To Crisis or Not to Crisis
The efforts of the Biden administration to avoid using the “c”-word, “crisis,” in regard to the U.S.-Mexico border might bring to mind another “c” word—comical.
That is, humor—of a dark kind—can be found when White House press secretary Jen Psaki won’t use the word “crisis,” but will allow that the situation on the border is a “big problem.” Similarly, homeland security secretary Alejandro Majorkas refused to call it a crisis, although he did concede that the situation was “undoubtedly difficult.”
In the meantime, the Biden administration has been freely using the word “crisis” refer to other concerns, including the economy, housing, guns, and Ethiopia. And so Politico–hardly a bastion of Biden-bashers–was moved to opine on March 19, “It’s puzzling that the Biden administration has taken the Orwellian position that the largest surge in migration in two decades is not to be described as a ‘crisis.'”
Yes, puzzling indeed. Still, at least one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, agrees that, yes, we do, in fact, face a crisis on the border; as he said on CNN, “It’s a crisis—oh, it’s a crisis.”
In the meantime, the Biden administration is scrambling around to open up detention facilities for migrants, from California to Texas to Virginia. And we can observe: By definition, a detention facility is a place from which the inmate can’t leave, and so it takes on the aspect of yet another “c” word, cage. As in, “kids in cages.”
Who can forget—who can count—all the times over the past four years that liberals and the left excoriated Trump, Kirstjen Nielsen, Stephen Miller, et al. for the putative atrocity of “putting kids in cages”? And yet when Trump supporters pointed out that it was actually Barack Obama’s administration that had begun the policy of detaining non-accompanied minors seeking asylum, the Main Stream Media went into overdrive, determined to annihilate any possibility that Obama and Trump policies could be conflated.
The matter came to a head last October, when Donald Trump himself, during his October 22 debate with Joe Biden, recalled the put-kids-in-cages accusation, and laid it at the feet of his predecessor, the 44th president:
They used to say I built the cages. And then they had a picture in a certain newspaper and it was a picture of these horrible cages and they said, look at these cages, President Trump built them. And then it was determined they were built in 2014. That was him. They built cages.
And in a report on the debate, the Washington Post conceded that yes, it was the Obama administration that had, in fact, built the cages. As the headline had it, “‘Kids in cages’: It’s true that Obama built the cages at the border.” Okay, so the Post just gave the game away. And yet then, in the next clause of the headline, the newspaper moved the goalpost: “But Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ immigration policy had no precedent.’”
So we can see: The Post conceded that Trump was right, and yet then sought to smudge the concession with a new accusation, concerning “zero tolerance.” Okay, we get it: If the Post has to concede that Trump was right about anything—it’s then sure to add some new condition, so it can keep attacking his credibility.
Meanwhile, in February, speaking of the new president, another MSM outlet, the Associated Press, conceded that, yes, the Biden administration is putting kids in cages, and yet then hastened to add that any notion that Biden is replaying Trump is “missing context.” Thus the MSM reminds us of its fallback rule: Trump bad, Democrats good.
And that’s why the MSM is happy to mostly ignore the border issue. Most journos do not wish to ask questions–let alone go digging for answers–about conditions in the detention facilities, nor do they worry about whether or not those entering the U.S. are being tested for Covid-19 (the answer, of course, is that they are not).
Yet the American people as a whole don’t seem to share the media elite’s la-de-da attitude; a March 15 Rasmussen poll found that 73 percent of Americans are “concerned” about the border situation, while 48 percent are “very concerned.”
So now we might ask: Why has the same border issue vexed three successive administrations? And forced the MSM into such contortions of like and dislike?
Moreover, thinking back to the Bush 43 administration, we can remember that immigration was then, too, a crisis.
The Three Factors Driving the Immigration Crisis
Yet we can also see that the immigration issue is driven by three ultimate factors: first, the U.S. is the richest country in the world; second, the U.S. is arguably the most wide-open country in the world; and third, the U.S. is one of the least-dense countries in the world.
Let’s unpack these points a bit: As to wealth, one forecaster predicts that U.S. GDP will reach $22.6 trillion this year. On a per capita basis, that’s not the highest, but on an aggregate basis, it sure is—and our GPD is, in fact, about a third larger than China’s. So plenty of wealth here, if you can get here.
Next, as to wide-openness, the U.S. is surely the land of the free—and just for openers, that puts us in sharp contrast to the People’s Republic of China. To be sure, many Americans no doubt wish that American freedom was more ordered and more law-abiding, and yet still, this is a place to aspire to, for all the reasons of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So it’s no wonder that many times more Chinese wish to come here, as opposed to Americans wishing to go there. Indeed, the U.S. has even been a magnet for Meghan and Prince Harry.
Finally, as to population density, measured by the number of residents per square mile of territory, the U.S. is, again, wide open. In fact, the U.S. ranks only 145th among the nations and states of the world on population density, in between such sparse places as the Faroe Islands and Kyrgyzstan.
And yet here’s the thing: Many nations on or near our border are much more densely populated. For instance, El Salvador is #26 in the world’s density ranking, while Guatemala is #54, Costa Rica is #87, and Mexico is #116. And if we look to the nearby Caribbean, we see can see even more densely packed places, such as Bermuda at #6, Barbados at #9, and Haiti at #18.
The bottom line is that we’re a rich, open, country with a light population density. And thus we are prone to the political equivalent of osmosis, the chemical process by which matter moves from one place to another. Here’s how Wikipedia defines osmosis:
The spontaneous net movement of solvent molecules through a selectively permeable membrane into a region of higher solute concentration, in the direction that tends to equalize the solute concentrations on the two sides.
In other words, osmosis occurs when there’s a differential: more crowded on one side of the membrane, less crowded on the other side. And so that’s what we’re seeing on the U.S. southern border today: the movement from more crowded to less crowded.
We might add that if you wish to prevent osmosis, you need to replace your permeable membrane with an impermeable membrane. You know, like a wall. But as Trump discovered, that’s not so easy.
So these are the factors that immigration hawks are up against. Indeed, these are the factors that even immigration doves are up against. And so now the dovish Biden administration must deal with the fact that the combined population of Central and South America, plus the Caribbean, is 648 million—and a lot of these people wish to leave their crowded, to say nothing of poor, homelands for the wide-open prosperity of the U.S.
And while we’re at it, we can add that the population of the world outside of the U.S. is about 7.4 billion. That’s a lot of people, and a 2018 Gallup poll found that about 10 percent—more than 750 million people—would migrate to the U.S. if they could. In other words, there’s a human wave poised to wash over the United States.
So what to do? How should we react? Since we don’t want to change our prosperity and we can’t change our geography, then we’ll have to look to our own security; that is, we’ll have to deal with the openness of our borders.
As we have seen, openness leads to osmosis—and uncontrolled osmosis can drown the organism. So maybe we need a impermeable membrane, also known as a wall, or a fence, or some other mechanism for stopping excess osmosis.
To be sure, right now, the Biden administration has zero intention of even thinking about a wall or some sort of barrier.
Yet even now, two months into the new administration, we can notice something interesting: Detentions are a kind of wall.
So the Biden folks might already be finding themselves on a sort of slippery, Trumpy, slope. That is, the Bidenites are continuing with Trump-style detentions (which involve blocking exit from a given place), and yet who can say that they won’t ultimately end up with some sort of barrier (which would involve blocking entry to a given place)?
To be sure, just as it shies away from using the word “crisis,” the Biden administration won’t ever wish to call a barrier a “wall,” and yet by any name, it will likely serve the same function.
Where Walls Work
After all, barriers work, to limit both exit and entry. That was a point made recently by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, as he campaigned for re-election:
You know, a lot of people want to come into Israel. In fact, I put up a fence, they call it a wall, but I prevented the overrunning of Israel, which is the only First World country that you can walk to from Africa. We would have had here already a million illegal migrants from Africa, and the Jewish state would have collapsed.
Strong commentary, and a strong prescription, for sure, from the leader of a different country in a different geopolitical environment. And yet across human history, the basic principle of blocking unwanted entry to one’s homeland is timeless. Yes, ten thousand years of human history tell us that walls work.
Of course, the Biden administration is far from friendly with Netanyahu, whom many on the left see, unadmiringly, as an Israeli version of Trump. So it would be enormously difficult, psychologically and politically, for the Bidenites to do anything of an, er, wall nature that would get a nod of approval from Netanyahu—to say nothing of the Dreaded Trump.
Israeli soldiers patrol along the concrete separation barrier bordering Abu Dis, West Bank, on March 26, 2006, in East Jerusalem, Israel. (Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
Yet still, the Biden administration has, yes, a crisis on its hands. And as we we have seen, the deep dynamics of prosperity, geography, and population density are driving that crisis. And so the administration’s apparent attempt to muzzle officials of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency won’t succeed, at least not for long, because the reality itself can’t be muzzled.
And yes, too, the border crisis has been further exacerbated by Biden’s talk of, and policy of, post-Trump openness. From the beginning, the Biden administration dismantled the Trump administration’s get-tough policies–raising, for instance refugee quotas–all as documented in voluminous articles by Breitbart News’ John Binder, Brandon Darby, and Neil Munro. In other words, the Biden administration might as well have been shining a bright neon sign at the border, “WE’RE OPEN!”
Indeed, just last week, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) volunteered that the 46th American president’s dovish manner had raised the migration hopes of many Central Americans; as AMLO told reporters, “They see him as the migrant president.” And on March 17, Texas Governor Greg Abbott warned that the migrant flow could increase “tenfold . . . a hundred-fold.”
Yet now, reacting to its own handiwork, the administration is trying to backpedal. That is, for the sake of himself and his party, Biden might not wish to be the presidente migrante, overseeing a gigantic human surge. Of course, in order to change that perception, he will have to change the reality–mere spin will not do the trick. To be sure, genuine change is hard, and yet Biden has always shown the ability to change when he has to; he wouldn’t have lasted as long as he has in politics without being flexible.
So it was interesting, if not surprising, that the New York Times reported on March 18 that the Biden administration has been quietly pressuring Mexico to stop the crossing of people from south of its border, with Central America, to its northern border, with the U.S. As the Times explained, it’s a move “echoing Trump-era policy.” Indeed, the “Remain in Mexico” policy was established by the Trump administration–and was proven to have worked in stemming the flow of migrants–but the new Biden administration ended the policy, and a record number of migrants have been coming. And, yes, to make matters worse, the migrants are being released into U.S. communities without being tested for COVID-19.
Migrants enter into the United States from Mexico on March 16, 2021, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. Some 50 asylum seekers were officially allowed to cross the Santa Fe International Bridge as part of the Biden administration’s unwinding of the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols, (MPP), also known as the “Remain in Mexico” immigration policy. Many of the asylum seekers, most from Central America, had been waiting in Mexico for more than a year. The immigrants are now free to travel to destinations within the United States pending asylum court hearings. (John Moore/Getty Images)
If the New York Times is to be believed, the Biden administration might be trying to reverse course on this crisis. Still, briefings to the New York Times are not the same thing as a major policy shift, and the signals are, even now, mixed; on March 19, Politico reported that the Biden White House has brought in Alida Garcia, formerly with the ardently pro-immigration group FWD.us, as “senior adviser for migration outreach and engagement.”
Yet still, it seems fair to speculate that at this pace, if the border is still in crisis a year from now, when Democrats begin thinking hard about the 2022 midterm elections–and the prospect of losing their slim majorities in Congress–Biden policy will have shifted still more Trumpward.
And if the border is still in crisis in the run-up to the 2024 election, when Biden himself probably expects to be on the ticket, well, expect some real hawkishness, of the type he showed when he pushed through the 1994 crime bill, that illiberal law that led to so much mass incarceration.
After all, two years after he passed that bill, in 1996, Biden was handily re-elected to a fifth term in his Delaware senate seat. Yes, decades after that, under pressure from the left during his 2020 presidential run, he apologized for the crime bill, and yet he never apologized for winning that fifth senate term.
So we can see: When politicians have their eye on a juicy electoral prize, mere consistency of policy is rarely allowed to get in the way of their hungry gaze—and of their eager grasp.
So could that mean that President Biden will actually build a wall? After all, Israel did it, and it worked. And yet today, U.S. immigration policy isn’t working; in fact, it won’t ever work, so long as those forces of prosperity, geography, and density are stronger than the power of our security.
Of course, whatever Biden might do—including whatever barrier he might build—to end the crisis, he could never actually call it a wall. Instead, maybe he could describe it as a “border marker,” or as a “mandatory Covid testing station.” Or maybe he’d call it an impermeable membrane—a membrane to block the the possibility of a Trump osmosis back to the White House.
If Biden described it that way, Democrats just might go for it.
Senate Judiciary Republicans Have a Laundry List of Questions About DHS, HHS, and the Border
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Posted: Mar 20, 2021 5:15 PM
Source: AP Photo/Susan Walsh, Pool
Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and a coalition of GOP members sent a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra over the "self-induced" crisis at the border. The senators want details on what DHS and HHS are doing to manage the escalating surge that's taking place.
According to the senators, Biden created the crisis at the border through a number of policy decisions, including rolling back the previous administration's policies that curtailed illegal immigration. Illegal aliens began flocking to the United States in anticipation of a Biden presidency in the months leading up to his inauguration.
"In keeping with this agenda, since January 20, President Biden and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have been aggressively reversing previous policies and replacing them with lax border security and enforcement policies that encourage immigrants to illegally migrate to the United States," the letter states. "President Biden also lent his support to a sweeping immigration proposal that, if passed, would grant mass amnesty with no strings attached to millions of illegal immigrants in the United States. Worse, the White House-backed immigration proposal makes no effort whatsoever to secure the southern border. Whether or not the Biden Administration wants to admit it, these policies have created a crisis situation."
The senators cited Customs and Border Protection (CBP) numbers as an area of grave concern. In January alone, 78,000 illegal aliens were detained, the highest number over the last decade. That number skyrocketed even more in February when 100,000 illegal aliens were detailed along the southern border, the highest number of apprehensions in February since 2006. For the month of March, CBP is on pace to surpass 120,000 apprehensions. The number of unaccompanied minors is four times higher than it was in the fall, with this year being anticipated as the highest number of unaccompanied minors and families in more than two decades.
Biden's catch and release policy was also called into question. Senators stated they heard reports that ICE plans to dump illegal aliens into the interior of the United States. If an area becomes too overwhelmed, they will be bused further away from the border.
There is concern over the potential for coronavirus to spread through the catch and release policies, particularly as most illegal aliens and unaccompanied minors have traveled in large groups. There's a possibility that they have been exposed to COVID but are asymptomatic, something that could change once they arrive at their final destination.
"Catch-and-release policies pose additional risks to public health in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The Biden Administration has expressed a purported commitment to ending the pandemic; however, news reports suggest that it now plans to keep some who are apprehended by DHS personnel in custody for just 72 hours before releasing them into American communities," the letter reads. "Furthermore, according to reports, in the event that processing centers become filled to capacity, there are plans to allow some detainees to complete their 72 hour wait in designated hotels in American cities such as McAllen and El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona."
The senators also raised questions about the Biden administration's vetting process, especially when unaccompanied minors are required to be sent to an HHS facility within 72 hours. The administration's plans to reopen facilities the Trump administration closed as well as proposals to open facilities in California and Virginia are "unprecedented and likely to create a complex logistical challenge."
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee laid out a number of specific questions they want answered by April 2:
- How many migrants has CBP encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border since January 20, 2021? Please provide daily totals and a breakdown of those apprehended by age and nationality. Among this group:
a. How many have been classified as unaccompanied alien children?
b. How many have been exempted from Title 42?
c. How many have claimed asylum?
d. How many have been screened by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services for credible fear?
e. How many have been tested for COVID-19 in total?
f. Of the migrants who have been released into the interior of the United States, how many have been tested for COVID-19?
g. How many have received a COVID-19 vaccine?
h. How many have been apprehended as part of large groups of 100 or more people?
- Among those who have been tested for COVID-19:
a. How long after entering DHS custody were they tested?
b. How long after testing negative must individuals wait before they are released into the U.S.?
c. Among those released into the U.S. after receiving a negative COVID-19 test, what follow-up does DHS do to ensure that they do not subsequently test positive?
d. How many have tested positive for COVID-19?
e. When an individual tests positive for COVID-19, what is the procedure DHS is following to ensure their health and safety and the health and safety of others?
f. How many of those who have tested positive for COVID-19 have required hospitalization?
g. How many have been identified as being part of clusters of other patients who have tested positive for COVID-19?
h. What steps is DHS taking to trace the movements of those who have tested positive and identify other possible cases during the period where they were likely to have been infectious?
- Among those who have been apprehended as part of large groups of 100 or more people, how many have tested positive for COVID-19?
- Please describe any current plans developed by DHS to safeguard American communities receiving migrants released from DHS custody from the spread of COVID-19.
- Among those migrants listed as unaccompanied alien children:
a. How many have been held at CBP facilities for longer than 72 hours?
b. How many are in HHS facilities where CDC guidelines to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have been relaxed?
- Following the termination of the April 13, 2018, Memorandum of Agreement between ORR, ICE, and CBP, what steps are being taken to ensure that weaker vetting requirements don’t endanger the safety of minors?
- What is the medical basis for not subjecting unaccompanied alien children to the Title 42 prohibition on entry, while keeping the Title 42 entry prohibition in place against other categories of aliens?
- Regarding aliens waiting in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols and who are currently being released into the United States:
a. Are those aliens being paroled into the United States, and if so, may they apply for employment authorization?
b. Are those aliens being released with a Notice to Appear in immigration court, and if so, how far out is the furthest date for such appearance that has been included in such a Notice?
- How many migrants does DHS currently project will cross the border this year? Of those, how many does DHS expect will be unaccompanied alien children? Please provide copies of all presentations or reports that have been prepared by DHS containing information related to the current and projected number of border crossings.
- Please provide a complete list of the current DHS or HHS facilities used to house UAC. With your response, for each facility on the list, please include: 1) the current number of UAC and staff, as well as maximum occupancy levels allowed under COVID-19 restrictions; 2) a detailed description of what, if any, COVID-19 protocols were changed in order to make room for additional UAC; 3) a copy of the facility’s operational plan to test for and prevent the spread of COVID-19; 4) a breakdown of monthly operating costs.
- Please provide a list of facilities that DHS and HHS plan to open in the future in order to house migrants and UAC, including their intended operating capacities under normal conditions and under current COVID-19 restrictions. How many facilities do DHS and HHS currently plan to open, and how many do you project that they will need to open by the end of 2021?
- Is DHS currently working to co-locate HHS personnel to U.S. Border Patrol stations?
- Please describe any plans for HHS personnel to match unaccompanied children with sponsors while they are still held at DHS facilities.
- On March 8, Secretary Mayorkas sent an email to the DHS workforce in which he stated that he had “activated the Volunteer Force to support Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they face a surge in migration along the Southwest Border.” The email also described the number of migrants showing at the southern border as “overwhelming.”
a. From which agencies are these volunteers being pulled, and what analysis has been done regarding the additional strain that this action will put on those agencies?
b. What is the level of exposure that this Volunteer Force will have to illegal immigrants who may have COVID-19?
c. What specific role with this Volunteer Force be fulfilling, how long will they be deployed, and what is the additional cost that the taxpayer will bear as a result of this deployed force?
The letter is co-signed by Sens. Tom Tillis (NC), Josh Hawley (MO), Ted Cruz (TX), Marsha Blackburn (TN), Mike Lee (UT), Tom Cotton (AR), and John Kennedy (LA).
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