This is Abbott's version of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' plan to re-route illegal immigrants flown into Florida in the middle of the night directly to President Biden's home state of Delaware. That deep blue state's population is less than one million. This fiscal year alone (since October 1), there have been more than 300,000 known 'got-aways' along the Southern border, and counting. That's roughly one-third of Delaware's population entering the US illegally in the last six months alone -- and not being encountered by over-burdened US officials. The number of apprehensions of illegal immigrants during that same period? About one million. That's more people than Delaware has total residents.
And it's many more people than live in DC, which is where Abbott plans to send captured illegal immigrants, en masse. A caravan, if you will. The state has hired 900 buses to help with this task, which isn't nearly enough. Border Patrol believes that after Title 42 is uprooted by the Biden administration, they will be facing up to 18,000 illegal border crossers every single day. Washington Democrats are murmuring about 'concerns,' realizing how disastrously the coming spike is going to play for them politically -- but they're evidently unwilling do anything concrete about it:
FLOOR ALERT: @HouseDemocrats just denied 70 @HouseGOP REQUESTS to consider @RepHerrell's PAUSE Act to restore #Title42. The #BidenBorderCrisis is unsustainable. But instead of addressing the problem, Democrats are removing this last available tool to deter illegal immigration. pic.twitter.com/wXEicXuHCR
— House Rules Republicans (@RulesReps) April 6, 2022
This is very much their political problem, but they seem to think it's someone else's logistical problem to deal with. So Texas' governor is going to drop a fraction of the people who represent that logistical problem right at Congress' doorstep. What else can the guy do to force Washington, DC to feel what's happening? The president won't go to the border, and his 'border czar' can't be bothered. The Lone Star State will make the crisis even harder for DC Democrats to ignore -- even if they're willing to look away from breathtaking stats like this:
The chief of the U.S. Border Patrol, Raul Ortiz, recently said his officers have encountered 1 million illegal border crossers in the first six months of fiscal year 2022 — that is, since Oct. 1, 2021. That is a big increase over fiscal year 2021, when there were 1.734 million encounters in the entire year. And that was a big increase over fiscal year 2020, during the pandemic, when there were 458,000 encounters, and fiscal year 2019, when there were 977,000 encounters, which was a record high at the time. Now, with 1 million in just the first half of the year, and with the peak migration months not yet begun, the Border Patrol is overwhelmed...For more than a week, administration sources have been trying to prepare the nation for what is coming. This week, the New York Times reported that "homeland security officials ... described contingency plans for managing as many at 18,000 encounters a day at the border." That would be more than 3.2 million in the next six months. Even if the real number is half that, it would smash the record that has just been set. No wonder the emergency agencies of the U.S. government are involved.
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Purple state Democrats are getting anxious (Allahpundit rounds up some of their panicky statements on the looming Title 42 fiasco), setting up a quandary for Biden. Does he tick off pro-illegal immigration progressives and depress base turnout in November? Or does he horrify literally everyone else with a catastrophe at the border this spring and summer, a crisis atop a crisis? Enjoy eating your shinola sandwich either way, Mr. President. You've really earned it. I'll leave you with the latest Biden approval numbers, with the GOP leading on the 2022 ballot by four points -- and tied among Hispanics:
If the election for the US House was today would you vote GOP/Dem?
— Ryan James Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) April 6, 2022
Voters: 47/43
GOP: 94/3
Dem: 3/94
Indie: 42/36
Men: 49/35
Women: 40/50
Whites w/ college: 43/50
Whites w/o college: 61/30
White men: 59/32
White women: 50/42
Whites: 54/38
Black: 8/73
Hispanics: 42/43
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