The Texas Tribune has a video out attacking Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for his efforts to arrest migrants crossing the southern border, but the video also makes it exceedingly clear that President Joe Biden’s “catch and release” policies are the true cause of the border crisis.
The video opens with a highly edited quote from Abbott announcing his enforcement campaign, more commonly known as Operation Lone Star.
“We are not playing games anymore. The Texas plan is to catch and to jail,” Abbott says in the video.
But here is the full quote: “We’re not playing games anymore. And we have a new program in place because the Biden administration plan is to catch and release. The Texas plan is to catch and to jail.”
It is easy to understand why the Texas Tribune took out the reference to Biden’s catch and release policies. The rest of the video shows that is exactly what is going on.
The next voice you hear in the video is from Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez, who claims, “What is happening today is that the volume of legal immigrants, those who come here seeking asylum, has grown to a very high number. We’re talking about thousands of them.”
And it is true that thousands of migrants are coming to the southern border every day. But they are absolutely not “legal” immigrants in any way. They are crossing the border illegally, which is why they are being taken into custody by Customs and Border Protection. They do have a right to assert a defensive case for asylum. But by definition, those making a defensive case for asylum must already be in the process of being removed from the United States. If the migrants never crossed the border illegally, they would never have the chance to assert asylum as a defense from removal.
The problem is that since 2009, migrants have figured out that if they cross the border illegally with children and then claim asylum, they will be released into the U.S. And this is exactly what the video admits is happening.
“If asylum-seekers pass a criminal background check and test negative for COVID, they are released to unite with family across the country,” the video explains.
But do any of these migrants qualify for the asylum defense they are claiming?
None shown in this video do.
We see one migrant from Guatemala, who says, “In our country, there are no job opportunities. You can’t get ahead academically or economically, so that’s why I did it: to give my baby a better future.”
Another migrant from an unidentified country says, “I’ve been without a job for two years in a row. The economy is bad, and you can’t live. The violence is also quite strong. I imagine a more prosperous life, one with better health. I imagine a job, education for my daughter more than anything.”
And these are heartbreaking stories. But none of them meet the legal requirements for asylum. To qualify for asylum, a migrant facing deportation must show that he or she is being persecuted in a home country based on one of only five specific criteria: race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.
None of these migrants identify how they are being persecuted or that they fit one of the five categories for protection. Just because crime is high in a country, or a country has a bad economy, doesn’t suddenly give everyone in that country the ability to claim asylum in the U.S.
But thanks to the catch and release policies of the Biden administration, millions of migrants around the world now believe they have a right to cross our southern border illegally and stay forever.
Until Biden admits he was wrong and changes those policies, more migrants will keep coming.
