Biden Officials Privately Warn: Ending ‘Remain in Mexico’ to Spur Flood of Illegal Immigration

Some officials on President Joe Biden’s National Security Council (NSC) are privately warning that an end to former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program at the United States-Mexico border will spur a flood of illegal immigration.

In June, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Biden administration can end the Remain in Mexico program but also sent the issue back to lower courts. Following the decision, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas vowed to end the program when the agency is legally allowed to do so.

Some NSC officials, who spoke anonymously to the Wall Street Journal, said they are privately warning administration officials that ending the Remain in Mexico program is likely to spur an even larger flood of illegal immigration to the U.S. while also crippling negotiations with Mexico.

The Journal reports:

The NSC officials have cited a number of reasons for their wariness, including that they are concerned that the publicity around ending the program could attract more people to cross the border illegally, the people said. Specifically, the program remains one of the only deterrent tools the administration can use to handle asylum-seeking migrants from Cuba and Venezuela, countries that aren’t taking back any deported citizens from the U.S. [Emphasis added]

They are also worried that ending the program entirely would upend continuing immigration negotiations with the Mexican government, which would prefer to see the program remain in place, they said. [Emphasis added]

…

NSC officials have also argued that ending the program could immediately prompt more litigation by Texas and other Republican-led states that could force the government to quickly start the program back up again, the people said. An initial lawsuit by Texas and Missouri prompted the administration to restart the program last fall as the case was pending with the Supreme Court. [Emphasis added]

At DHS, though, agency officials are reportedly all on board to end the Remain in Mexico program — claiming it is too expensive to operate even as illegal immigration costs American taxpayers billions of dollars every year in direct costs.

The Biden administration’s seeking to end Remain in Mexico comes even as the program has drastically helped eliminate asylum fraud where border crossers and illegal aliens, who knowingly did not qualify for asylum, were released into the U.S. interior regardless.

The latest federal data, as Breitbart News reported, reveals that of the more than 45,000 Remain in Mexico cases adjudicated, only 1.6 percent of migrants enrolled in the program have been found to have legitimate asylum claims.

Meanwhile, more than 70 percent of migrants enrolled in the program have been ordered deported after failing to prove that they have valid claims for asylum. More than 10,000 migrants terminated their asylum proceedings before making it to court, suggesting they too did not believe they would be found to have valid asylum claims.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.