Of the all-too-many ways President Joe Biden’s performance completely contradicts his words, controlling the border stands out.
He set yet another record in May, as reported migrant encounters rose to an astonishing 239,416 — the highest-ever one-month total, even more than the record set in April, which beat March and so on.
That brings the overall number of encounters in the Biden era’s 16 months to more than 3.5 million, and that doesn’t include migrants who avoided detection.
Drilling down, the picture’s even worse. Some 42% of the May tide got sent back under the Title 42 provisions that Biden wants to junk, and has already reduced the use of.
About a quarter had prior encounters with border enforcement in the past 12 months, meaning the message is out: If at first you don’t succeed . . . eventually you will.
Other than seasonal variation, the trend hasn’t slackened a bit since Biden took office, despite his repeated insistence all along that he’s getting the border under control.
He offered more empty promises in his so-called “Los Angeles Declaration” closing out last week’s Summit of the Americas, with hot air about transforming the US “approach to managing migration in the Americas” while also securing our borders.
The president’s been banging on about this literally since his first days in office, when he rescinded a major Donald Trump executive order tightening border security while swearing that “the policy of my Administration” was to keep the border secure. The numbers every month since show that’s a lie.
And the hideous rise in kids in border custody proves that the policy is as far as can be from humane — another Biden buzzword around immigration.
Human traffickers are enjoying a field day. Fentanyl is flowing freely into our cities and killing teens. The humiliation Biden suffered at the Americas Summit, where multiple leaders either refused to show or demanded concessions before coming, is clearly connected to his abject bumbling here.
Biden’s real policy is keeping the border wide open. Until that changes, his ongoing humanitarian and security crisis will keep on breaking its own ugly records.