Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the situation is not a crisis, but “a challenge” – an “acute” and “stressful” challenge with some “urgency”, but only a challenge at the same time.
Consider the outlines of this challenge. Twice as many, some 80,000, tried to cross the border illegally in January this year, compared with January the previous year.
Even though it is not yet the peak travel season (which traditionally takes place in May and June), the US Border Patrol has already started releasing migrants to American cities on the border, and the number of minors arriving each day is four times greater than in October.
Axios reported on a briefing prepared for Biden that warned that the number of migrant children is on track to break a record and there are not enough beds to accommodate them. By Axios, the briefing projects that an astonishing 117,000 unaccompanied children will appear at the border this year, and says that we will need another 20,000 beds.
Health and Human Services, which takes custody of minors, has begun to expedite its release to adults in the United States and to pay for transportation costs.
Meanwhile, Biden’s team is reopening the border detention facilities that drew the ire of Democrats during Trump’s presidency.
Biden officials tend to discuss “pressure factors,” the conditions that lead migrants to flee their countries in Central America. But changing these underlying conditions, however feasible, is a long-term proposition. What we have a lot more direct control over are the “attraction factors”, our own policies and practices that create an incentive to come here.
Trump overemphasized the importance of the border wall and had a series of false starts at the border, most notably the “zero tolerance” policy that led to family separations. In the end, however, he had created an entirely reasonable system based on his legal authorities to enforce order at the border, while still allowing asylum seekers to apply for asylum in the United States.
There is no good reason to tear this deal too far, although that is exactly what Biden did.
During the early stages of the pandemic, Trump quickly bypassed illegal cruisers on the border for public health reasons. Biden created an exception for unaccompanied minors, which is an obvious incentive for families to send children under 18.
Under Trump, the Migration Protection Protocols, also known as Staying in Mexico, ended the practice of allowing Central American migrants to enter the United States while their asylum applications were tried.
This was crucial because, under the old agreement, asylum seekers were allowed to enter the United States while their requests were considered. Even if the claims were rejected, like the vast majority of them, the overwhelming majority of migrants would end up staying anyway (we had no will and resources to track and deport them).
That was a big magnet for migrants – get to the border and ask for asylum and you will be in the United States, very likely to stay.
Biden destroyed the Migrant Protection Protocols. No new asylum seekers will be enrolled in the program, and the backlog of people waiting in Mexico is being admitted to the United States.
He also suspended so-called safe third-country agreements that Trump signed with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to make asylum seekers apply for asylum in one of these countries (the beginning of the pandemic paralyzed these programs).
The premise of Trump’s general approach was that people who feared for their lives in their home country because of the persecution did not necessarily need to go to the United States to escape. It should be enough for them to go to another country in the region, or if they are in fact applying for asylum in the United States, to stay in Mexico while doing so.
Allowing them to enter the United States, without any reliable internal enforcement mechanism to remove them if their claims are rejected, is an end to our immigration system. Because migrants, like everyone else, respond to incentives, the more who are allowed to enter, the more they will come. And since our resources are not infinite, if enough families show up at the border, it will inevitably overwhelm our people and facilities.
Obviously, Biden is in a very different position on Trump’s immigration, but even if he has different priorities, it makes no sense to create a random run on the border before a supposedly better system is in place (whatever it is).
Instead of recognizing that the previous government, despite everything, had some sensible policies, Biden’s team wants to reject everything wholesale.
Mayorkas blames Trump for “dismantling our nation’s immigration system in its entirety”, a claim as absurd as the notion that the Biden government started from scratch with vaccines.
Needless to say, naturalization and green card issuance continued quickly under Trump. And he really managed to control the border, which in 2014 and 2019 got out of hand, creating a major humanitarian disaster.
Call it what you want, a crisis, or a challenge, or whatever, but Biden is on a path to repeat that experience without caring.