A Biden administration record 221,303 migrants were arrested illegally crossing the southern border in March, breaking the previous record of 213,593 arrests set last July. Just under half of these migrants, 109,549, were expelled under the Title 42 public health law. Another 12,070 were expelled under the usual Title 8 immigration system.
That means the Biden administration let almost 100,000 migrants into the United States in March, most of them completely free to travel wherever they want with just a mere promise that they will contact Department of Homeland Security officials after they reach their final destination.
At this rate, President Joe Biden will be ushering more than 1 million illegal immigrants into the U.S. this year, a population about the size of Dallas. Unfortunately, the pace of migrants released into the U.S. is set to double as Biden stops expelling them under Title 42.
If the number of migrants arrested illegally crossing the border just stays the same, but without Title 42 applied, Biden will let in almost 2.5 million immigrants this year, a number larger than the populations of Houston, Phoenix, and Philadelphia. DHS officials, however, fully expect the number of migrants attempting to cross to skyrocket as Title 42 fades away.
Centrist Democrats, especially those up for reelection this year, are desperate to distance themselves from Biden’s border crisis. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona has introduced legislation, co-sponsored by Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Jon Tester of Montana, Mark Kelly of Arizona, and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, that would keep Title 42 in place at the southern border until at least 60 days after Biden ends the nation’s COVID emergency.
This legislation had good intentions, but it will not solve what has already become a crisis, even with Title 42 in place. Since Biden became president, almost 2.5 million migrants have been arrested at the southern border, or about 180,000 per month. That is 180,000 illegal entries per month with Title 42 in place.
In contrast, the month before then-President Donald Trump invoked Title 42, just 36,000 migrants were arrested at the southern border. In other words, there was no border crisis before Title 42 was implemented — the cause of this crisis was Biden’s decision to end Trump’s highly successful “Remain in Mexico” policy on his first day in office.
Under Trump’s policy, otherwise known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, migrants arrested illegally crossing the southern border were still given the option of applying for asylum — they just had to wait in Mexico while their case was considered.
By denying migrants access to the U.S., where they know immigration officials are unlikely to find and deport them, Remain in Mexico successfully deterred hundreds of thousands of migrants from ever attempting the dangerous journey to cross the border.
When Remain in Mexico was first implemented in Texas in March 2019, more than 100,000 migrants were arrested crossing the southern border. But as the number of migrants enrolled in Remain in Mexico rose from 5,000 in May to 12,000 in August, the number of arrests fell from 144,116 in May to just 62,707 in August. This provides crystal-clear evidence that incentives matter and that deterrence works.
Biden doesn’t need Title 42 to secure the southern border — Title 42 was always, at best, a temporary measure. The only way to restore order on our southern border is to end the catch-and-release policies that are causing the crisis. For all his other faults, Trump recognized this and worked with Mexico to identify and implement a solution.
All Biden has to do to solve the border crisis is re-implement Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, a course of action his administration is already under federal court order to do. Instead of fighting that court ruling, Biden should embrace it. The nation would be safer if he did.
