Title 42 Expired: Immigration Catastrophe Is Coming and Biden Is To Blame

This week, the Biden Administration allowed Title 42 to expire.  This Trump Administration policy provided expedited removal of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers, sending them back across the southern border to await the disposition of their cases.  The lifting of this policy will unleash a true immigration crisis on our southern border – a crisis entirely of President Biden’s making.

In just the first four days of May, 8,000 illegal immigrants crossed the border into Texas in anticipation of the expulsion policy being lifted.  In just one single Mexican city, there are an estimated 40,000 people waiting to cross our border.  We should remember that New York City declared a state of emergency after trying to care for 37,500 migrants; imagine what the pressure will be like on a border city like El Paso in the coming days as the surge continues. With 14,000 illegal immigrants projected to cross the border every single day, our already overstretched immigration system is almost certainly going to be overwhelmed.  Biden’s decision to send 1,500 troops to the border – while sounding nice – isn’t actually meant to stop illegal crossings.  They’re going to the border to help in-process illegal immigrants – to assist with administrative paper-pushing rather than the securing of our border.

This carries real and serious consequences for the American people.  We have inadequate resources to address this influx of immigrants, and Biden’s haphazard efforts to house, bus, educate, and care for them will cost the American taxpayers dearly and strain the resources of local communities.

The cost won’t just be financial, though, as far more than illegal immigrants will be crossing our southern border in the coming months.  Drug cartels are going to have a field day: They already control access to border crossings on Mexico’s side, and they will undoubtedly use this opportunity to smuggle more drugs into our country than ever before – especially deadly fentanyl – and continue poisoning our towns and communities.

An overwhelmed border poses genuine national security risks, too.  Over the past seven months, 69 individuals on the United States’ terror watchlist have been caught trying to cross our southern border.  Think about how many probably made it in during that time, and further consider how many more will make it in when the border is engulfed by chaos.  The Biden Administration is abdicating its responsibility to keep Americans safe by abandoning the rule of law on our border.

In recent weeks, Biden’s officials have claimed the Administration will replace Title 42’s policies with those of Title 8, which allow for “expedited removals” of illegal immigrants seeking asylum.  But this is all smoke and mirrors. Title 8’s expedited removal is a joke: What Team Biden is really proposing is a return to the broken process of asylum claims, wherein illegal immigrants are allowed to live in America as they await nonexistent future court dates.  This catch-and-release policy is little more than a speed bump for illegal immigrants; it won’t deter them from crossing the border and it won’t effectively process them once they are here.  If you want proof, just look at the numbers: As of December 2022, there were already nearly 1.6 million pending asylum hearings.  We can’t even process illegal immigrants who are already here, let alone the many more the end of Title 42 will bring.  Title 8 is not a replacement for Title 42.

Even if it was a perfect legal replacement, Biden’s promises are still empty.  There isn’t a crisis on our southern border because we lack adequate policies to deal with it. The Biden Administration entered office with excellent tools to manage the influx of migrants: The Trump Administration’s Remain in Mexico agreements.  Even after a court forced Biden to keep these policies in place, his Administration simply chose not to enforce them.  If the Biden Administration wouldn’t enforce those effective policies, there’s no reason we should expect it to now enforce the law under Title 8.

For four years, the Trump Administration managed to keep illegal immigration under control by negotiating common sense agreements with Mexico and enforcing the rule of law at home.  Why can’t Team Biden do the same?  Because it is dominated by individuals who either do not believe in the concept of national borders or are petrified they might upset their progressive base by actually enforcing the rule of law.  The Trump Administration’s commitment to serving the American people has been replaced by poisonous ideology and political cowardice.  This is why the end of Title 42 will only intensify the crisis President Biden has created.