During the Trump administration there was a running joke about “Infrastructure Week” — at least half a dozen times the White House said it would be focusing all its attention to roads, bridges, etc., and each time it didn’t happen.
The Biden administration is following suit on an even more urgent problem, and one of its own creation: the out-of-control border.
After repeated White House hints that the president might finally do something about the border — none of which resulted in anything — this week the president himself teased that maybe, possibly he might act.
During the first three years of this administration, about 3.5 million people with no right to enter the United States were released into the country by Biden’s DHS.
There were another 2 million “got-aways” — border-jumpers that agents saw on remote cameras or otherwise knew about but couldn’t stop.
On top of all that are an unknown number of foreigners who infiltrated the border without anyone in authority knowing about it all.
No country in history has ever allowed an illegal flow of that magnitude across its borders.
Biden created the disaster immediately upon taking office by unraveling all the border-stabilizing measures Trump had put in place.
Nonetheless, a president who cared about the rule of law and national security would have acknowledged his error and acted immediately to stop it.
Instead, all we got were assurances that all is well, please remain calm.
But there’s an election coming, and Biden’s opponent is Mr. Build-The-Wall himself.
The administration had to do something.
So, back in February, after the implosion of the deceptive Senate border bill (written in part by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas), the White House leaked multiple times that President Biden was considering a “bold move” to use “a sweeping presidential authority” to stop the hemorrhaging at the border.
Specifically, to limit the ability of border-jumpers to use bogus asylum claims as a means of staying in the country.
No one in the White House explained how that squared with the president’s assurance just a few weeks before that “I’ve done all I can do” to control the border.
Regardless, Biden was expected to make his “bold” and “sweeping” announcement during his leap-day visit to the Rio Grande (hurriedly arranged after Donald Trump announced he’d be going there).
But it didn’t happen.
Instead, Biden just blamed Republicans again for not passing the terrible Senate Mayorkas bill.
(While Biden dithered, there were another 190,000 “encounters” at the southern border in February, most of whom were let go.)
The State of the Union address in March was another opportunity for Biden to make his “bold” and “sweeping” announcement.
Again, all he ended up doing was blaming Republicans for the mess he himself caused.
(Meanwhile, another 190,000 people with no right to enter the United States were “encountered” at the southern border in March.)
What’s new this week is that the president himself this time has teased the possibility that he might actually start doing his job.
In an interview with the Spanish-language outlet Univision, Biden was asked about yet more White House leaks about bold and sweeping measures to shut the border.
“We’re examining whether or not I have that power,” Biden told the Univision interviewer.
He continued, “Some are suggesting that I should just go ahead and try it. And if I get shut down by the court, I get shut down by the court.”
This is a laughable lie, since it’s clear that he has — and has always had — the power to stop letting unauthorized foreigners in.
Specifically, Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act gives the president sweeping (even bold!) powers to keep people out. Here’s what it says: “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation . . . suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens.”
You don’t need a law degree to understand that.
This provision trumps (you should pardon the expression) all other rules about who gets to come here.
And the Supreme Court agrees.
When President Trump used this provision in the falsely labeled “Muslim ban,” the justices upheld his legal authority to do so, writing that this provision “exudes deference to the President in every clause” — in other words, he can keep out anyone he wants.
Will anything come of it this time?
White House leakers told the news site Axios that “such an executive order is likely by the end of April.”
I’ll believe it when I see it.
Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.
