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The Rampant Chaos Is Escalating and Title 42 Hasn't Even Ended Yet

Guy Benson
Guy Benson  |  December 20, 2022 10:35 AM

The Biden administration is scheduled to end 'Title 42' emergency measures on Wednesday, putting a stop to one of the few enforcement tools keeping the historic border crisis even somewhat in check.  Title 42 is a pandemic-era remnant that has allowed border officials to rapidly expel large numbers of arriving illegal immigrants -- disproportionately men traveling without families -- without long logistical delays.  At the urging of pro-illegal immigration activists, and despite dire warnings from relevant authorities, Team Biden is squashing this pandemic emergency authority, even as it continues to use the pandemic to justify novel federal power-grabs on other fronts.  Unless Monday's temporary administrative hold from SCOTUS sticks beyond this evening, it will be gone.  When I visited the border earlier this year, one official after another told me that the end of Title 42, without an adequate replacement, would unleash chaos and dysfunction far beyond what they've already experienced.  Ahead of the December 21 deadline, the meltdown has already begun:


The El Paso emergency declaration is notable because as we covered this fall, the Biden administration has allegedly been pressuring that city's Democratic mayor to avoid taking this step.  The mayor denied it, but other city officials say that he'd admitted it was true in meetings.  It's gotten very bad in that city, as it has become the temporary focal point of the crisis -- as other border sectors and cities have been at various points over the past two years:

Some 500 migrants were released into the streets of El Paso, Texas, to fend for themselves Monday as the border city grappled with an overwhelming influx of asylum seekers who have besieged the city and overwhelmed its shelters and border detention facilities. Migrants with nowhere to go were seen lying on mattresses and cardboard boxes in the city’s downtown district after having their claims processed and being let into the country by Border Patrol agents, according to KTSM-TV. The situation, which a local congressman dubbed a “crisis on steroids,” came as some 5,628 asylum seekers were held in temporary US Customs and Border Protection custody in a facility designed for 3,500 after Mexican authorities escorted busloads of people fleeing failing governments in Nicaragua, Peru and Ecuador to the US border this weekend.

Under the Trump administration's successful policies, 'Remain in Mexico' provisions allowed US officials breathing room to process asylum claims (the great majority get denied) while migrants waiting south of the border. That was reflexively reversed, along with other policies, by the Biden administration, and the results have been disastrous. Per this and other reports, Mexican officials are not "escorting busloads" of illegal migrants directly to the US border.  Fox's Bill Melugin told us the same in a radio interview last week. And as Melugin and others point out, El Paso isn't the only location where the crisis is raging or surging. Dispatches from elsewhere in Texas and Arizona:


In the lead-up to December 21, the White House continues to defiantly pretend that they've been all over this problem since day one, a transparently insulting lie. Biden's chief spokesperson still refers to Republican efforts to draw attention to the catastrophe as "stunts," and the administration is shamelessly trying to blame GOP rhetoric for the massive influx of illegal crossers:


The border is effectively open, as more than one million known 'got-aways' have entered the US since Biden took office.  Many more have been processed and transported to their cities of choice around the country, awaiting distant court dates.  The president is eliminating one of the last remaining and effective enforcement mechanisms for rapid removals.  Noticing reality is not the problem.  The policies creating that reality are the problem.  The White House's partisan spin is so facially preposterous that of course journalists are apparently taking it seriously.  In case you missed it, this is wild, mind-bending stuff:

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Fiscal year 2022 shattered all previous records on illegal immigration. Over the first two-plus months of the new fiscal year, illegal crossings are already up by more than 50 percent over last year -- and known got-aways are already approaching 200,000.  This isn't happening because Republicans are calling out the problem.  It's happening because of...the problem.  I'll leave you with this: