I see that the Biden Administration’s performance on our southern border is beginning to alarm the editors of the Washington Post:
What is mostly missing from the sweeping rhetoric and broad-strokes analysis is an actual plan for action.
Ms. Harris and administration officials have also described short-term steps designed to get a handle on deterring the current tsunami of migrants and asylum seekers at the border. But the convoluted messaging — telling migrants not to seek entry to the United States while at the same time relaxing or scrapping an array of measures that would actually dissuade them, and providing relief to migrants on both sides of the border — has been a failure.
That failure is measurable, and it is politically toxic. As of mid-July, a staggering 1.1 million unauthorized border crossers had been apprehended so far in the current fiscal year, which began last Oct. 1. Nearly 190,000 migrants, a record monthly total high, were taken into custody by border officers in June alone, when the early summer’s heat often deters many from making the trek. At the current pace, officials project that apprehensions will reach 1.5 million by the end of the fiscal year, the most in more than two decades.
They characterize the administration’s policy as incoherent. I don’t think it’s incoherent at all. I think they’re wrong. I think it’s constituent service for a very small constituency—about the same size as that for the “Latinx” neologism which offends a lot more people than it pleases.
Allow me to acquaint Vice President Harris with the work of another Harris, Sydney, who drew the cartoon at the top of this post. Waiting for divine intervention is not generally the greatest policy and there are no mulligans in politics. Unfortunately, I think the administration has little choice but to double down on its present approach of doing things that convince people in Mexico and Central America to do the opposite of what they’re telling them to do. Being charitable I do not believe that is intentional but feckless.
I have no idea of how they can mitigate the risks of the approach they’ve taken. The “it happens every year” explanation fell apart when the summer heat rose and the numbers of “encounters” did not decline. It probably doesn’t help that the presidents of Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras all attribute the increase in illegal migration to President Biden’s campaign rhetoric. Blaming him certainly takes them out of the crosshairs but it’s hard to hold him completely blameless.
