The border: When mass expulsion ends
A new border surge is coming, said Eileen Sullivan in The New York Times, and “it could pose a serious political problem for Democrats ahead of the midterm elections this fall.” The Biden administration announced last week it plans to lift a Trump-era border restriction in May, and Homeland Security officials estimate that the number of migrants showing up at the border every day could more than double from 7,100 to 18,000. Title 42, invoked by former President Trump during the Covid-19 pandemic, had enabled border officials to cite the danger of communicable disease in turning away most migrants before they could claim asylum.
But with pandemic restrictions ending, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention opted not to renew Title 42—and word of that decision will soon spread south of the border. My south Texas district has already been ravaged by “Biden’s border crisis,” said Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales in the Washington Examiner. Law enforcement stopped nearly 165,000 migrants and 12,500 pounds of smuggled methamphetamine in February alone. If the border becomes even more porous, these numbers will grow dramatically.
“Good riddance to Title 42,” said Raul Reyes in CNN.com. Public health experts always doubted its usefulness against Covid-19; it was “always a border-control measure masquerading as public health policy.” Republicans will now demonize the migrants who’ll apply for asylum, but never offer “any constructive immigration or asylum solutions of their own.” Legally, Biden is “obliged to end Title 42,” said Charles Cooke in the National Review. The Covid pandemic has waned, and such emergency powers “must be used only during emergencies.” Both Congress and Biden now have the responsibility to create new, sensible policies to contain the “rolling crisis at the border.”
The Biden administration needs to step up to that challenge, said Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman in The Washington Post. In the next six months, there may be millions of attempted crossings, and news coverage “will be awash in scenes of overwhelmed border facilities.” The administration plans to hire new asylum officers to greatly speed up the processing of claims. But the ongoing influx of desperate Central American migrants “will continue to be a profoundly difficult problem to manage.” Biden’s failure to explain “these challenges forthrightly to the public” has only “ceded the field to the Republican media machine.”