Embattled Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas just released a six pillar plan that purports to address the anticipated increase in illegal migration once Title 42 is no longer in effect.
It’s worse than you think.
The plan contains no policies or programs to deter illegal migration or close existing legal loopholes. Instead, it focuses on processing every migrant in the impending wave quickly and efficiently. Open borders asylum officers with rubber stamps await.
The Biden administration’s top immigration policy goal is to expand the number, method, and ease by which migrants can come to and remain in the United States. By quietly converting all illegal migrants into “asylum seekers,” the plan does exactly that.
What is most offensive about the plan is that DHS is pledging to expeditiously remove all migrants who are unable to establish a legal basis to remain in the country once Title 42 ends. You only need to look at how the Biden administration has managed the existing crisis on the border to understand that this pledge holds no water. Today, as a result of Biden administration policies, the expedited removal and credible fear process results in nearly every single migrant who makes a fraudulent asylum claim being released into the country. Those who are eventually (years later) ordered removed will largely have absconded and become fugitives that will never be deported.
That isn’t the only part that is all for show. The plan also calls for the ability to hold 18,000 illegal aliens in custody at a one time. There’s a big problem with that: the exact number of illegal aliens that border officials say we could be seeing every single day once Title 42 ends. That means 18,000 illegal aliens would have to be released every 24 hours.
So not only does the plan not address the real root cause of the border crisis – an asylum system that functions as a lawless, greased up turnstile into the United States – it makes it much, much worse.
The new plan is also sure to exacerbate horrors on the other side of the border – the part of the process that the Biden administration enables, but is unable to control. Rapacious smugglers stand ready to get even richer off of the human suffering of the hundreds of thousands of new migrants the promise of quick processing and a ticket to any American community will attract. Children will suffer, migrants will die, sexual assaults will continue, and cartels will get a new funding stream. All because of the plan.
Any plan intended to truly reduce or handle increased apprehensions at the border must look at past success. President Trump brought the 2019 border crisis to an end by creating the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program, signing Asylum Cooperative Agreements (ACAs) with Northern Triangle countries, and issuing sweeping asylum rules to prevent fraud. The Biden administration quickly ended them all, although a federal judge ordered small-scale re-implementation of the MPP for the time being.
If the Biden administration wanted to truly end the border crisis, allowing asylum officers to parole migrants into the United States and rubber-stamp fraudulent asylum claims is not the way to do it. They need to start from the ground up: Fully re-implement MPP, sign ACAs, reform our asylum system, empower agents to enforce the immigration laws of this country, and send a message to economic migrants and human smugglers that asylum fraud is not a pathway to get into the United States.
Will they do this? Not a chance in hell. This is all by design.
RJ Hauman is head of government relations and communications at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).