Call the situation at the border a crisis or not--it's still a huge problem and the Democrats' plans for immigration reform are going up in smoke. From Maria Sacchetti and Nick Miroff at the Post:
"Biden had said he would reverse the Trump administration’s “inhumane” border policies, but his administration has struggled with the spike in crossings and the spread of the disease....
The Biden administration late Monday said in federal court records that enjoining the Title 42 order “will result in an immediate increased risk of harm from COVID-19” for DHS officials, immigrants and, potentially, the public.
Border Patrol officials are confronting a “historic” influx of migrants at the southwest border, a top official said in court records, with massive crowding in some Border Patrol sectors in Texas and more migrants and federal agents getting sick.
“Based on current trends, the Department expects that total encounters this fiscal year are likely to be the highest ever recorded,” David Shahoulian, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Department of Homeland Security, said in the court filing. “The Department also expects that these numbers will climb even higher if the CDC Order is enjoined.”
The Biden administration has declined to call the situation at the border a crisis, but Shahoulian said in the court filing that the crowding in border detention is “extremely worrisome.”
Officials have made more than 1 million apprehensions at the southwest border this fiscal year as of June, and 210,000 more individuals probably crossed in July, he said, calling the preliminary tally “the highest monthly encounter number since Fiscal Year 2000.”
“July also likely included a record number of unaccompanied child encounters, exceeding 19,000, and the second-highest number of family unit encounters, at around 80,000,” which is close to the peak in May 2019."
This is not supposed to be happening. From the Wall Street Journal:
"[The Biden immigration] agenda has been challenged by a rise in illegal crossings at the southern border, which usually drop during the hot summer months. Unaccompanied migrant children have been crowding Border Patrol facilities—with more than 2,250 children in custody on Thursday—a sign the system is once more becoming overwhelmed. Migrant families continue to be released with instructions to check in with immigration authorities, rather than being given court dates, because border agents are too busy to issue the proper paperwork.
“At this point, anything the Biden administration wants to do on immigration is going to have to address the border in some way, shape or form,” said Cris Ramón, an independent immigration consultant who works for groups including the George W. Bush Institute. “Given where things are at the border, I don’t think he has much wiggle room to address other issues in the same way he had planned.”...
The border surge has all but foreclosed on the possibility that Republicans will work with Democrats to find a solution for the Dreamers without significant changes to asylum or other border policies that Democrats consider anathema."
There you have it. Either the Democrats start taking border security more seriously or immigration reform is dead.
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