Faced with an unrelenting surge of foreign nationals coming to the southern border, the Biden Administration has devised a new plan: More comfortable housing for people in the country illegally.
The White House is requesting roughly $1 billion in funding to set up new housing for illegal aliens while their overwhelmingly illegitimate asylum claims play out in the courts. Under the administration’s plan, beneficiaries of this new program would be free to go where they wish during the day, but would have to check in and stay the night in their houses, according to Axios.
But, here’s the kicker. According to the Washington Free Beacon, the language of the White House’s proposal would allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to use any of its funding on housing for illegal aliens instead of enforcement. The use of the funds would be at the discretion of anti-borders Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. One can only imagine how Mayorkas is salivating at the potential opportunity to use his agency’s funding to further his anti-borders agenda.
As former Acting ICE Director and Immigration Reform Law Institute Senior Fellow Tom Homan put it, this program would “would serve as yet another enticement, another magnet that will bring more families to our borders.”
If this new housing program were to take effect, it would serve as further encouragement for foreign nationals to make the dangerous journey through Central America to the U.S. The Biden Administration spent the first half of 2023 concocting schemes to artificially lower the number of illegal crossings at the southern border, but those numbers still skyrocketed by more than 30 percent last month. The promise of new and improved housing for illegal aliens will surely cause those numbers to soar even higher, empowering the cartels, and causing many migrants to die in the process, while further disrupting border communities already overwhelmed by the crisis.
The administration’s proposed housing program appears to be another racket, designed to weaken our borders under the guise of compassion. Everyone agrees that foreign nationals, even those who cross our border illegally, deserve to be treated humanely and compassionately while they’re here, but this housing plan goes far beyond that. Instead, the plan uses the promise of free housing and freedom of movement to lure more foreign nationals into the country, and it does so during a time when many Americans have been forced to live on the streets due to the lack of affordable housing in the U.S.
If you live in or have recently visited a major U.S. city, it is impossible not to notice the large number of Americans living in tents and blankets on the streets, and the statistics bear this reality out. More than 420,000 Americans are currently homeless, and that number has climbed by around six percent every year since 2017, according to National Alliance to End Homelessness. This includes roughly 37,000 veterans, who have been forced to sleep in the streets of the country they risked their lives to serve. If the Biden Administration is looking to expand housing for certain groups, they should start with the hundreds of thousands of Americans who are currently homeless.
Thankfully, Congress, not the administration, holds the power of the purse, and thus has the final say on whether this program will be funded. Congress should decline to play games with the administration’s misplaced priorities, and instead insist that any new funding for ICE and DHS go towards enforcement and border security, not increased comfort for those who have violated our laws and illegally crossed our border.
Almost every policy this administration proposes or enacts on this issue is designed to weaken America’s borders and import even more illegal aliens into the country. This new housing program is just the latest example of this.
William J. Davis is a communications associate for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.