Get a ‘Plan B’ Now, Joe

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas this week again told Congress, “yes,” the border is secure, “and we are working day in and day out to enhance security.” We do not think that word means what he thinks it means.

And the impending end of Title 42, which Team Biden has used to expel more than 1 million of the 2.4 million migrants that Border Patrol “encountered” in the last year, is sure to add to the chaos. The surge is set to rise to 18,000 a day, or over 500,000 a month.

Even now, the waves have border security hopelessly overstretched, with perhaps half a million illegal migrants a year seen but not “encountered” by Border Patrol — meaning they made it in with no screening at all.

It’s not just migrants. At the same hearing, FBI chief Christopher Wray said, “We see significant criminal threats coming from south of the border — whether it’s guns, drugs, money, violence.” Fentanyl smuggling, especially, is out of control.

Month after month, the migrant numbers grow, hitting 230,678 encounters in October. And that’s with more than a third being sent back to Mexico under Title 42.

Yet the administration plainly has no clue what to do now that the courts are ordering Title 42 to end (which is legally correct: It’s a public-health exception to normal rules that Team Trump invoked during COVID).

The exit of woefully incompetent Customs and Border Protection chief Chris Magnus might bring marginal improvements, and we certainly get the GOP sentiment to impeach routine-liar Mayorkas. But the core problem is policy, not personnel.

That is: President Biden refuses to do anything serious to stem the tides. He’s gotten tougher on migrants from Venezuela, Cuba and Haiti, but the overall numbers still keep rising. Don’t come — but we’ll probably wave you in if you do turns out not to work.

Having made it through the midterms, Biden may think he can go on not caring. But the cumulative impact keeps growing, slamming ever more communities across the nation — and, again, the problem will soon double from its already-record levels.

This is a recipe for disaster: more border violence, more drugs, more shootouts like Thursday’s, which killed one border agent and injured two more; potentially, the utter breakdown of overwhelmed towns — and a likely rise in ugly anti-immigrant sentiment.

The White House needs a realistic Plan B — one that goes beyond gaslighting.