By Allan Wall, February 9, 2021
Current President Joe Biden says he wants to reverse the “chaos, cruelty and confusion” of former President Donald Trump’s border policies.
So what sort of border policy is developing under the Biden administration?
Already, an avalanche of illegal border entries is being reported by Border Patrol agents.
This is unsurprising. After all, they follow the U.S. news in Latin America (and elsewhere).
As a resident of Latin America for many years, I can assure you that Latin Americans closely follow U.S. immigration policy and debates about it. They know U.S. immigration loopholes better than Americans do. Many see the Biden presidency as their golden opportunity to get into the United States.
Let’s look at some ongoing developments:
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS
One of Trump’s great accomplishments was his use of foreign policy to improve immigration policy, by making deals with Mexico and the Central American nations of Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras.
These are ending. Mexico is already not taking non-Mexican “family units” removed from the United States, and Biden is scrapping Trump’s deals with the three Central American countries. Once again, this encourages Latin American leaders to use the United States as a vast human dumping ground, rather than solve their own problems for their own people.
CATCH AND RELEASE
Yes, the famous “catch and release” policy is being used again, the insane practice in which detained illegal aliens are simply released on U.S. soil and given a notice to appear later (wink, wink, nod, nod) at an immigration court. Amazingly, most don’t show up. Why should they? They’ve already achieved their goal of getting into the U.S.A.
Now illegal alien detainees can only be held for 72 hours, after which they are released onto U.S. soil.
Meanwhile, the so-called Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which doesn’t actually fight poverty but systematically destroys the reputations of conservatives and immigration-enforcement proponents, is offended by the phrase “catch and release.” Not the practice, but the terminology! Efren Olivares of the SPLC says the term comes from fishing and is thus “dehumanizing.”
So what should we call it? According to Olivares, people should “simply say they are allowed to continue their immigration proceedings from the community.”
WHO CAN BE DEPORTED?
Biden promised to shut down most deportations the first 100 days of his administration. As I reported two weeks ago, a federal judge put a stay on that order.
The problem is that the administration can just change policy by simply not enforcing the law.
On February 3, the administration sent out word that immigration agents can’t even warn illegal aliens that they could be deported, because that causes “undue stress.”
Poor babies. Just because they enter our country illegally, disrespect our law and seek to game the system, doesn’t mean we should place any “undue stress” on them. Have a heart!
It’s not like they’re American citizens, who face all sorts of “undue stress” over the economy, COVID-19, political division, censorship, losing their jobs, or crime. Who cares about them?
Just don’t put any “undue stress” on the illegal aliens.
In related news, deportation flights to Haiti have been halted, and a scheduled deportation flight to Africa was cancelled in part because it’s Black History Month. Hey, that means American Black History Month. I don’t think it’s a thing in Africa, and even if it is, they can celebrate by going home.
Exactly what sort of deportation system would a Biden administration have eventually? According to the Washington Post, Biden deportation would be focused on “national security threats, recent border crossers and people completing prison and jail terms for aggravated felony convictions.”
According to ICE Acting Director Tae Johnson, it wouldn’t however apply generally to “drug based crimes (less serious offenses), simple assault, DUI, money laundering, property crimes, fraud, tax crimes, solicitation, or charges without convictions,” which means aliens committing those crimes wouldn’t be deported.
Don’t you feel safer already?
An ICE official speaking off the record put it this way, “They’ve abolished ICE without abolishing ICE. The pendulum swing is so extreme. It literally feels like we’ve gone from the ability to fully enforce our immigration laws to now being told to enforce nothing.”
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