WSJ: Joe Biden’s Deputies Alarmed by Growing Tide of Migrants

Honduran migrants, who were heading in a caravan to the US, speak with a police officer at
Johan ORDONEZ / AFP) (Photo by JOHAN ORDONEZ/AFP via Getty Images
Neil Munro

Joe Biden’s deputies now recognize that their campaign promises to welcome migrants into a claimed “Nation of Immigrants” are encouraging many migrants to take him up on that welcome, according to the Wall Street Journal.

“The Biden transition team has grown concerned about a surge of asylum seekers at the border,” the Journal reported December 9. Deputies are “trying to decide which policies to change and when, in order to fulfill Mr. Biden’s campaign promises without creating the appearance of leniency, according to people familiar with the matter.”

More migrants are now heading towards the U.S. border, and progressive judges are cutting more loopholes on the border.

On December 10, for example, Reuters reported that a small caravan of a few hundred migrants has begun in Honduras:

Mostly younger migrants with backpacks and some women carrying children left the northern city of San Pedro Sula on foot for the Guatemalan border after calls went out on social media to organize a caravan to the United States.

If the exodus grows, it could become the first major caravan to hit the road since Joe Biden defeated U.S. President Donald Trump in a presidential election last month.

In mid-November, the ACLU and other pro-migrant groups persuaded a D.C. judge to order the agency to stop sending youths and children home under the Title 42 disease protection rules adopted by the administration.

Other migrants are already at the U.S. border. They include many youths and children who hope to be delivered by coyotes to U.S border agencies and then forwarded to their parents living illegally in U.S. cities. “In October, 4,630 unaccompanied children were taken into custody by border patrol agents, up from 712 in April,” the Journal reported.

Biden and his deputies will face a backlash as they disappoint the more radical pro-migration activists, including ethnic lobbies and immigration lawyers.

For example, on December 9, Sen. Kamala Harris carefully declined to repeat Biden’s pro-migration campaign promises. Instead, she offered a series of vague promises to a meeting of ethnic and racial advocates at a virtual conference:

Joe Biden and I will work to right the wrongs of these past four years, and honor and advance America’s heritage as a Nation of Immigrants. We know that immigrants have always made our country’s stronger and that is what they are doing today … together we will build a better, more humane immigration system. In our first 100 days, we will send an immigration bill to Congress, reinstate DACA, repeal harmful and discriminatory policies like the Muslim ban, and during our administration, we will repeal indiscriminate enforcement policies that tear families apart and make us less safe.

So thank you again for all the work you have done and continue to do. That work is not easy. I know. But I know also that we can deliver the change we need, and President-Elect Biden and I are looking forward to working alongside you in the months and the years ahead.

Democrats learned in 2014 and 2016 that their open border policies are deeply unpopular — especially during a national economic crisis caused by coronavirua — and that unpopularity could give the GOP a big win in the 2018 midterm elections.

In response, Biden’s deputies will likely use regulations and their control over the agencies to minimize border drama while quietly helping many recent illegal migrants settle into U.S jobs, neighborhoods, and K-12 schools.

Some border security experts are skeptical that Biden can balance the competing pressures from Americans, migrants, and his progressive allies. “I don’t see any recipe that doesn’t have them as overwhelmed as we were in ’14 and ’18,” Ron Vitiello, a former Border Patrol chief, told the Wall Street Journal.

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