Democrats effectively conceded their loss to Republicans in the immigration debate a minute after the Trump-era Title 42 policy expired at 11:59 p.m. Thursday. “Starting tonight,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement sent at midnight, “people who arrive at the border without using a lawful pathway will be presumed ineligible for asylum.
The Biden administration should have had a different response to the end of Title 42, the public health emergency order that kept individuals from seeking asylum.
“Do not believe the lies of smugglers. The border is not open,” Mayorkas said. “People who do not use available lawful pathways to enter the U.S. now face tougher consequences, including a minimum five-year ban on re-entry and potential criminal prosecution.”
Game over. With that capitulation by Democrats, there is no longer an immigration debate in the United States. The system that has been broken for decades should now be declared permanently shattered with no concrete hope of any real progress of reform, unless Congress suddenly wakes up, works together and passes a real bill for President Joe Biden to sign. Such a scenario, however, is a fantasy right now.
The Biden administration should have had a different response to the end of Title 42, the public health emergency order that allowed our government to expel migrants more quickly having to consider their asylum requests. The end of the policy, which coincides with the official end to the country’s Covid emergency, is expected to lead to an estimated 10,000 asylum seekers per day at the U.S.-Mexico border.
The law says that to apply for asylum in the U.S., a person must be either physically present in the U.S. or at a port of entry. But Biden’s Homeland Security secretary sent a message that the United States will set rules regarding how a person has to enter to ask for asylum and punish those who don’t follow those new rules. Mayorkas’ statement is a clear sign…
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