As Katie noted yesterday, and as we previewed on Monday, President Joe Biden has unveiled a new series of executive actions related to his historic, records-shattering border crisis. Biden and his team manifestly do not care about the crisis itself, as evidenced by their policies and behavior over the last three-plus years. They do, however, care about their re-election crisis -- and a wide swath of polling demonstrates that immigration and the border is both a top concern for voters, and a very bad issue set for the incumbent. Team Biden's previous spin has obviously failed. They tried denying the problem, refusing to even call it a crisis. They engaged in intense gaslighting, claiming the border was "secure" and "closed." More than three years and approximately 10 million illegal crossings into their rolling catastrophe, they decided to endorse a fatally flawed immigration bill, then pounded away at blaming Republicans for defeating the bad legislation.
None of it, evidently, was working. So now with the election is just months away and facing electoral vulnerability, Biden shuffled out and announced his new plan -- which notably features a raft of unilateral actions, the authority for which he and his party just spent the last several months adamantly insisting Biden lacked. He'd done everything he could on his own, he himself asserted, so Congress had to intervene. When attacking Republicans didn't do the trick, Biden and company magically re-discovered power levers they'd frequently told Americans he couldn't access. And he's chosen to do a whole list of things he has now effectively admitted could have been done at any time over the course of his failed presidency. They didn't do any of it because they didn't want to, and their political calculus was (as usual) to pander to their leftist base for as long as possible. But the election is getting too close, so it's finally time to abandon the previous 'his hands are tied' lies, and to feign concern over the disgraceful, mass-scale affront to our national sovereignty and security that they've directly caused and invited:
Biden kicks off his fake border security press conference by immediately blaming others.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 4, 2024
REMINDER: Biden took 94 executive actions in his first 100 days to DISMANTLE border security — then sat and watched 15 million illegals flow in. pic.twitter.com/r3xSdHWKmo
"Today, I'm moving past Republican obstruction and using executive authority available to me as president to do what I can on my own to address the border." Shameless in every way. In my piece earlier in the week, I conveyed reports suggesting that Biden would propose shutting down the border if average daily illegal crossings between ports of entry surpassed 5,000 per day, over the span of a week. It turns out the actual number he rolled out is half of that, meaning it should be easily triggered, based on his own horrendous track record. According to the new policy, the 2,500 daily average threshold would force a border shutdown, which would be lifted once the numbers fell to 1,500 per day. It's unclear where any of these numbers came from. As we also noted previously, President Obama's former DHS chief had stated that 1,000 illegal crossings per day overwhelms the system, so Biden's new 'cap' would be two-and-a-half times that level.
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Nevertheless, the 2,500-per-day threshold at least theoretically represents a 'tougher' enforcement regime than the rumored 5,000-per-day threshold -- which is what the Biden-endorsed Senate bill had called for. Yes, the failed legislation Democrats have been assailing Republicans for rejecting was more lenient on this point than what Biden has now simply decided to make a show of 'enforcing' on his own, after telling us for quite some time that he couldn't do anything at all. Democrats and other supporters of the Senate bill warned border hawks that they'd never get anything better than what that proposal offered. Biden just seriously undermined that talking point, too. But a lot of this is also pure smoke and mirrors. It sounds like a crackdown, but there are exceptions and asterisks galore, rendering much of it useless and toothless:
🚨🚨The exceptions to Biden's new EO are broad enough to drive a truck through.
— House Homeland GOP (@HomelandGOP) June 4, 2024
They include "any noncitizen who is permitted to enter...based on the totality of the circumstances..."
Look at that list of "circumstances." They are the same reasons as for CBP One, CHNV, etc. pic.twitter.com/RsD6A2E3ee
Fox's Bill Melugin reports:
In no way can Biden’s executive order be described as “shutting down” the border. It bans asylum to some illegal crossers, with some exceptions. It does *not* stop or slow the up to 1,500 migrants per day released into the U.S. via CBP One app at ports of entry, and does not stop or slow the up to 30,000 migrants per month flying directly into the U.S. and being released into the country via Biden’s controversial mass parole program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans. Unaccompanied children/minors are exempt from the order - which will lead to concerns about child trafficking, and migrants can still claim fear in an attempt to avoid deportation. Also, asylum has already been banned for most migrants who cross illegally since the end of Title 42 last year - and that hasn’t stopped them from coming. Highest numbers in recorded history end of 2023. The order may speed up removals to countries we can deport easily to, (Mexico, northern triangle countries, etc), but there has been no explanation as to how the administration will be able to begin mass removals of migrants coming from another hemisphere with governments that don’t cooperate with the U.S.
Confirmed -- this is a giant, easily-exploitable loophole, which the traffickers absolutely will exploit, eagerly:
NEW: In an internal memo to ICE— The ERO Executive Associate Director says that CBP and ERO will not question illegal immigrants who cross the southern border and are processed for expedited removal while the limitation is in effect regarding their fear of return... “If a…
— Ali Bradley (@AliBradleyTV) June 4, 2024
More important than any of the details of what Biden has decided to temporarily implement (or claim to be implementing as a place-holder campaign-era talking point) are two realities: (1) As pointed out above, literally any and all of these more serious steps (and more meaningfully enforceable versions of them) could have been taken at any point since the crisis started in 2021. Biden and his administration made a choice not to, even as the numbers grew staggeringly worse. Only when voters are several months away from rendering a verdict on the president's terrible leadership did these tools fly out of a toolbox the president said didn't exist. 'Cynical' doesn't begin to cover it. (2) Because the administration is setting a border 'shut down' threshold, at least on paper, they are conceding that the border can be shut down. They have the ability to do it. They just have not. By choice. What a self-indictment. And in an interview that conveniently got published on the same day the president pulled this transitory stunt -- just imagine how the border policies will look if this crew wins a second term -- Biden stubbornly and stupidly gave the whole game away:
10 million illegal crossings later & it’s a huge ‘no regrets’ from POTUS. A second term would be worse. https://t.co/mAUZAPuwV7
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) June 4, 2024
After ten million illegal crossings, two million known got-aways, numerous deaths and other serious crimes, untold human misery, billions flowing into the cartels' coffers, and hundreds of suspected terrorists getting caught at the border (it's unknowable how many highly dangerous illegal immigrants were among the population of got-aways), this president has absolutely no regrets about his decisions to reflexively cancel successful immigration policies because they were associated with his predecessor. Biden similarly doesn't regret anything about the Afghanistan fiasco, which was a national humiliation and a stain on our honor. He called it an "extraordinary success." Biden also doesn't regret his partisan spending binge that fueled painful inflation, which is still hammering American families. He thinks he's done a great, or even flawless, job as president. He is incapable of being better. He doesn't want to be, and thinks he doesn't need to be. I'll leave you with this:
Garland tells House panel he's worried about a terrorist attack: The threat level has gone up tremendously
— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) June 4, 2024
Yeah, I'm sure those millions of Biden-era unidentifiable got-aways will be just fine.
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