It would be nice if the media’s affinity for “fact-checking” were still a thing. But it seems to have lost its appeal with a new president.
That’s too bad because fact-checking this White House, at least on immigration policy, would make for a lot of work for a smart journalist somewhere.
Almost everything that comes out of the Biden administration on immigration is a lie — a complete and sophomoric lie.
Let’s just look at one thing bleated earlier this month by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. At a White House press briefing, Mayorkas claimed with a straight face that the reason the southern border is seeing itself crushed by migrants coming by the thousands each week, many of them unaccompanied minors, is because the previous administration broke down our immigration system.
“To put it succinctly, the prior administration dismantled our nation’s immigration system in its entirety,” Mayorkas lied. “When I started 27 days ago, I learned that we did not have the facilities available or equipped to administer the humanitarian laws that our Congress passed years ago. We did not have the personnel, policies, procedures, or training to administer those laws. Quite frankly, the entire system was gutted.”
If a Trump official had made an assertion this brazenly false, CNN would have stacked a week’s worth of programming centered on the lie. Jake Tapper’s brow would sit paralyzed in a frown to convey just how much he disapproved.
But no such thing happens in the Biden era, so I guess I’ll have to do it myself.
The idea that the Trump administration “dismantled” the system “in its entirety” is preposterous. It flies in the face of all evidence of the last four years. The truth is the exact opposite. The Trump administration built a remarkably strong and complex system that incorporated the work of several foreign governments in order to reduce the inflow of migrants at the border. And it worked!
Donald Trump’s White House got the governments of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico to discourage and break up the formation of so-called caravans of migrants making their way to the southern border in droves. The majority of migrants who made it to the border were then required by our government to remain in Mexico, rather than in the United States, while their asylum claims were processed. This reduced the incentive to come and to file any but meritorious asylum claims. No longer would such a claim be sufficient to get into the U.S. and then disappear into the background.
The Trump White House also raised the standard for what qualified as legitimate asylum and refugee claims. The ridiculously low bar that was in place before allowed virtually anyone and everyone who set foot on U.S. soil to become a welfare case for taxpayers.
For all that, the number of encounters at the border with illegal immigrants steadily dropped in 2019 from a high of 144,000 that May to just one-third of that by that September. In contrast, border encounters with illegal aliens have been higher under Biden’s short time in office than during any of the three years prior of the same time period.
Mayorkas is also being dishonest when he said, “We did not have the personnel, policies, procedures, or training to administer those [humanitarian] laws.” Of course, they did. They just weren’t given unlimited resources to accommodate the rush of migrants who started coming only because of Biden’s request. Biden campaigned on an open border. People are taking him up on it. That isn’t Trump’s fault.
Lastly, the “system” at the border was not, as Mayorkas lied, “gutted” by Trump.
Again, the opposite is true. Immediately after being sworn in, Biden began to gut the very system put in place that had worked to control this problem. It was covered in the news.
Reuters, Feb. 6: “Biden administration suspends Trump asylum deals with El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras”
Associated Press, Feb. 11: “Biden decree ends ‘emergency’ that Trump used to build wall”
Bloomberg, March 1: “Biden Ends Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Rule, and a Border Camp Empties”
Talk about “gutted.”
Mayoraks is a liar. Too bad fact-checking is no longer a thing.
