Joe Biden creates a crisis at the border

To the surprise of no one, not even the clueless president, the Biden administration is facing a crisis at the Mexican border. The Washington Post puts it this way:

President Biden’s more-welcoming message to immigrants is facing an immediate challenge along the Mexican border, where Central American families and children have been crossing in numbers that point to a building crisis.

(Emphasis added)

According to the Post, recent days have seen the return of large groups of parents and children crossing the border in the darkness. Why? Because illegal immigrants know the Biden administration isn’t going to kick them out.

One woman, Daysi Funes Peña, told the Post:

I came last year, but they weren’t giving you the opportunity to cross. But then I decided to come back again, and thank God, I got the opportunity.

[A friend] said, ‘Come, they’re really receiving mothers with children, families.’ And it was true, we made it.

Last fall, she crossed the Rio Grande with her family and surrendered to border officials, but they were returned to Mexico. This time, Funes and her children were released in downtown McAllen and into the care of the Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley.

Biden’s supporters will say that the new approach is humanitarian. However, the Post’s reporting suggests that it is likely to produce hardship and perhaps a humanitarian crisis:

The area [where Funes Peña and her children were released] has been one of those hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 100,000 cases, raising concerns in cities and towns worried about a growing influx of people and outbreaks inside shelters.

The Biden administration issued a lame public statements urging migrants not to cross the border. However, as the Post observes, current and former border officials say the president’s actions to rescind Trump-era controls, welcome immigrants, and curtail deportations risk send a different message. And that’s the message that counts.

Over the weekend Secretary of State Blinken made matters worse by announcing the cancellation of a Trump-era program known as Asylum Cooperation Agreements. It allowed U.S. authorities to send asylum seekers back to Central America to find refuge there. No longer.

Rodolfo Karisch, a retired border patrol official who was chief in the Rio Grande Valley in 2019, told the Post:

I think we’re just sending the wrong message in rescinding all these executive actions. I think we’re asking for additional chaos similar to what we saw in 2019. .

This could cause a huge problem for these communities along the border, because we still have significant challenges with covid, and this looks like a recipe for something that isn’t good.

Legal residents in the area have the same concern:

Last summer, Enedina Treviño and five family members caught the virus. Her mother-in-law died from it.

Treviño was alarmed by the news of migrants being released untested in nearby McAllen. There was still a risk, she said, even if the migrants are tested soon after they arrive.

“I know they come here to better themselves, but it’s still a danger to us — a community who is still suffering from covid, still suffering the aftereffects,” said Treviño, who has been dealing with the lingering effects of the disease that she said put her in the hospital just two weeks ago.

The choice at the border is straightforward: Put the interests of Americans first or go with the interests of illegal immigrants and the Democratic Party.

It doesn’t matter one way or the other to Joe Biden. He could play it either and has played it both ways at various points in his career.

But at this juncture, because he’s beholden to Latino activists and Democratic politicians, Biden will put their interests, and those of illegal entrants, ahead of the interests of Americans.