The New York Post’s video showing more than 100 migrants tearing aside barriers and pushing their way past National Guard troops and into the United States near El Paso is shocking, but what’s really appalling is what the public won’t see:
Nearly all of those migrants being rewarded for their disdain for US sovereignty and assault on our troops by being released to live and work here indefinitely, if not forever.
The migrant surge at the border that has been ongoing since President Biden took office is really just a slow-motion version of what that video portrays.
In January, a “good month” at the border under the current administration’s standards, 4,000 migrants crossed illegally every day. In December, it was 8,000 a day.
Consequences
They’re coming illegally because they face few, if any, consequences, as Border Patrol Chief Jason Owens made clear in a refreshingly candid interview with CBS Newson on Thursday.
Owens explains that “everything revolves around being able to deliver a consequence for an action that you don’t want a person to commit,” and the chief was clear about the consequences he thinks should be imposed on migrants who enter illegally: “jail time”; deportation; and “being banned from being able to come back because [they] chose to come in the illegal way.”
Yet, while a few of the migrants who tore down barriers and assaulted soldiers were arrested, the rest were “brought into the US for processing,” which means they’ll answer some questions and quickly be released, as more than 3.3 million others encountered at the border under the current administration have been.
Honestly, though, how much respect for US sovereignty can you expect those migrants to demonstrate when administration officials show so little of it themselves?
The president and his officials long ago ditched deterrence as a border policy in lieu of allowing every illegal immigrant who can make it to this country to apply for asylum, regardless of the strength or validity of their claims.
Sovereignty on pause
Owens isn’t alone in saying that consequences are key to border security, and the concept itself isn’t novel. Seven years ago, Congress directed the Department of Homeland Security to create a “Consequence Delivery System” for those who enter illegally.
It’s essentially been a dead letter since Inauguration Day 2020, when one of the first acts of the new administration was to impose a 100-day “pause” on removals of aliens — criminals included — for no other reason than that Donald Trump was president when those removal orders were issued.
The latest Yahoo! News poll reveals a solid majority of Americans want consequences and deterrents at the border: 62% of registered voters favor “shuttering the border” once a daily threshold is met; 64% want to make it easier to expel migrants; and 56% want a border wall, up from 40% in a 2019 Gallup poll.
Neither the White House nor Congress has apparently gotten those messages — yet.
Andrew Arthur is the fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies.
