Biden’s New Border Record – WSJ

The September surge pushed enforcement actions for all of fiscal 2022 to 2.77 million, more than a million more than the 1.72 million in fiscal 2021, which was the previous annual record. The border state mayors and Governors aren’t making it up when they say they are overwhelmed by the illegal crossers.

There wasn’t much media coverage of this milestone on the weekend, but some of the details are illuminating about the monumental failure of U.S. immigration policy. About 19% of migrants apprehended in September were repeat offenders, meaning they had been encountered at least once in the previous 12 months. This reflects that the border is so porous that migrants will keep coming even if they are arrested once or more. They know they’ll get through sooner or later.

A second theme is the rise of migrants from the tyrannies in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. In September, 77,302 individual migrants encountered were from the three socialist failures compared with 58,068 from Mexico and northern Central America.

This reflects the incentives sent by U.S. asylum policy, which allows even economic migrants claiming asylum to remain in the U.S. until their claims are heard by immigration judges. That can take months or years. The message is that migrants from these countries have a decent chance of making it into the U.S., and staying when they do.

The U.S. needs to tighten its rules on asylum to send the message that not everyone in the Western hemisphere can come to the U.S., but the Biden Administration and Democratic leaders in Congress won’t act.

By the way, these are the migrants you read about who are bused or flown from the border to cities across the country. Most of those flights and buses aren’t sent by GOP Governors. They’re sent by the Biden Administration, which wants to ease the pressure on border regions. But that’s why mayors such as

Eric Adams

in New York are declaring emergencies as they cope with the new arrivals.

All of this represents an American political failure, of which there are many these days. It is also doing great harm to the cause of legal immigration. The perception of an essentially open border is building a political backlash in favor of more restrictionist immigration policies. The bitter truth, which the left won’t admit, is that Mr. Biden’s border failure has done more damage to the immigration cause than

Donald Trump’s

policies ever did.