White House Sees Border Policy Failure as Success

Getting a dinner reservation at Per Se, New York’s restaurant of choice for the city’s royalty, is more difficult than entering the U.S. illegally.

The wait for Per Se, the Thomas Keller Restaurant Group dining experience, can exceed three months, but border crossers just walk right on in to the U.S. without a reservation or identification. Actually, illegal aliens have it better than Per Se diners. Border surgers don’t have to pay a $2,000 tab, including wine and tax, for dinner for two. Just the opposite for aliens. The free ride begins once they step inside the U.S.

To get their new-in-America lives started, the aliens only have to peacefully surrender to immigration border officials. Although the agents are highly trained to defend and protect the U.S. border, the new normal under Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is for aliens to turn themselves in to Customs and Border Protection agents who process and release them into the American interior. Then, they become the responsibility of federal, state and local taxpayers who foot the bill for a bountiful array of affirmative benefits.

An extraordinary example of how the Biden administration has abdicated its border responsibilities occurred January 22 when federally charted buses dropped off dozens of illegal aliens in Brownsville, Texas, where they were seen getting into taxis headed for the airport to travel to Miami, Atlanta and Houston. No one has the slightest idea who they are. The only certain thing is the taxpayers, who have no vote in federal immigration policy, are funding their trips.

In December 2020, agents reported more than 178,000 encounters at the southern border, the highest December on record. Convicted sex offenders and other criminals were among the 2 million worldwide migrants who illegally entered in 2021.

Several think tanks, each doing independent research, calculated that taxpayers subsidize illegal immigrant health care costs annually to the tune of $18.5 billion, and public education at $60 billion. Unaccompanied minors crossing the border in record numbers from Mexico, and the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, have created a budget-draining cost to public schools in the form of Limited English Proficiency classes the schools are federally mandated to offer.

Illegal immigration, the unprecedented Biden-style 2022 version, can be analyzed two ways. Beyond the first, the dollar burden on taxpayers, lays the long-term negative consequences to U.S. sovereignty. Some analysts argue that illegal immigration helps the U.S. economy because the migrant workers are motivated and responsive to the country’s always-shifting needs – in agriculture, construction and hospitality.

Those who benefit the most from illegal immigration, however, are the cheap labor-addicted employers who hire them, and the aliens who have relocated, often with spouses and children in tow. Except for corporate profiteers, Americans gain little.

The second and much less discussed consequence of illegal immigration is the dissolution of national sovereignty. Arguments about illegal immigration, good or bad, have persisted for decades. But never before has an administration been so brazenly craven in welcoming and catering to aliens. Of the 2 million illegal immigrants who entered last year, 45,000 were clandestinely flown from the border into the interior with some using their arrest warrants as identification to board commercial aircraft.

Mayorkas openly admits that his agency has “fundamentally changed,” meaning that he’s gutted Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and proudly eliminated worksite enforcement. Even though only Congress can make immigration law, Mayorkas also boasted that in the Biden administration illegal presence is no longer considered a criminal offense.

Texas U.S. Representatives Chip Roy and Michael Cloud have called for Mayorkas’ immediate impeachment. Roy and Cloud allege that Mayorkas has violated many laws in letter and spirit, and he has “undermined the rule of law, violated the Constitution, and placed the lives and inalienable rights of Americans in danger.”

Because Biden and his administration view the border calamity as a thundering success, Mayorkas may remain in office for as long as the president is in office, something that sovereign America cannot withstand if the historic nation is to survive. Mayorkas’ impeachment is the best solution.

Joe Guzzardi is a Progressives for Immigration Reform analyst who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at jguzzardi@pfirdc.org.