The Border-Crisis Deniers
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
I t should be perfectly obvious what’s happening at the border, but the Biden administration and journalistic allies are denying it all the same.
Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been leading the way with a haze of misrepresentations.
On Sunday, he said that Title 42, the public-health authority the Trump administration used to quickly remove migrants during the pandemic, is largely still in place. “The border is closed,” he said. “We are expelling families. We are expelling single adults. And we ’ ve made a decision that we will not expel young, vulnerable children.”
This is not true. It is a symptom of the crisis at the border that Border Patrol has been overwhelmed and simply releasing people.
According to Axios , the use of Title 42 has been breaking down more broadly. It reported Department of Homeland Security data showing that just 13 percent of roughly 13,000 family members attempting to cross the U.S. in the week beginning March 14 were returned under Title 42.
Some migrants in the Rio Grande Valley, per Axios , are being released without a court date.
By way of blaming Trump for the crisis, Mayorkas said on Sunday, “Please remember something, that President Trump dismantled the orderly, humane and efficient way of allowing children to make their claims under United States law in their home countries. He dismantled the Central American Minors program.”
This is preposterous. An analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies explains the history. In response to the border crisis on its watch, the Obama administration created the Central American Minors program in 2014 to allow parents in the U.S. to petition for minors in the Northern Triangle to come to the United States. It was of limited use because it required that the parents be legally within the United States (when most parents who would have been interested are here illegally), while the minors had to qualify for refugee status (unlikely, since the Northern Triangle countries, whatever their other failures, generally aren’t persecuting people).
The Obama administration tried to make the program more attractive by expanding it in 2016 and working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to establish something called the Protection Transfer Arrangement (PTA), which sought to process asylum-seekers via Costa Rica.
How useful was all of this? As a report from the Center for Immigration Studies notes, the U.N. evaluated PTA and found in a roughly two-year period just 140 people had been resettled and another 1,885 had been screened out, or had been rejected by a resettling country, or were still awaiting a decision.
There is no way that such programs, which are bureaucratically involved and, if they try to faithfully apply the standards for asylum, will approve only a small percentage of applicants, can possibly stanch the migrant flow. They can’t compete with the lure of showing up at the border and being assured entry into the U.S.
Finally, to defend the exemption that Biden created in Title 42 for minors, Mayorkas said, “We will not expel into the Mexican desert, for example, three orphan children whom I saw over the last two weeks. We just won’t do that. That’s not who we are.”
This is a tawdry distortion of what happened under Title 42. Children weren’t released back into the desert. They were flown home on government charter flights and handed over to social-service agencies for placement back with their families.
Even if we had wanted simply to push minors back across the border, Mexico had a policy against taking them.
Mayorkas, of course, always insists that there isn’t a crisis at the border, and he’s getting some back-up, however dubious.
An analysis piece at the Washington Post the other day was titled, “There’s no migrant ‘surge’ at the U.S. southern border. Here’s the data.” The authors wrote, “We analyzed monthly CBP data from 2012 to now and found no crisis or surge that can be attributed to Biden administration policies.”
The article attributed the non-surge at the border to “seasonal changes,” plus “a backlog of demand.”
It’s hard to square this take with Mayorkas himself saying that the U.S. this year will have the biggest surge at the border in two decades.
Clearly, something is going on beyond seasonality (it is true that migration tends to pick up in the spring and then fall off in the summer).
Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies has been crunching the numbers from Customs and Border Protection.
Per his analysis, there were more than twice as many unaccompanied minors apprehended in January of this year (5,694) than in January 2020 (2,680), prior to the pandemic.
In February, the number of unaccompanied minors, more than 9,000, was higher than it had been in any month since May 2019, when there was a widely acknowledged crisis at the border.
In February of this year, more family units were apprehended at the border, nearly 19,000, than in any month since August 2019.
March isn’t finished, but the number for minors is likely to be the highest on record, topping 17,000.
This would exceed the peak of both 2019 and 2014, when roughly 11,000 minors arrived during the highest months of those crises.
Also, apprehension numbers don’t capture what happens after the migrants show up at the border. There’s a difference between apprehending them and sending them home (what the Trump administration did), and apprehending them and releasing them into the U.S. (what Biden is doing with unaccompanied minors and many family units now).
Do the numbers of apprehensions always increase in January and February, as the Washington Post authors suggest? No.
In January and February 2017, the numbers of unaccompanied minors and family units markedly declined from the end of 2016 (this was a function of the so-called Trump effect — fear that Trump would ferociously enforce the laws).
And in January and February 2018, they ticked down some from the end of the prior year.
What in particular happened in January and February of this year that might have made numbers jump so high? Joe Biden became president promising a new approach at the border and blew holes in the system Trump had created.
There was clearly a “Biden effect,” where people expected the new president to welcome them to the U.S.
The president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has noted this. “Expectations were created,” he has said, “that with the Government of President Biden there would be a better treatment of migrants. And this has caused Central American migrants, and also from our country, wanting to cross the border thinking that it is easier to do so.”
And then Biden implemented an exemption in Title 42 for minors that common sense and experience suggest would create an incentive for more minors to come — exactly what has happened.
Reasonable people can disagree about immigration policy, but there can be no doubt that we are experiencing a crisis at the border, and one of Joe Biden’s making.
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Discuss the topic/thread - not the source nor the seeder.
What in particular happened in January and February of this year that might have made numbers jump so high? Joe Biden became president promising a new approach at the border and blew holes in the system Trump had created.
So, what happened to following the Immigration Laws that have been established and implemented since 1940? Laws passed by Congress and ignored by this Administration - totally ignored.
migrants in the Rio Grande Valley, per Axios, are being released without a court date.
WTF - that ain't a lawful thing to do.
Mayorkas is a leftist liberal appointee beurocratic hack who has zero clue of the real conditions on our Southern borders! He has his head buried in the sand in DC and sends his minions out instead who report back distorted facts so as not to displease their boss or the Biden administration. Disgusting!
BP are still turning away thousands. It just took a couple of months for the kids to start arriving unaccompanied after the court decision.
migrants in the Rio Grande Valley, per Axios, are being released without a court date.
Many likely carrying Covid
In one of the reports that is supportive of this seed, it is stated that at least 1/2 of those released "probably" have Covid.
Not quite sure where they get the "probably" - but - I'm not doing the study.
PROVE IT!
What cracks me up is the right wing was and is downplaying the virus, yelling and screaming about wearing masks, I could even throw in the anti-vaxers yet when it comes to the border, now all the sudden they are scared that immigrants may have the virus...
Yeah right...
well, you know, it's that deadly brown virus vs. the not as bad white virus version.
Not all conservatives. The governor of AZ just this week ceased state mandates for masks in government and public spaces. Private businesses have the option to demand or not demand masks. I personally choose to continue to wear a mask in enclosed spaces outside my home here in SE Arizona on the border. Many of the residents here that I know on both sides of the political spectrum feel the same.
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I personally think it is still a little early to open everything up.
Even after I get my second shot I still plan on wearing a mask to crowded places.
"I personally think it is still a little early to open everything up.
Even after I get my second shot I still plan on wearing a mask to crowded places."
It is too early.
Everyone should still practice social distancing, face masks, and hand washing/sanitizing
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Why you so nasty and hateful arkie?
Same here.
So there was no 'crisis' at the border BEFORE Joe Biden became President Biden?
No but he has made it substantially worse in a very short time.
With the wall, sending or keeping the aliens in mexico, and the deportations of those here illegally Trump was actually doing something to slow down the influx of illegal aliens in this country. Biden invited them in.
"No but he has made it substantially worse in a very short time."
Not true.
"With the wall, sending or keeping the aliens in mexico, and the deportations of those here illegally Trump was actually doing something to slow down the influx of illegal aliens in this country. Biden invited them in."
No trumpturd didn't do a damn thing about that or anything else other than lining his pockets and his 'donors' pockets.
No, President Biden did not.
In your own words, PROVE IT!
I wasn't talking to you, plus, no need, it's not true.
You were talking to me so now prove your BS is true.
I don't answer to you!
What happened at the end of 2019 and throughout 2020? Could it have been the jackass Democrats during the primaries promising everything under the sun to illegals if they won?
Democrats rang the dinner bell long, loud, and hard. Now they are shocked at all the illegal immigrants they have drawn to the US. They think Trump brought them here; showing how fucking clueless (or deranged) they really are.
There was a rise despite the spin being put upon it.
Comical trying to blame an administration that was not even an administration...
Your usual projection, deflection, and denial - I didn't really waste my time going through your nonsense - did you remember to include 'leftist brown shirts'?
Can't back up your claims huh. Not surprised.
I'm wondering if anyone notices that the graph shows apprehensions. Wouldn't that suggest that border patrol and local law enforcement were doing what they were supposed to do?
Just a thought. I'm not placing blame on any administration; I'm simply making an observation of the chart itself.
Similar chart showing "detained" as opposed to apprehended, all presumably deported
Last week, people apprehended in Brownsville were complaining about being transported to El Paso
for deportation in "a strange place".
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Okay. That still doesn't change what I'd said previously. If you notice, there's far more detained and apprehended when Republicans were in office. May be a coincidence. I'm not judging either way.
What do these people want, a personal escort to their homes no matter where that may be? They made their way there, likely knowing the potential outcome, but did it anyways.
Only Arkie has never challenged me, or you . . . . .
I'm not the subject of the seed dennis.
Uh huh, right. If you say so.
Thanks, I know!
Yesterday on the CNN show Reliable Sources the topic was discussed of why was immigration brought up so much at Biden's press conference and other topics not brought up at all.
The media are allowing the conservatives and Republicans to dictate the media agenda. Every question was that this is a 'crisis' that should be what Americans think about all the time.
The truth is this issue is a continuation of what has been happening, on and off, at the border for 20 years. It's not any more of a crisis than it was any of the other times a lot of people from southern countries wanted to seek asylum in the United States.
Right wing media will NEVER be honest about this.
I would say for the last century.
Prior to 1912 when NM gained statehood and 1910 for AZ, there was no issue.
People crossed the border in both directions at will.
After WWI immigration issues began to be codified to specifically limit immigration from unacceptable countries
of southern and eastern Europe.
The immigration Act of 1924 made the quotas system stricter and permanent.
White prejudice against white ethnic groups continued until 1965 when the US dropped ethnic quotas
in favor of a more neutral appearing policy.
As in every government function, the focus of controlling the southern border revolves around taxation.
Head taxes and tariffs and taxes of commodities coming and going across the southern border
CBP processed 2.7 trillion in material for 80 billion in revenue in 2019.
Thanks for the facts as usual, SP!
"THE REPUBS WILL NEVER BE HONEST ABOUT THIS"
1986 - 36 years ago - the Dems started this "issue" when they lied big time and did not produce the "promises" they made to President Reagan of penalizing employers for hiring Illegal Aliens and strengthening the enforcement, through not producing budget increases and manning, and not requiring the use of the "E" (employer verification of employment to the IRS).
They got what they wanted then, the amnesty of 2.9M Illegal Aliens and they want the same thing now - the amnesty of over 30M Illegal Aliens.
The Dems will NEVER be honest about this.
Who were those 'employers' you're referring to? Plus, Prove it! [deleted]
CNN is as left wing as it gets. Maybe they should look at which reporters are asking the damn questions- the Biden administration doesn't call on those from the right.
The left wing media are allowing? Right....Another denial of reality of what is going on at the border.
The truth is the Democrats got exactly what they were trying for; a large illegal immigration problem at the border- but now there is no Trump in office. They are being left holding the bag; and the "But Trruuummmmppppp!!!!!' BS is only being believe by severe TDS sufferers.
You forgot 'leftist brown shirts'