WASHINGTON, DC, May 23 – We dodged a bullet on the border last week when a federal judge stopped the Biden administration from lifting the Title 42 order that gives the Border Patrol a tool for limiting the entry of illegal immigrants at our southern border. Of course, President Biden’s minions in the Justice Department are already working on an appeal of the ruling handed down by District Judge Robert R. Summerhays in Lafayette, LA, who said canceling Title 42 would have caused “irreparable harm.”
The loss of the Title 42 rule was scheduled for this week at a time when unimaginable numbers of illegals continue to come knocking at America’s back door. The Border Patrol says a record-breaking 234,000 or more were intercepted last month at the Mexican border. Without Title 42, the numbers would have been much higher, considering that the rule has helped the border police deny entry to some 1.7 million illegals since it was first used. To further put the numbers in perspective, there were just 17,106 at the border in April 2020, a month after President Trump invoked the rule. Three months after President Biden took office, there were 178,000 encounters in April 2021.
The admission by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a CNN interview that his agency is preparing for as many as 18,000 illegal migrants a day – 540,000 or more a month – may soon be seeking entry into the U.S. that’s half a million reasons a month why the Title 42 rule is so important.
Notwithstanding the rule, the Border Patrol is already overwhelmed. It’s gotten so bad that the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency is asking former Border Patrol Agents to re-up. Former agents under 40 years of age who quit their jobs in the past three years are being asked to return to work. A senior Border Patrol official told the Washington Examiner, “We’re getting pummeled with retirements. It’s not just Title 42 ending. I know agents that are good agents, and they totally believe in the mission – they just feel they’re unable to do their job, so if they’re eligible to retire, they’re retiring.” He said that, in addition, agents are committing suicide at “ridiculously high” rates.
The fact of the matter is that due to the massive numbers of illegals they have to deal with, agents are taking shortcuts with migrants they encounter. According to the Epoch Times, “A Customs and Border Protection spokesman said parole designation allows for overwhelmed Border Patrol stations to process large numbers of illegal aliens ‘significantly faster’ and release them into the country much faster than the more involved current system—which releases an illegal alien with a notice to appear that includes a court date for their first immigration hearing.”
The 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act says that illegals must be held in custody until they are deported or granted legal entry. However, the law provides for a so-called “parole exception” that gives the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security discretionary authority to let illegals come “into the United States temporarily under such conditions as he may prescribe only on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit.”
The Daily Caller reports that The Department of Homeland Security released 117,989 out of the 234,088 migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border in April. Meanwhile, that same month DHS expelled 113,248 migrants under Title 42 or Title 8 for inadmissibility.
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