoot!” but we didn’t expect a flashing “Vacancy!” sign, either.
Of the specific families mentioned by the administration, those parents will be allowed to come to the U.S. on “humanitarian parole,” while “authorities consider longer-term forms of legal status.” The children, it should be noted, are already here. Which should be plenty of incentive for more mothers and fathers to send their children to El Norte, in the possession of who knows who.
“We continue to work tirelessly to reunite many more children with their parents in the weeks and months ahead,” Secretary Mayorkas told reporters. “We have a lot of work still to do, but I am proud of the progress we have made and the reunifications that we have helped to achieve.”
The only part of that statement that we’d question is the “told reporters” part.
More from the wires, which go all around the world in a flash: “The [Biden] administration worked with about 10 lawyers and advocates to select 36 families from across Mexico and Central America to be reunited with their children in the United States over the next several weeks. Those families are part of a trial run, meant to prepare the federal government for hundreds of future reunifications, an effort unlike anything the U.S. has done before.”
An effort unlike anything done before. On second thought, we don’t need to emphasize it. Surely that’s being done elsewhere.
BORDER PATROL officers say they “encountered” 172,000 illegal aliens at the U.S. border with Mexico in March of this year. That is a 71 percent increase from the month before. That number included almost 19,000 unaccompanied minor children. That was a 100 percent increase from the month before.
Now, in the last few weeks, the administration has lifted the cap for refugees from 15,000 to more than 62,000. With plans to double that by next year. It has moved to expand the eligibility requirements for resettlement in this country. And find more comfortable places for illegal immigrants other than Border Control custody.
Again, most Americans probably expected all of this from the Biden administration.
What they didn’t expect, perhaps, was the loud welcome. If that helps ease the crisis at the border in the coming months, human nature has changed so much as to be unrecognizable.