Bidens’ disinterest in protecting the US border – may ironically be his undoing. The undoing may come in several forms, but they are coming – if his team does not get serious about border protection. While an influx of illegal aliens may seem like a fast track to illegal vote harvesting, the reverse may happen.
In the first week of November 2021, we are watching an unprecedented breakdown of law – and law enforcement, which means respect for the law – by those governing and by those breaking the law.
Border arrests have topped a million in 2021, not including missed and admitted. Some put the total closer to two million. See, e.g., U.S. border arrests top 1 million in fiscal year 2021; U.S. officials come across nearly 2 million unauthorized migrants in FY 2021.
This has never happened before, and now we have “caravans” of South, Central, and globally attracted illegal aliens coming to the US, our southern border under siege, law enforcement disowned. The Biden-Harris team is, candidly, a disgrace.
But that is not the end of this discussion.
Three outcomes are possible, and if the Biden crowd were watching – rather than trying to manipulate, intimidate, and socialize the nation, defund police, disarm citizens, diminish respect for parents, and destabilize political institutions – they would see the future.
First, as the border crisis becomes an interior public health and safety crisis, with midnight drops of aliens, crime soaring, concerns over COVID persisting, security rising, states are starting to move on their own to demand federal accountability and even test the constitutional limits of joint border protection.
While a concerted, lawful, and coordinated effort by concerned States to sue the federal government, deploy police, and protect their populations is admirable, the time, coordination, and funding are limited. The threat to public health and safety is large enough; a federal response is likely critical.
Second, in consequence, the Biden team may come to their senses – and realize that, for whatever liberal, leftist, law-breaking benefits they imagined, this has become a boomerang. The reality is that law-abiding citizens – in states blue, purple, and red – are getting fed up. Border matter. Laws matter.
People are seeing schools, health care systems, public streets, health, and safety compromised. They are watching an abdication of responsibility – by this president, vice president, cabinet, and Congress – and saying “enough.” The penalty will be at the polls, and early signs are mounting. See, e.g., New Harvard-Harris Poll Shows Broad Opposition to Biden’s Border Policies; It’s not just Republicans. Everyone’s mad at Biden over migration.; Mo Brooks: Biden should be impeached for allowing illegal alien ‘invasion’ of southern border.
The third option, while less likely, is worrisome. It should keep Biden-Harris awake. If they let go of this kite string and mass swarms of illegal aliens penetrate the border in numbers that overwhelm law enforcement – which is largely based on deterrence – things will not go well.
The lesson of history is that people protect their families, homes, communities, states, and the country. The concern is that lawlessness, permitted and even encouraged by this Biden team, will redound to their overwhelming detriment – if Americans seek, for lack of a better phrase, vigilante justice.
The point is that laws must be enforced or public trust in their efficacy, and in leaders, slips. Rather ironically, the word “vigilante” comes from Spanish, originally Latin. It means “watchman” and derives from the Latin “vigliantem,” or “watchful, anxious, careful.”
When vigilant, we are alert. Attending a vigil, we are awake. And historically, when the frontier got too wild, “vigilance committees” formed.
The upside was people care about their homes and lives – and will not allow them to be lost. The downside was darker. Vigilante violence, made heroic in comics, is lawlessness. It undermines lawful institutions and trust in-laws by society, a shift from the public trust to distrust of institutions and leaders.
When public distrust grows to a level when vigilantes appear, the reality is that law enforcement, the rule of law, and respect for the law – as well as for leaders and institutions on republics depend – have vanished. The risks incurred are high, and the failure of leadership is clear.
The prayer is that we will not get to that point, but Biden-Harris and their indifferent, ignoble behavior is chaffing, clearly straining the public trust. Likely, people will exercise lawful, electoral, and constitutional prerogatives – using free speech, protests, demands, and their vote to put things right.
Fear is that Biden-Harris and their inept, leftist team – will not hear the public outcry, not understand how serious it is, do not want to hear the American people are fed up with open borders.
An administration that can deploy coercive power of the Justice Department against parents at school board meetings that have tried to restrict First, Second, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Tenth Amendment rights is on thin ice, on the wrong path.
Americans will not, in the end, put up with open borders. To think so is a profound misjudgment. Just as Americans will not put up forever with unconstitutional mandates, forced job loss, distorted public education, accelerating homicides, endless federal spending, runaway inflation, lack of accountability in other areas, the border is becoming a material concern for all Americans, not just those on the border.
Optimally, as these mega–caravans approach, the Biden team will finally realize borders matter, and whatever gains they thought went with illegal migration, they are now dwarfed by public distrust. Whatever misconceived value in promoting lawlessness has all vanished.
If Biden-Harris are smart, they will see Democrats are in trouble. Signs are everywhere. Opening the border was a bad call. Time exists to reverse course, protecting the interior from an unlawful onslaught. If they do not, governors – and citizens – are about fed up. 2022 could be the biggest rout in decades.
