Joe Biden’s ‘Catch and Release’ Policy Opens the Southern Border

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, MEXICO - FEBRUARY 08: Migrants, most of whom are part of a recently arrive
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Neil Munro

President Joe Biden’s deputies are trying not to detain the rapidly rising inflow of economic migrants who are coming across Americans’ Southern border in search of blue-collar jobs, homes, and the Democrats’ dangled prize of American citizenship.

“We will continue to use all current authorities to avoid keeping individuals in a congregate setting [detention] for any length of time,” [emphasis added] said a statement provided February 4 to Breitbart News by the Customs and Border Protection agency of the Department of Homeland Security.

“Catch and release, and what you’re seeing right right now with no deportation or detention, that is the definition of open borders,” said Todd Bensman, a Texas-based expert on migration with the Center for Immigration Studies. He added:

They’re doing catch and release, which is the most powerful incentive for mass migration that exists in the world … [because it ensures migrants] can live and work indefinitely inside the United States without authorization. There’ll be no kicking out of anybody, ever, under this administration. They’ve made that clear. They won’t be doing any  deportations.

On January 20, Biden promised an amnesty — and therefore, the hugely valuable prize of American citizenship — to all migrants who could persuade government officials that they were living in the United States before January 1 — even though millions of Americans — including millions of his supporters — are struggling to get jobs, earn more wages, and pay their rents.

In addition, Mexico’s government is no longer accepting all migrants who were rejected by President Donald Trump’s policies. This break forces Biden’s deputies to either detain, deport, or release the growing population of border migrants.

The February 4 statement from CBP suggests the policy of minimizing detention is due to the concern that some of the migrants are infected with China’s coronavirus:

CBP has seen a steady increase in border encounters since April 2020, which, aggravated by COVID-19 restrictions and social distancing guidelines, has caused some facilities to reach maximum safe holding capacity. Per longstanding practice, when long-term holding solutions aren’t possible, some migrants will be processed for removal, provided a Notice to Appear, and released into the U.S. to await a future immigration hearing. As the Administration reviews the current immigration process, balancing it against the ongoing pandemic, we will continue to use all current authorities to avoid keeping individuals in a congregate setting for any length of time.

The statement does not say the border agencies are trying to expand detention capacity to cope with the rising inflow.

The statement does not say that agents are using technology to record the identity of the migrants who are being let into the United States. The absence of biometric identification data will help the new migrants claim they are eligible for Biden’s amnesty if it becomes law.

The CBP did not say when the new migrants are expected to get court dates. But, “the average wait for a hearing date is now 1,642 days or 54 months,” according to TRAC Reports Inc.

The CBP statement also does not suggest that border officials are still trying to exclude single migrants. However, a February 3 report by the Wahington Post report suggested that border agencies were returning single adult migrants back to Mexico while they release spouses, teenagers, and children into the United States

Overall, Biden’s administration is putting the welfare of migrants ahead of Americans’ right to a national labor market, fair wages, and decent housing, based on the claim that the United States is a “nation of immigrants” rather than a nation of native-born Americans.

On February 4, Biden also announced his plan to surge 125,000 refugees per year into American towns, workplaces, and schools. He has also directed his agencies not to deport economic migrants from the interior of the United States for 100 days.

DHS chief Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN on February 4:

“We have asylum laws that provide humanitarian relief. Those who qualify under those laws are entitled to the relief that we extend. Those who do not will not be able to remain in our country. And we can effectively implement both responsibilities in both opportunities to be both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants. That’s our core and fundamental obligation.”

The number of migrants is rising rapidly as Biden invites more migrants and his progressive deputies quickly dismantle the protective border rules adopted by President Donald Trump. In a February 3 report for CIS, Bennsman reported:

One Border Patrol agent in the area told CIS that the migrants are now too numerous for local systems to process, just like the catch-and-release circumstances that powered the 2019 crisis.

“We are releasing hundreds from many different countries of origin because we simply don’t have enough room to hold them all,” the Border Patrol agent told the Center for Immigration Studies. “They are being released under what is called an O.R. which means ‘Own Recognizance’ – basically, a promise to arrive for their immigration hearing at some future date. We can’t hold them because they are crossing all day long in groups of 20 to 40, men, women, children.”

Said one federal official in the area: “They’re filling bus after bus after bus.” No U.S. media has yet covered this incentivizing shift in practice as the number of migrants trying their luck at winning catch-and-release spikes ever upward. But Mexican media in the State of Coahuila across from Del Rio and Eagle Pass have reported that increasing numbers of migrants are heading toward the American border and that human smuggling activity is much higher than in previous years.

The inflow of blue-collar migrants from the south “doesn’t affect doctors and lawyers or journalists so much” said Bensman, who is the author of a new book about the cross-border migration of jihad supporters. The book is titled America’s Covert Border War: The Untold Story of the Nation’s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration. He continued:

Most of the people in higher-income brackets don’t even have their kids in public schools …  If you’ve ever been visited a school district that is filled with non-English speaking ESL kids, where they went from a few to 200 or 400 overnight, you’d see that people who have their kids in those school districts don’t like it a bit [because] it degrades the quality of the education that they expected.

The foreign migration into Americans’ jobs is expected to grow rapidly as coyotes recruit and escort more fee-paying migrants through U.S. border laws into Bidens’ welcome. The Washington Post reported February 3:

A Central American official who closely monitors migration dynamics said smuggling guides have intensified their marketing efforts in Guatemala’s destitute rural highlands in recent weeks, recruiting customers by telling them the Biden administration is taking a softer enforcement approach.

“They’re saying Biden has given the green light,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak to reporters.

Roughly half of the 3.5 million migrants who arrived between 2014 and 2020 are still in the United States, according to a December report by the Department of Homeland Security.

For years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration — or the hiring of temporary contract workers into the jobs sought by young U.S. graduates.

The multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, priority-driven, and solidarity-themed opposition to labor migration coexists with generally favorable personal feelings toward legal immigrants and immigration in theory.

The deep public opposition is built on the widespread recognition that migration moves money from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to real estate investors, and from the central states to the coastal states.

“I’ll probably in my lifetime never comprehend why Democrats want unrestricted, unmitigated, wide open, millions of strangers over the border,” said Bensman. “That is a very weird cult religion to just have a population transfer from poor countries to our country.”

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