The Patriot Post® · A Bad Border Bargain

Since just before the beginning of Joe Biden’s administration, there have been more than 1.7 million “gotaways” reported to have illegally entered our country and evaded capture, the majority of whom are military-age men. Those are just the ones Border Patrol spotted but didn’t apprehend; U.S. Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz says the number could be 10% to 20% higher. Gotaways are included in the more than 10 million total illegal border crossers reported to have entered the country from January 1, 2021, to September 30, 2023.

For comparison, the total number of births in 2021 (the last year statistically available) was about 3.66 million. So, assuming a similar birthrate for the last three years, illegal immigration has contributed nearly as much to our population increase as live births, with some percentage of those births being “anchor babies” from illegal immigrants.

We talked about the standoff between Texas and the federal government yesterday, and it’s an outgrowth of the increasing concern among Americans — not just from voters, but also from 10 FBI retirees who penned a letter to federal officials calling the situation “a new and imminent danger.”

“In its modern history the U.S. has never suffered an invasion of the homeland and, yet, one is unfolding now,” they wrote. “Military aged men from across the globe, many from countries or regions not friendly to the United States, are landing in waves on our soil by the thousands — not by splashing ashore from a ship or parachuting from a plane but rather by foot across a border that has been accurately advertised around the world as largely unprotected with ready access granted.”

Kevin Brock, one of the signatories, noted, “We are by no means the first to articulate unease about the surge of military aged men from hostile regions and countries coming across the border.” There is hope, however. He added: “The FBI and its federal and state partners can identify and find these individuals. They are good at that. Give them the priority orders to do so.”

“We know a record number of illegal aliens on the terrorist watch list have been stopped at the border,” noted columnist Gary Bauer. “We know Iran’s main terrorist proxy, Hezbollah, has major operations in Latin America. Add to that thousands of Chinese, Russians and other illegal aliens from the Middle East. We should assume our enemies are exploiting Biden’s intentional failure to secure our borders.”

All this has led to renewed attention toward ongoing and delicate Senate negotiations so legislators can appear to be doing something about the problem.

The House passed its own immigration reform earlier in the session but did so without any Democrat votes. That package is deemed DOA in the Senate. But over the last several weeks, three senators — Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma, Democrat Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and Democrat-turned-independent Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona — have been hashing out a compromise that they believe could be palatable to the moderates in the House. What they’ve come up with is “a border security bill that would dramatically raise the cap on foreign visas and allow more than 1.8 million illegal crossings a year,” as The Washington Free Beacon describes it. “The draft bill … would also raise the annual number of visas issued and trigger automatic migrant deportations once the total number of illegal border crossings exceeds 2 million annually.” This prompts the question: How do they find illegals to deport with the catch-and-release program we have?

While a few provisions from the House bill are packaged into the Senate deal, Donald Trump and his House allies are giving the overall deal a thumbs-down. They are already dead-set against Joe Biden’s desire to link this bill with aid to Ukraine.

“Reporting indicates that Trump is pressuring his Senate allies not to cut a deal with Democrats — not because such a deal would be bad for the country but because it would be a ‘win’ for Biden that would diminish the border as an election issue,” writes Andrew McCarthy at National Review. “And just as you would expect, Republican moderates, who are crafty tacticians when it comes to facilitating bad deals, are claiming that Trump is trying to upend their good-faith bipartisan bargain for indecorous political reasons. From their perspective, it’s a smart ploy: Trump is unpopular nationally, so if opposition to the deal can be spun as fighting off Trump’s machinations, then maybe they can get the deal across the finish line.”

Yet since immigration has replaced the economy as the foremost issue on the minds of the electorate, Trump’s desire to work out his own deal when he’s elected may be enough to overcome these moderates’ fears. And as our Mark Alexander notes, “If congressional Republicans would legislate a DOJ requirement to maintain a national database of violent crime committed by illegal immigrants, the public sentiments against the border invasion would have overcome the Democrats’ political resistance to border security years ago.” It’s like the old joke: If it could be proven that illegal immigrants would become staunch Republicans, the Democrats would have built Trump’s wall twice as high and perhaps laid a few booby traps along it.

Meanwhile, the editors of National Review have their own take on the bill, in essence questioning the “new emergency authority” the proposal would purportedly provide for Joe Biden. “If given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law,” said Biden. The NR editors called this a “brazenness on the border.” Yet given Joe’s penchant for making things up on the fly — like the student loan relief he tries to dole out — why does he have to wait? He could start enforcing this proposed bill as well as actual existing laws right now in an effort to stop the flow of illegals and dare the Supreme Court to stop him. It would certainly enhance his reelection chances — in fact, you can bet on a mild crackdown just to drum up support as voters begin to go to the polls this fall.

There’s also the view that a compromise now would be better than pushing the issue off past yet another election cycle, one pushed particularly by the Chamber of Commerce types who speak through The Wall Street Journal.

But there are others who remember when the Democrats played Lucy and snatched the football away from earnest Republicans who wanted action. With Simpson-Mazzoli, Ronald Reagan gave three million illegal immigrants amnesty in exchange for promises of border security that never arrived. Two decades later, the Secure Fence Act required 700 miles of double-layered fence, but much of it was eventually devolved into a vehicular barrier and pedestrian fence through programmatic changes during the later George W. Bush years (with the Pelosi-Reid Congress) and Barack Obama’s administration.

Over the last three years, our government has given a green light to those who want to come into America the easy way — not just by crossing the southern border but also by flying in by using an app and forgoing the need to show an ID at airport security.

The solution is right in front of us: just properly enforce the existing laws we have. If Joe Biden had done this from the start, he would have a better approval rating than his paltry 32% regarding his handling of the border.