President Joe Biden may eliminate one of the last remaining United States-Mexico border controls next month, a Texas Democrat says.
A year ago, former President Trump imposed the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Title 42 order — a critical border control that has kept nearly 650,000 border crossers out of the U.S. to protect public health for Americans.
Reports have circulated this week that Biden is considering allowing Title 42 to expire after July 31. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-TX), though, now says that the elimination of the border control could come weeks from today, even as experts have warned that such a move would spur an unprecedented run on the southern border.
Axios reports:
Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, tells Axios he’s been advised by a border official that as soon as mid-July the administration will end all use of a Trump-era policy citing COVID as a rationale to block migrants at the border. [Emphasis added]
…
A White House official said a decision on the rule was not yet final while acknowledging plans were under discussion. [Emphasis added]
Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Thomas Homan told Breitbart News that ending Title 42 “will send a clear message to the entire world — grab a kid, illegally enter our border, and we will release you into the interior of the U.S.”
“It will act as a powerful incentive to be exploited by human smuggling organizations and act as a magnet for the migrants,” Homan said. “It will result in increased suffering and inhumanity as migrants will be willing to sacrifice their lives knowing they will be allowed entry into our country.”
In March, former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Mark Morgan revealed that he and other top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials warned Biden’s transition team that ending Title 42 would drive a massive wave of illegal immigration to the U.S:
We specifically told them, if you ended [Remain in Mexico], if you ended Title 42, if you ended the asylum cooperative agreements with the Northern Triangle countries, you will cause, you will drive an unmitigated crisis that will make 2019 pale in comparison.
“We told them that again and again,” Morgan continued. “We told them that the surge numbers would skyrocket.”
In October 2020, seven months after former President Donald Trump’s first implemented Title 42, about 91 percent of border crossers apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border were being removed using the border control.
Today, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is only using Title 42 in about 64 percent of border crosser cases — a roughly 30 percent drop.
For months, Democrats and the open borders lobby have been urging Biden to end Title 42. In a letter to top DHS officials in February, House Democrats said the administration ought to release into the U.S. border crossers who would otherwise be expelled under Title 42 to prevent the spread of coronavirus in Central America.
Biden’s ending Title 42 would be out of step with the majority of Americans.
A Harvard/Harris poll released this week shows that a 64 percent-majority of registered U.S. voters said they want Biden to “issue new, stricter policies to reduce the flow of people across the border.”
Likewise, 55 percent of voters said Biden should have kept Trump’s border and immigration controls that resulted in less illegal immigration, increased interior immigration enforcement, and thus a tighter labor market with boosted U.S. wages.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.