Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas wants voters to believe that the southern border is secure. But the available data show the exact opposite. The border is wide open — and migrants know it.
“What happens now is individuals are either expelled under the Title 42 authority or they are placed in immigration enforcement proceedings,” Mayorkas told CNN's Dana Bash this month. “And they are removed if they do not have a valid claim under our law to remain. And so the border is not open.”
If only that were true. The reality is that those arrested at the southern border who are not turned away under Title 42 are released into the country to go wherever they please. Importantly, Mayorkas confirmed to Fox News's Bret Baier that over 1 million migrants have been caught and released into the United States since President Joe Biden took office.
Many of these migrants do show up in immigration court to file asylum claims, but asylum cases take years to complete. The current average is 4 1/2 years. By the time their asylum claims are decided — they're usually rejected — the migrants in question are no longer a priority for deportation. That's because, under enforcement guidelines issued by Mayorkas, migrants whose only offense is illegally crossing the border more than a year and a half ago are not a priority for removal.
Biden’s decision not to deport migrants in this category is a big reason why deportations fell to a record low, 59,011, in the president's first year in office.
Throw in what Mayorkas admits is somewhere between 200,000 to 400,000 migrants who escape apprehension, and that means somewhere between 1.2 million and 1.4 million illegal immigrants have entered the U.S. since Biden took office, while fewer than 60,000 have been deported.
And Biden isn’t even trying to stop the flood. Asked by Baier if it is "the objective of the Biden administration to sharply reduce the total number of illegal immigrants coming across the southern border,” Mayorkas said it was not.
“It is the objective of the Biden administration to make sure that we have safe, legal, and orderly pathways for individuals to be able to access our legal system,” Mayorkas said.
The DHS chief couldn’t be clearer: The Biden administration has placed its desire for migrants to “access our legal system” above the legal duty to protect the southern border.
The migrants know it — that is why more than 2 million of them were arrested trying to cross the southern border illegally last year. It is why even Mayorkas’s DHS believes that number will double once Title 42 is officially lifted.
No wonder 65% of voters recently told Harvard they believe Biden’s immigration policies “encourage illegal immigration” and another 54% believe he is “creating an open border." It's because they do, and he is.