AMAC Exclusive – By Aaron Flanigan
Less than a month after launching his reelection campaign, Joe Biden is already facing his first major political crisis of the 2024 election cycle.
On May 11, the Biden administration is expected to end the last remaining remnants of Title 42, the Trump-era border policy that permits the U.S. government to swiftly expel illegal aliens crossing the southern border. In April 2022, the administration announced its intention to formally end the policy amid pressure from far-left open-borders activists— despite strong pushback from even Democrat leaders in border states.
After more than two years of Biden systematically eliminating Trump-era border policies and allowing millions of illegal aliens to flood American communities, Title 42’s official termination will represent the apex of this open-borders insanity.
Though the policy was initially enacted on public health grounds in the early days of the COVID pandemic (the Title 42 clause of the 1944 Public Health Services Law “allows the government to prevent the introduction of individuals during certain public health emergencies”), there had remained a broad political consensus—even among Democrats—that the policy was worth keeping intact to impose at least some limit on the influx of illegal aliens pouring across the border.
Nevertheless, Biden appears determined to charge ahead. Title 42 will formally come to an end in a matter of days. And by every available indication, the policy’s expiration will wreak havoc on our already imperiled southern border.
Immigration officials have estimated that, following the expiration of Title 42, nearly 400,000 illegal aliens could stream across the border on a monthly basis – a catastrophic rate of nearly 5 million per year. As Breitbart reported John Binder observed, “Such a monthly illegal immigration inflow would be larger than the resident population of New Orleans” every single month.
“DHS Office of Immigration Statistics projects that [border] encounters could average 11,000 to 13,000 per day after the lifting of the Title 42 public health order, absent additional policy changes,” according to a Department of Homeland Security report. As of last fall, thousands of illegal aliens were already “camped out” near the U.S.-Mexico border, eagerly awaiting Title 42’s end.
Jared Polis, the Democrat governor of Colorado, indicated he has “a lot of concern” about the end of the policy. Democrat Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona agreed: “They don’t have a plan for when Title 42 goes away. I still don’t think they have a plan. So, this is a process of me pushing the administration and sometimes getting results and also having to drop legislation.”
Of course, Kelly’s criticism should likely be seen through the lens of home-state politics rather than sincere concern. For the past three years, Kelly has aided and abetted the Biden administration’s lawlessness and obstructed every serious effort to secure the border.
Joe Biden’s active refusal to secure the southern border and enforce commonsense measures to protect American communities has already yielded the worst border crisis in recorded American history, with an all-time record of at least 2.76 million illegal aliens crossing the border in 2022—shockingly breaking 2021’s previous record by more than one million. These numbers themselves are almost certainly drastic underestimates of the real scale of the crisis.
As Biden evinces callous disregard toward the effects of his disastrous border policies on the nation, illegal immigration could be a major political liability heading into his 2024 reelection campaign.
An AP-NORC poll from March showed that just 38% of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of border security, including just two-thirds of self-identified Democrats. 59% of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of border security, including 33% of Democrats and 67% of Independents.
Additionally, as Biden announced new policies dramatically expanding the number of refugee admissions, just 24% of Americans said the country should admit more asylum seekers, while 43% said that number should be lower and 30% said it should remain the same.
But even as Biden launches his bid for a second term, he appears to have no interest in appeasing voters – and is now prepared to create an even worse border crisis that he is clearly responsible for. As his dismantling of Trump’s border policies and spending of tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to house illegal immigrants in hotels had already made clear, Biden is completely beholden to far-left immigration activists, even at his own political peril.
As former President Donald Trump recently said to voters in New Hampshire, Joe Biden has “destroyed our country, and yet he says… that he wants to finish the job.” Trump continued: “He wants to finish the job of destroying our country. But on that, he’s actually very close.”
Ending Title 42 appears to be the next step in Biden’s plan to “finish the job.” Barring any action from Congress, which at this point seems unlikely, Americans can only hope that November of 2024 is not too far away to stop Biden from completing his goal.
Aaron Flanigan is the pen name of a writer in Washington, D.C.
