Even Democrats are reluctantly finding themselves forced to acknowledge the realities of mass migration, prompting the White House to cede some ground.
As CBS News reports, the Biden administration is now dropping its plan to require illegal migrants to “Remain in Texas” after crossing the border — a proposed move that was intended to alleviate the massive flow of migrants to cities such as New York and Chicago.
Initially, officials in El Paso were going along with the administration, even preparing plans to pay for 400 hotel rooms to shelter the migrants illegally coming across the border. But when the plans became public, the community and local politicians went into an uproar, prompting the federal government to walk back its stance.
This comes amid a few other concessions the administration has recently made on the migrant issue. For example, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas earlier this month issued a waiver of over 25 federal laws, including environmental protection laws, to expedite the construction of barriers and roads along the border. The administration also announced that it will resume the deportation of Venezuelan migrants.
Nevertheless, the White House is responsible for the migrant crisis by refusing to secure the border and to repatriate those who are apprehended.
Border Patrol agents in places such as Tucson, Arizona, and San Diego, California, have been allowing apprehended migrants to simply escape into the interior of the country because there is insufficient room to detain them. Furthermore, it was the Biden administration that had halted border wall construction (citing, among other factors, environmental considerations) and has even been auctioning off unused border wall.
Faced by these circumstances, some states have taken migrant matters into their own hands, as far as circumstances and the law allow.
This week, for example, the Texas House of Representatives passed three groundbreaking migration bills. As the Texas Tribune reports:
The Texas House in the early morning hours Thursday approved three bills aimed at beefing up border security, one that would appropriate more than $1 billion for additional border barriers, one that would allow police officers to send back migrants to who cross the border illegally and another that would increase penalties for human smugglers.
… All three bills drew Democratic opposition, but the most contentious debate was House Bill 4, which would empower police officers to apprehend, arrest or send back migrants who cross the border illegally.
… U.S. Border Patrol agents have had a historically high number of encounters with migrants on the southern border in recent years: 1.7 million in fiscal year 2021, a record topped the next year when agents recorded 2.2 million encounters. In fiscal year 2023, which ended Sept. 30, the number dropped slightly to 2 million encounters.
The border-wall bill, HB 6, stipulates that five contractors will be paid to put up an additional 50 miles of border barriers and to maintain the already-planned 40 miles of barrier. If the bill is approved by the Senate, Texas could have another 100 miles of border wall by September of 2026. In addition, more floating barriers would be put up in the Rio Grande. Abbot earlier this year ordered the installation of a 1,000-foot-long string of buoys separated by serrated saw blades.
However, there are some challenges. For instance, most of the anticipated construction area is private land, which means the state would have to secure easements before any barriers could be put up.
Yet the tug of war between the federal government and states continues. Even as the White House seemingly makes some overtures to communities that have been exhausted by mass migration, it finds other ways to aggravate the issue.
For example, the administration last month published its targets for the number of refugees it plans to admit over the course of the next fiscal year, revealing that it will admit between 35,000 and 50,000 refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean. By contrast, this year’s goal was just 15,000.
Thus, while cities are being overwhelmed by illegal immigrants from Latin America, Biden wants to add more legal refugees on top of that.
Ironically, some of the areas hardest hit are Democratic strongholds, which are discovering the consequences of being sanctuary cities and states.
In New York City, capacity for sheltering migrant arrivals is so maxed out that the National Park Service has signed an agreement to lease Floyd Bennett Field, a former airport that is part of the Gateway National Recreation Area in Brooklyn and managed by the National Park Service, as the site of a migrant tent city. Officials have candidly admitted that they will not go through the typical environmental protocols mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act to do so.
Not only do government officials lack a plan to provide sufficient policing for a population of 7,500 potentially dangerous adult men who crossed the border illegally (often with help from cartels); the camp doesn’t even have the infrastructure to ensure that that many people have access to basic needs such as water.
It may be a long shot, but perhaps the voters whose communities are being transformed by illegal immigration (and whose pocketbooks are being depleted by the tax dollars spent on immigrants) will learn from this experience and change their voting patterns accordingly in the next election.
Click here to learn more about America’s immigration invasion and what can be done about it.
