Oct
24
Biden/Harris Admin Lies about the Surge
Following up on last week’s post, I have another citation of Mark Morgan from the Imprimis article adapted from a lecture he gave this past July. The selection in particular follows Morgan’s discussion of President Trump’s effective border security policies. Informative? Yes. But, unless you are a Biden apologist, you will also find your blood-pressure begin to rise…
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“Less than three weeks after President Biden took office, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that “in line with the President’s vision” the U.S. had suspended, and was in the process of terminating, the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. In the same announcement, Blinken said that the new U.S. approach to the problem of migration from these countries would be to address the “root causes” of that migration — especially economic underdevelopment and poverty, although, oddly enough, climate change has been mentioned as a root cause as well.
We are hearing more and more subsequently about root causes — especially from Vice President Harris, who President Biden charged with developing a “Root Causes Strategy.” But what we are hearing is bunk. The fact is that when the U.S. opens its borders — which is what it amounts to when we return to a catch and release policy — illegal immigrants flock to the U.S. That’s the root cause of the crisis on our southern border. Compare the numbers in April of last year to those of this April: there was a 900 percent increase in illegal immigration. The economic conditions in Central America didn’t markedly change during that period. The climate didn’t markedly change. Our policies changed! That’s the root cause….
The incoming Biden team received exhaustive briefings on the situation at the border and was warned about the consequences of undoing the security policies they inherited. They were told clearly that Border Patrol stations didn’t have adequate capacity to handle the surge of illegal immigrants that would follow a reversal of policy; they were told clearly that the Department of Health and Human Services did not have the detention capacity to handle it. They were told that smuggling organizations and other criminal groups would exploit a return to catch and release.
Despite this, they rushed to dismantle the entire system. And with the results becoming evident to the public, they resorted to deception. I’ve served in federal law enforcement in various capacities for more than 35 years, under six different administrations. And while I’ve become numb to the spin and misdirection that is commonplace in Washington, I have never seen as blatant a disinformation campaign as this one.
Initially, this campaign involved outright denial: “Our message has been straightforward — the border is closed,” said Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas on March 21, in the midst of a surge across the border of families and unaccompanied minors. There was also deflection: Mayorkas blamed the surge on the Trump administration, which he claimed had “torn down” the “entire [immigration] system” that had been in place. This took a lot of gall, given that the surge was so obviously a direct response to the termination of Trump’s Remain in Mexico Program and Asylum Cooperative Agreements and the revival of catch and release.
We were also treated to a fictitious narrative according to which the surge was the reflection of seasonal trends. A “significant increase” in migration “happens every year” in the winter months, President Biden claimed at his first presidential press conference, since that is when migrants “can travel with the least likelihood of dying on the way.” The problem is that this year’s winter numbers dwarfed those of 2020 — not to mention the fact that the surge has continued unabated into the spring and summer. The June apprehension number exceeded 180,000, and in July it exceeded 210,000. Year-to-date apprehensions are over one million, including more than 100,000 unaccompanied minors — a 444 percent year-to-year increase.
At the point when the administration could no longer deny the dangerously overcrowded conditions at Border Patrol facilities, some operating at more than 400 percent capacity, it adopted a shell game strategy, first moving migrants into newly-constructed facilities and then surreptitiously flying families and unaccompanied minors to cities throughout the U.S. The point of this ongoing shell game is not to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into our country, but to improve the political “optics” of the crisis.”
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If you thought that maybe the “surge” at our southern border wasn’t so bad, or that the Biden administration had some valid points for why it happened when it did, you were sorely mistaken. More, if you still think the Dems are trustworthy with what they tell the public and that they are acting honorably re issues like this one, then I have to ask (borrowing from Frasier on “Cheers”), “What color is the sky in your world?”
It’s not a matter of the occasional misjudgment or misreading of the numbers. Such consistent incompetence would be bad enough. No, they are outright lying to the American public.
* “Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.”
