PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico — “Mission Accomplished” is how President Biden, his top deputies and media lackeys are characterizing the “tough” new border management plan that on May 12 replaced the pandemic-control Title-42 rapid expulsion measure.
Administration officials boasted — and legacy media trilled — that, thanks to tough-as-nails sanctions they’d apply to all illegal crossers, a massive, expected border surge never materialized and crossings plunged.
But like President George W. Bush’s infamous May 2003 “Mission Accomplished” speech about the Iraq invasion, Biden’s border success claim is proving premature.
Parents in Mexico have discovered that administration threats of “expedited removals” for illegal crossings, five-year bans on legal reentry and prosecution do not apply to them.
Nothing does.
The runway into America is clear and open, just like always, to any parent with a kid.
Immigrant families with children have now figured out that, if they cross illegally and turn themselves in under the supposedly harsh new strategy, Biden’s Border Patrol will very quickly admit all of them right into the American heartland just like when the government exempted them from Title 42.
A mammoth new surge of family units seems assured because that good word is out and spreading lightning fast on cellphone social media networks.
That this category of immigrants has seen the light is significant because families make up a very large percentage of the mass migration crisis Biden touched off when he first exempted them from Title 42 expulsions on inauguration day in 2021.
‘Got in because of kids’
Since that day, according to an analysis of government apprehension data and interviews with knowledgeable government sources, the Biden administration has allowed at least 1.3 million immigrants in family groups to stay after illegally crossing since his first day in office.
That’s more than half of the roughly 2,020,522 Southwest Border immigrants the administration has set free through April, though the real total is likely tens of thousands more, Center for Immigration Studies analyst Andrew R. Arthur recently estimated.
By Todd Bensman