On day one of his administration, President Biden invited the world to come on down to our border, Bob Barker style, and untold millions have taken the invitation. The price is right.
Democrats want to redistribute wealth, but they are better at redistributing the poor. The Biden administration has redistributed millions of illegal aliens in secret around the country while proclaiming “the border is secure.”
The administration has performed many bad and destructive acts in what will soon be three years. That’s three years in elapsed time. On a feels-like basis, it’s a generation or two. The destruction will never be undone. Even Democratic mayors in solid blue states aren’t entirely happy with the redistributive effects of the alien invasion.
With the 2024 presidential election coming into view, the Biden crew must do something to protect their phony baloney jobs, or appear to do something. Yesterday administration officials announced their determination to waive 26 federal laws in south Texas to allow for construction of roughly 20 miles of additional border wall.
Biden, of course, had promised not to build a foot of border wall in his administration. He only supported walls to protect his family, not the country.
The Department of Homeland Security officially announced in the Federal Register yesterday that Secretary Mayorkas had decided the waiver was necessary “in order to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border in Starr County, Texas.”
Mayorkas pronounced:
The United States Border Patrol’s (Border Patrol) Rio Grande Valley Sector is an area of “high illegal entry.” As of early August 2023, Border Patrol had encountered over 245,000 such entrants attempting to enter the United States between ports of entry in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Fiscal Year 2023.
Therefore, I must use my authority…to install additional physical barriers and roads in the Rio Grande Valley Sector. Therefore, DHS will take immediate action to construct barriers and roads….
There is presently [sic] an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas pursuant to [specified statutory sections].
A sane person reading this might infer that the border appears not to be secure. A sane person might infer that the 20 miles of wall and the 26 waivers officially announced in support of its construction were therefore necessary. However, Mayorkas followed up with a public relations statement saying he didn’t really mean it:
I want to address today’s reporting relating to a border wall and be absolutely clear. There is no new Administration policy with respect to border walls. From day one, this Administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer. That remains our position and our position has never wavered. The language in the Federal Register notice is being taken out of context and it does not signify any change in policy whatsoever.
The construction project reported today was appropriated during the prior administration in 2019 and the law requires the government to use these funds for this purpose, which we announced earlier this year. We have repeatedly asked Congress to rescind this money but it has not done so and we are compelled to follow the law.
This Administration believes that effective border security requires a smarter and more comprehensive approach, including state-of the-art border surveillance technology and modernized ports of entry. We need Congress to give us the funds to implement these proven tools.
There is a circle here that must be squared, appearances that must be maintained, and politics that must be conducted. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre brought her talents to bear in these efforts at yesterday’s White House press briefing (transcript here).
According to KJP, the administration was acting like a good citizen to comply with the law. You got a problem with that?
I wonder if the law compels Mayorkas to waive the 26 laws cited in the Federal Register notice. There he explains that he is acting in his “sole discretion.” Even the AP notices the seeming contradiction.
And of course Biden himself pronounced that the wall wouldn’t work. He’s just going through the motions, as he does on the days he shows up to work.
What are we to make of this? Andrew Arthur has a few thoughts in today’s New York Post. I am quite sure it would be a mistake to make anything of the administration’s latest moves other than a reminder that an election is scheduled for November 2024. Beyond that, it is sound and fury signifying nothing, or something asymptotically approaching it.
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