Beware: Another ‘Cataclysmic’ Border Surge Is in the Offing

WASHINGTON, DC, Dec 19 — The border crisis has reached cataclysmic proportions. Unless there is a way to resurrect or replace the Trump era Title 42 protocols the invasion of illegal migrants will go well beyond anything we’ve seen thus far in President Biden’s come-one-come-all tenure. 

Title 42 gave the Border Patrol the ability to instantly send some 2.4 million illegals packing over the past two years.  It expires this week and, while efforts are under way to come up with an effective substitute as of Wednesday, December 21, it’s already resulting in increased surges of migrants at border towns such as El Paso, TX. City Manager Mario D’Agostino told CNN just a few days ago that some 2,500 have been crossing into El Paso every day; the town’s authorities are openly concerned that things will get worse once Title 42 is ended on Wednesday. If and when that happens, he told reporters that the illegal surge could increase to as many as 6,000 a day. It’s been reported that 7,000 migrants crossed the border into El Paso over this past weekend.

Things are getting so bad that even the ultra-Left governor of California, Gavin Newsom, has had a wakeup call, lamenting that “What we’ve got right now is not working, and it’s about to break in a post-[Title] 42 world unless we take some responsibility and ownership.”

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are scrambling to chisel out a solution. Senator Krysten Sinema of Arizona, who recently left the Democratic Party and is now an Independent, is working with Senator Thom Tillis [R-NC] on a legislative deal. It’s a long shot, according to the Washington Post. “It reportedly would retain Title 42 restrictions on asylum claims, or something like them, for a year or more until new processing centers are built to contain the disorder along the border and accelerate decisions on admitting or expelling migrants based on their situations.” It might also include a way to legalize so-called “dreamers” — migrants who entered the U.S. when they were children, a controversial element that could be a deal breaker. 

Townhall’s Katie Pavlich says the Sinema-Tillis was doomed to be scrapped from the get-go.  It “won’t solve even part of the problem,” she says. “Border barriers like a wall and funding for additional agents have been proposed, but both are worthless with current asylum rules still in place. The only real solution to the current crisis is to reform the asylum process and raise the bar for asylum qualification beyond a simple statement of ‘I’m in fear.’ The vast majority of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. are pursuing economic opportunities and are not ‘in fear.’ Instead, they’ve been coached over and over again by cartel smugglers to fraudulently repeat the line, which is accepted as ‘proof’ of an initial asylum claim.”  

Newsmax reports that Congressman Henry Cuellar [D-TX] estimates that there are some 50,000 migrants who could surge their way into the U.S. in one fell swoop once Title 42 is canceled and that the Department of Homeland Security [DHS] is getting ready for the worst. They are getting ready by adding “personnel, transportation, medical support and facilities to help border officials ahead of the expected surge once the policy lifts.”  

So, what will happen once Title 42 is terminated? The Wall Street Journal says the Border Patrol will reinstate traditional processing practices.  Most of the illegals will be allowed to stay in the U.S., seek asylum and wait here for as long as it takes courts to rule on their fate — “a process that most often takes several years amid a backlog of more than two million cases pending in federal immigration court.”

The Journal went on to explain that President Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy that required migrants to wait for court decisions in Mexico was challenged by the Biden administration but was dismissed in court, which found “the administration didn’t follow the proper administrative procedure in ending the policy. The effect of the ruling isn’t yet clear, as the Supreme Court ruled last June that the government had the right to end the policy, and Mexico hasn’t yet agreed to cooperate with the U.S. to once more restart it…Under Remain in Mexico, formally known as the Migration Protection Protocols, asylum seekers were sent back to Mexico to wait for their U.S. court process to be completed.”