Democrats’ ‘Lost Hope’ in Kamala
Even for the Left, it's the clown-show cringe.
It’s funny when The New York Times comes under fire among liberals for saying something critical about Vice President Kamala Harris. A front-page story on Feb. 6 was headlined “Frustrated Harris Struggles to Define Her Role.” This somehow required three reporters — Zolan Kanno-Youngs, Katie Rogers and Peter Baker.
The passage that spurred all the fits came inside the paper, of course, on page A-13. It wasn’t hostile fire from Republicans. It was internal: “(T)he painful reality for Ms. Harris is that in private conversations over the past few months, dozens of Democrats in the White House, on Capitol Hill and around the nation — including some who helped put her on the party’s 2020 ticket — said she had not risen to the challenge of proving herself as a future leader of the party, much less the country.”
But wait, the next sentence was even worse: “Even some Democrats whom her own advisers referred reporters to for supportive quotes confided privately that they had lost hope in her.” Even the authorized anonymous sources went rogue.
The Times also noted that author Chris Whipple recently quoted Biden as calling Harris a “work in progress.” They added comments from chief of staff Ron Klain, who served as chief of staff to two vice presidents (Al Gore and Joe Biden). He said vice presidents often “take grief” but go on “to prove skeptics wrong.” This all recalls Dana Carvey’s impression of George H.W. Bush claiming his vice president, Dan Quayle, was “still gaining acceptance.”
In an angry video tweet, Democrat pollster Cornell Belcher argued there was an “implicit gender bias” in the Times story, complaining that unlike male vice presidents for centuries, “the woman is not accorded the presumption of competence.” It’s like Belcher can’t remember Quayle. Then there’s the case of Dick Cheney, where he was presented as Darth Vader and George W. Bush suffered the presumption of incompetence.
What makes Democrats nervous is Harris’ cockeyed utterances, which can easily go viral. Most recently, she said, “We in government have great possibility in terms of the range at which we work as government.”
The Times story presents the sentence, “You got to know what you stand for and, when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for,” and then adds, “What that translates to in tangible terms is less clear.” They noted after a “disastrous” interview in 2021 with NBC anchorman Lester Holt, she “all but went into a bunker for about a year.”
The Harris defenders complain that Biden’s age is her greatest handicap. At the website Puck, former ABC White House correspondent Tara Palmeri lamented, “Biden’s age is a huge liability for him, and that’s one reason why Harris is the subject of such excessive criticism. Of course, some of the antagonism is sexist and racist, the unfortunately predictable response in some corners to her historic role.”
Then, Palmeri added her own advice, that she should be by his side at more events: “The older he gets, his re-election depends on her success just as much as his. And taking her off the ticket is not an option.”
There’s not a single Republican quoted in this supposedly outrageous anti-Kamala piece. But one Democrat, John Morgan, explicitly said the prospect of Harris suddenly becoming president is “one of the most hard-hitting arguments against Biden” in 2024. That underlines how many Republicans feel a little glee at the idea of Harris remaining on this ticket as Biden’s apparent infirmities increase.
Reader Interactions
Kamala’s ‘Root Causes’ Strategy to Shutter Illegal Immigration
And the failed, unreported history that precedes it.
Vice President Kamala Harris spiked the football recently as though she had scored big time in her two-year effort to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration from Central America. Some $950 million in new pledges by private companies, added to the $3.2 billion pledged since May 2021, are already creating “positive trends,” Harris claimed in a February 6 press conference announcement.
“The research is pretty clear in telling us that, when we create economic opportunity in these regions, as we have done, we can potentially have a great impact on those who otherwise would leave home and allow them an opportunity to stay in their home countries, which is where they prefer to be,” Harris told reporters.
But the polar opposite is true about the research she claimed, as my forthcoming book, Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History reveals for the first time. Rarely if ever reported before, during or after all prior Harris press conferences like this one is the fact that Europe has tried variations of “root causes” migration alleviation strategies for more than 30 years already. A trove of good, corroborating research exists that actually debunks the policy as a total failure – long years before Biden’s government adopted the European idea as its own.
As my book explores, European anti-borders liberals first concocted the root-causes doctrine in the early 1980s. Through the 1990s, it became engrained in European thinking, according to a 2016 Peace Research Institute of Oslo paper. The basic theory was that, if Europeans invested in fixing broken nations, their citizens would stay home.
But the most cursory glance at Europe’s experience with the doctrine show the strategy simply never worked.
For example, the European Union-funded policy think tank MIGNEX reviewed some ten studies spanning more than a decade where development aid was invested to reduce Europe-bound emigration from poor countries.
“In its current form, development aid does not seem to be big enough to create the underlying changes that effect migration decisions,” the MIGNEX report concluded, in part. “In cases where we do see a deterrent effect of aid on migration, a noticeable impact would require an unrealistic increase in aid.”
Writing for the International Institute of Social Studies in 2007, social scientist Hein De Haas concluded that, “Besides the limited scope and credibility of such policies, empirical and theoretical evidence strongly suggests that economic and human development increases people’s capabilities and aspirations and therefore tends to coincide with an increase rather than a decrease in emigration.”
U.S. media doesn’t seem to want to catch on. The New York Times’s story of the February 6 press conference came close to that flame with a passing admission that administration officials “could not specifically document the effects” Harris had just claimed.
That’s because U.S. policy changes that close or open the gate are the main causes of surges and retreats of illegal immigration, according to my interviews hundreds of immigrants. Like a Haitian named Alexandre I met one night in the deep southern Mexican city of Tapachula.
In 2016, he and his wife set off through South America on their way to the American border based on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign rhetoric about opening the southern border and welcoming in all comers. But Donald Trump won in a surprise upset, and he’d campaigned on building a big beautiful wall to block illegal entrants like Alexandre.
So they stayed in Chile, not wanting to waste smuggling fees only to wind up stuck in Mexico. Were Alexandre and his wife willing to gamble the necessary $7,000 in smuggling money they’d saved up working in Chile for his family to probably end up stuck in northern Mexico for the years of Trump, I asked?
Not only no, but hell no, he responded.
“That money, in order to come to the United States…I worked hard for that money. I wouldn’t have spent that money when Trump was president.”
But when Biden won office, the couple saw that Biden’s DHS started letting Haitians in who reached the border, by the thousands, and only then decided the time was right to risk the smuggling cash. They did what any family would do:
“We talked it over with the family, and we decided to make the trip,” he explained. “Under this president, it seemed like things are different.”
One day, the United States is going to follow the Europeans, who have ditched root-causes doctrines in favor of what actually works on migrant decision-making.
Since 2015, a half dozen European countries have erected some 800 miles of border walls, in Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland. These ended mass migrations through their territories, not some sudden new demand for employment in Afghanistan and Syria.
The European collective uses air repatriation flights now, and other deterrence-based projects that changed immigrant minds faster than any outbreak of government integrity in home countries. They now understand that policies like walls and air repatriation are what make immigrants want to stay home and keep their money.
The Biden administration’s dedication to the bankrupted “root causes” doctrine belies other logic fallacies. For instance, it only targets Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. But more than 40 percent of everyone reaching the southern border during this crisis hail from 100-plus other wrecked countries like Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Are Americans expected to rebuild those nations too, or any new poor nation whose citizens decide to come next? Proponents look away from this worthy question.
And there’s this: The project does not account for the fact that America is as terrible at nation-building. Its endeavors failing even after trillions of dollars in expenditures and deployment of American troops. Utopian ideals to rebuild Central America do not bake into the cake the terrible nation-building failures of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.
As much as the beauty queen contestant in all of us would like to see world hunger alleviated, it is unfortunately here to stay for a long time. In the end, only enforcement policies that lower smuggler fee return on investment will end this long historic crisis, very well and very fast.
Vice President Kamala Harris spiked the football recently as though she had scored big time in her two-year effort to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration from Central America. Some $950 million in new pledges by private companies, added to the $3.2 billion pledged since May 2021, are already creating “positive trends,” Harris claimed in a February 6 press conference announcement.
“The research is pretty clear in telling us that, when we create economic opportunity in these regions, as we have done, we can potentially have a great impact on those who otherwise would leave home and allow them an opportunity to stay in their home countries, which is where they prefer to be,” Harris told reporters.
But the polar opposite is true about the research she claimed, as my forthcoming book, Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History reveals for the first time. Rarely if ever reported before, during or after all prior Harris press conferences like this one is the fact that Europe has tried variations of “root causes” migration alleviation strategies for more than 30 years already. A trove of good, corroborating research exists that actually debunks the policy as a total failure – long years before Biden’s government adopted the European idea as its own.
As my book explores, European anti-borders liberals first concocted the root-causes doctrine in the early 1980s. Through the 1990s, it became engrained in European thinking, according to a 2016 Peace Research Institute of Oslo paper. The basic theory was that, if Europeans invested in fixing broken nations, their citizens would stay home.
But the most cursory glance at Europe’s experience with the doctrine show the strategy simply never worked.
For example, the European Union-funded policy think tank MIGNEX reviewed some ten studies spanning more than a decade where development aid was invested to reduce Europe-bound emigration from poor countries.
“In its current form, development aid does not seem to be big enough to create the underlying changes that effect migration decisions,” the MIGNEX report concluded, in part. “In cases where we do see a deterrent effect of aid on migration, a noticeable impact would require an unrealistic increase in aid.”
Writing for the International Institute of Social Studies in 2007, social scientist Hein De Haas concluded that, “Besides the limited scope and credibility of such policies, empirical and theoretical evidence strongly suggests that economic and human development increases people’s capabilities and aspirations and therefore tends to coincide with an increase rather than a decrease in emigration.”
U.S. media doesn’t seem to want to catch on. The New York Times’s story of the February 6 press conference came close to that flame with a passing admission that administration officials “could not specifically document the effects” Harris had just claimed.
That’s because U.S. policy changes that close or open the gate are the main causes of surges and retreats of illegal immigration, according to my interviews hundreds of immigrants. Like a Haitian named Alexandre I met one night in the deep southern Mexican city of Tapachula.
In 2016, he and his wife set off through South America on their way to the American border based on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s campaign rhetoric about opening the southern border and welcoming in all comers. But Donald Trump won in a surprise upset, and he’d campaigned on building a big beautiful wall to block illegal entrants like Alexandre.
So they stayed in Chile, not wanting to waste smuggling fees only to wind up stuck in Mexico. Were Alexandre and his wife willing to gamble the necessary $7,000 in smuggling money they’d saved up working in Chile for his family to probably end up stuck in northern Mexico for the years of Trump, I asked?
Not only no, but hell no, he responded.
“That money, in order to come to the United States…I worked hard for that money. I wouldn’t have spent that money when Trump was president.”
But when Biden won office, the couple saw that Biden’s DHS started letting Haitians in who reached the border, by the thousands, and only then decided the time was right to risk the smuggling cash. They did what any family would do:
“We talked it over with the family, and we decided to make the trip,” he explained. “Under this president, it seemed like things are different.”
One day, the United States is going to follow the Europeans, who have ditched root-causes doctrines in favor of what actually works on migrant decision-making.
Since 2015, a half dozen European countries have erected some 800 miles of border walls, in Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Poland. These ended mass migrations through their territories, not some sudden new demand for employment in Afghanistan and Syria.
The European collective uses air repatriation flights now, and other deterrence-based projects that changed immigrant minds faster than any outbreak of government integrity in home countries. They now understand that policies like walls and air repatriation are what make immigrants want to stay home and keep their money.
The Biden administration’s dedication to the bankrupted “root causes” doctrine belies other logic fallacies. For instance, it only targets Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. But more than 40 percent of everyone reaching the southern border during this crisis hail from 100-plus other wrecked countries like Venezuela, Haiti, Cuba, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Are Americans expected to rebuild those nations too, or any new poor nation whose citizens decide to come next? Proponents look away from this worthy question.
And there’s this: The project does not account for the fact that America is as terrible at nation-building. Its endeavors failing even after trillions of dollars in expenditures and deployment of American troops. Utopian ideals to rebuild Central America do not bake into the cake the terrible nation-building failures of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.
As much as the beauty queen contestant in all of us would like to see world hunger alleviated, it is unfortunately here to stay for a long time. In the end, only enforcement policies that lower smuggler fee return on investment will end this long historic crisis, very well and very fast.
Reader Interactions
YOU KNOW HARRIS FROM MEXIFORNIA WASN'T URGING MIDDLE AMERICA
TO VOTE FOR BIDEN. THE DEMS HAVE SCREWED THE AMERICAN MIDDLE
CLASS SINCE BILLARY CLINTON AND THEN SENATOR JOE BIDEN
PERPETRATED NAFTA.
Kamala Harris Urges Illegal Migrants to Help Elect Joe Biden
Sen. Kamala Harris promised Sunday to reduce detention space for migrants as she asked an illegal immigrant activist to help Joe Biden win the election.
BLOG EDITOR: WHY DIDN’T LAWYER KAMALA HARRIS TELL THE ILLEGAL TO GO HOME??? SHE’S THE ONE WHO AS ATTORNEY GENERAL OF CA DECLARED THAT NEARLY HALF THE MURDERS IN MEXIFORNIA ARE BY MEX GANGS!
“I’m undocumented … I can’t vote …What can we do during this election to help make sure that we get you elected?” asked Astrid Silva, who was brought into the United States as a child by her illegal migrant parents.
“You can tell people who can vote what life is like for you now, and what life can be like,” Vice President nominee Harris told the Nevada-based political organizer who runs the pro-amnesty Dream Big Nevada group, adding that:
We are committed to shutting down private detention centers and ending policies that have been about separating children from their parents at the border.
Harris’s comments may be a coded message to would-be illegal migrants and their supportive legal-immigrant relatives.
For example, if implemented, Harris’s promise to start “shutting down private detention centers” could cripple border enforcement. If the enforcement agency does not have commercial prisons to hold detainees prior to their asylum hearings, the agency would be forced to release waves of job-seeking migrants into the U.S. labor market.
Similarly, Harris’s promise to end “policies … about separating children” echoes the media-magnified demand by pro-migration activists that officials release migrant mothers and children when they cross the border. That demand would let migrant families freely travel to relatives — including their illegal migrant husbands and fathers — who are working illegally in the United States.
Last week in Nevada, I caught up with my friend @Astrid_NV, to discuss the Biden-Harris plan for immigration reform and how Dreamers can make a difference in this election.
If you're eligible to vote, show up at the ballot box for those who can't: https://t.co/VbrfuqVy9P. pic.twitter.com/knU2qFSYmn
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) November 1, 2020
Like Biden, Harris pushed the Cold War “Nation of Immigrants” claim, even though only about 10 percent of people in the United States are legal immigrants:
We want to have a president who understands we are a nation of immigrants. This is a country that was built and that has derived its strength from immigrants coming here over the generations.
Harris also tried to blur the legal and civic differences between illegal migrants, legal immigrants, and American citizens. For example, she told Silva:
Define who you are, and you tell the world who you are. Don’t let anybody ever put you in a box because they have a limited perspective on who can do what and who can be one.
[…]
We are all in this together. And so, chin up, shoulders back, right? We speak our truth and know that there will always be people applauding and supporting that even if you can’t see them at that one moment, know that there are so many of us who are supporting your leadership and the power of your voice. It’s really important.
Harris also claimed President Donald Trump vilified immigrants: “We’ve seen under the current president the kind of vitriol, the kind of hate, the vilification of immigrants in such a horrible way.”
But a Washington Post poll showed in April that Latinos are the strongest advocates for a near-total halt to legal immigration during the coronavirus epidemic and economic crash.
Biden’s 2020 plan promises to “reassert America’s commitment to asylum-seekers and refugees,” wipe out Trump’s asylum reforms, bar any deportations for 100 days, and end migration enforcement against illegal aliens unless they commit a felony.
Joe Biden’s asylum and open-border policies will destroy the American middle class by releasing millions of foreign migrants into the United States, Stephen Miller told reporters October 28. https://t.co/BaeLSIud7y
— Breitbart News (@BreitbartNews) October 28, 2020
Biden also wants to let companies import more visa workers, let mayors import temporary workers, and allow an unlimited flow of foreign graduates through U.S. universities into white-collar jobs. Biden would “exempt from any cap [the] recent graduates of Ph.D. programs in STEM fields.”
Biden also wants to accelerate the inflow of chain migration migrants and dramatically accelerate the inflow of poor refugees to at least 125,000 per year.
“The influx of low wage workers from all across the world will drive down incomes, drive down wages, deplete the middle class, bankrupt Social Security, bankrupt Medicare, bankrupt Medicaid, bankrupt federal entitlements, overcrowd schools, and overcrowd every hospital in the middle of a pandemic,” White House aide Stephen Miller told reporters on October 28.
“It is an assault on reason, it is an assault on law enforcement, and it’s an assault on the very idea of having a country, having a Republic,” Miller added. “This is not about left or right or Center. This is about between having a country, or not even having a country.”
House Republicans move to forbid illegal aliens voting in DC
The House of Representatives voted to overturn a D.C. law that would allow illegal aliens to vote in local elections.
In October 2022, the D.C. Council passed the "Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act," which gave legal non-citizens and illegal aliens the right to vote in the nation's capital.
The GOP-led House voted 260-173 to overturn the new law. Forty-two Democrats joined the Republicans in opposing it.
For the law to be struck down, the Democrat-led Senate must vote against it, and the president must sign it.
According to NBC News, approximately 50,000 residents in D.C. are non-citizens.
In January 2023, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced legislation that would prevent illegal aliens from voting in D.C.
According to the Daily Caller, the legislation would prohibit any federal funds from being used by the district to allow non-citizens to vote in any election.
Prior to introducing the legislation, Cruz said:
Allowing non-citizens, including aliens occupying our nation illegally, to exercise a right reserved for American citizens not only violates the constitutional principles our nation was founded upon, but also naively invites foreign meddling in our elections.
Voting is a privilege and the tool by which American citizens exercise their say in who leads our country, how we spend our tax dollars, and what policies should be instituted. I am vehemently against unconstitutionally cheapening the votes of American citizens and ignoring the rule of law in this nation.
If the law were to pass, it would allow foreign nationals who pledged allegiance to other countries, such as Russia and China, to vote in D.C. elections.
Jason Snead, executive director of Honest Elections Project Action, stated that "eighty-four percent of Americans agree that only citizens should have the right to vote." A poll cited by The Hill bears this out.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the GOP is reviving the "legacy of slavery" by prohibiting non-citizens from voting in D.C.
Ocasio-Cortez said that the GOP's opposition to the law is "singling out the residents of the District of Columbia and expanding in the history of disenfranchisement that goes all the way back to the legacy of slavery."
She falsely accused Republicans of denying Black Americans the right to vote. Republicans "claim they believe in the sacred right to vote while denying that right to vote to an overwhelmingly Black city."
House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) gave a speech on the House floor condemning the non-citizens voting rights law. "A healthy republic has two basic duties: guarantee free and fair elections; and protect life, liberty, and property from violence," he said.
Image: Lars Di Scenza via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).
WE CAN'T SAVE OUR COUNTRY UNTIL WE REMOVE JOE BIDEN AND PUT HIM IN GITMO ALONG WITH HIS PACK OF BRIBES SUCKING BIDEN PARASITE LAWYERS.
The House of Representatives voted to overturn a D.C. law that would allow illegal aliens to vote in local elections.
In October 2022, the D.C. Council passed the "Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act," which gave legal non-citizens and illegal aliens the right to vote in the nation's capital.
The GOP-led House voted 260-173 to overturn the new law. Forty-two Democrats joined the Republicans in opposing it.
For the law to be struck down, the Democrat-led Senate must vote against it, and the president must sign it.
According to NBC News, approximately 50,000 residents in D.C. are non-citizens.
In January 2023, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) introduced legislation that would prevent illegal aliens from voting in D.C.
According to the Daily Caller, the legislation would prohibit any federal funds from being used by the district to allow non-citizens to vote in any election.
Prior to introducing the legislation, Cruz said:
Allowing non-citizens, including aliens occupying our nation illegally, to exercise a right reserved for American citizens not only violates the constitutional principles our nation was founded upon, but also naively invites foreign meddling in our elections.
Voting is a privilege and the tool by which American citizens exercise their say in who leads our country, how we spend our tax dollars, and what policies should be instituted. I am vehemently against unconstitutionally cheapening the votes of American citizens and ignoring the rule of law in this nation.
If the law were to pass, it would allow foreign nationals who pledged allegiance to other countries, such as Russia and China, to vote in D.C. elections.
Jason Snead, executive director of Honest Elections Project Action, stated that "eighty-four percent of Americans agree that only citizens should have the right to vote." A poll cited by The Hill bears this out.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said the GOP is reviving the "legacy of slavery" by prohibiting non-citizens from voting in D.C.
Ocasio-Cortez said that the GOP's opposition to the law is "singling out the residents of the District of Columbia and expanding in the history of disenfranchisement that goes all the way back to the legacy of slavery."
She falsely accused Republicans of denying Black Americans the right to vote. Republicans "claim they believe in the sacred right to vote while denying that right to vote to an overwhelmingly Black city."
House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) gave a speech on the House floor condemning the non-citizens voting rights law. "A healthy republic has two basic duties: guarantee free and fair elections; and protect life, liberty, and property from violence," he said.
Image: Lars Di Scenza via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped).
WE CAN'T SAVE OUR COUNTRY UNTIL WE REMOVE JOE BIDEN AND PUT HIM IN GITMO ALONG WITH HIS PACK OF BRIBES SUCKING BIDEN PARASITE LAWYERS.
Biden Finally Finds a Balloon He Wants To Take Down: Surveillance Blimps at the Southern Border
Immigration crisis expected to worsen as president yanks airships used to monitor 'gotaways'
February 9, 2023
After refusing for days last week to shoot down China's spy balloon, the Biden administration finally found airships they are happy to take down: surveillance blimps that monitor the southern border.
The Biden administration is taking the blimps, which allow agents to detect illegal migrant activity over long periods of time, out of commission due to funding cuts, Fox News reported. While there were 12 surveillance balloons in operation last year, only four remain.
Customs and Border Protection agents told Fox that the removal of the blimps, known in the agency as their "Eyes in the Sky," will drastically hinder their ability to track illegal immigrants who evade detention at the border. As of January, there were 1.2 million "gotaways" since Biden took office.
The news of Biden's groundings comes a week after the president waited days to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon traversing the continental United States. The aircraft was first reported on Jan. 31, floating over military and nuclear bases in Montana. The military finally shot down the vessel over the Atlantic Ocean on Feb. 4.
Biden didn't show the same indecision with the balloons guarding the border: The security devices were taken down across the border on Jan. 1 after funding dried up.
"Although the Border Patrol’s number of aerostats will be reduced, the Border Patrol will continue to use aerostats throughout FY 2023," a Border Patrol official told Fox.
The decision to ground the surveillance balloons comes amid a worsening migrant crisis on both borders. More migrants were processed in December than ever before—251,487 in total.
Border agents in New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont reported a 743 percent increase in migrant encounters between October and December compared with the same months in 2021.
Customs and Border Protection, meanwhile, this month distributed a poster to its officers celebrating "black resistance," featuring anti-police advocates like Colin Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter.
After refusing for days last week to shoot down China's spy balloon, the Biden administration finally found airships they are happy to take down: surveillance blimps that monitor the southern border.
The Biden administration is taking the blimps, which allow agents to detect illegal migrant activity over long periods of time, out of commission due to funding cuts, Fox News reported. While there were 12 surveillance balloons in operation last year, only four remain.
Customs and Border Protection agents told Fox that the removal of the blimps, known in the agency as their "Eyes in the Sky," will drastically hinder their ability to track illegal immigrants who evade detention at the border. As of January, there were 1.2 million "gotaways" since Biden took office.
The news of Biden's groundings comes a week after the president waited days to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon traversing the continental United States. The aircraft was first reported on Jan. 31, floating over military and nuclear bases in Montana. The military finally shot down the vessel over the Atlantic Ocean on Feb. 4.
Biden didn't show the same indecision with the balloons guarding the border: The security devices were taken down across the border on Jan. 1 after funding dried up.
"Although the Border Patrol’s number of aerostats will be reduced, the Border Patrol will continue to use aerostats throughout FY 2023," a Border Patrol official told Fox.
The decision to ground the surveillance balloons comes amid a worsening migrant crisis on both borders. More migrants were processed in December than ever before—251,487 in total.
Border agents in New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont reported a 743 percent increase in migrant encounters between October and December compared with the same months in 2021.
Customs and Border Protection, meanwhile, this month distributed a poster to its officers celebrating "black resistance," featuring anti-police advocates like Colin Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter.
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