The U.S. border with Mexico is overwhelmed with individuals trying to either enter the country illegally or claim asylum.
And things are going to get worse.
President Biden is expected to lift Title 42, a public health provision the federal government has used since the Trump administration to stop the potential spread of Covid in this country by preventing would-be immigrants from crossing the border to claim asylum.
NBC News reports, “The policy, which the (Biden administration) officials say will be lifted May 23, has blocked more than 1.7 million attempts by immigrants to cross the border… often turning them around and sending them back into poor conditions in Mexico.”
West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito believes Biden is making a big mistake. She said more than 100,000 individuals are in Mexico “waiting for this (Title 42) to be overturned so they can then get into the country.”
That means the already swamped border security and immigration systems will come under even more pressure.
Capito serves as ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, where her responsibilities include funding for the Department of Homeland Security and Border Protection. She is in frequent contact with Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz who Capito says tells her, “We’re doing the best we can, but the numbers are overwhelming.”
Capito said on Talkline Thursday that the immigration system cannot handle the flood of people who disappear by blending into the population. “What happens is a total ‘catch-and-release’,” Capito said. “The U.S. does not have the capacity to examine or adjudicate every asylum claim.”
Joe Biden criticized Donald Trump during the campaign for his border policies. The Biden/Harris campaign promised to “Take urgent action to undo Trump’s damage and reclaim America’s values.”
That prompted a surge at the border after Biden took office, and now the numbers are expected to increase dramatically. “Homeland Security officials on Tuesday described contingency plans for managing as many as 18,000 encounters a day at the border, regardless of cause,” the New York Times reported.
Capito believes Biden’s border policies have failed. “I think the administration has done a miserable job in securing and deterring at our southern border,” she said.
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin agrees with Capito on Title 42.
“With encounters along our southern border surging and the highly-transmissible Omicron BA.2 subvariant emerging as the dominant strain in the United States, now is not the time to throw caution to the wind,” Manchin wrote in a letter to the Centers for Disease Control director Rochelle Walensky.
“I urge you to again renew this common sense policy that has been in effect—under both Republican and Democratic administrations—since March 2020.”
Candidly, it is an administrative stretch to use Title 42 to try to manage migration at the southern border, but that is what happens when the immigration system is overwhelmed and the policies are a patchwork that swing wildly from administration to administration and from court decision to court decision.
This country, a country built up and powered by immigration, must do better—for the sake of the nation and the desperate people who have legitimate asylum claims.