Joe Biden had been president for less than a month when, in February, our Douglas Andrews observed that there was already “a border crisis by design.” We’ve consistently warned that was not because Biden is a clueless cognitive mess, though he is that, but because he and his sidekick “border czar” Kamala Harris want an immigration crisis to empower the Democrat Party with new loyal voters after they’ve been made citizens.

Hanlon’s razor states, “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Reverse that, and you have Biden’s immigration policy.

Biden immediately set about to undo Donald Trump’s needed enforcement policies and mechanisms, calling them “inhumane” and “dangerous.” Would-be migrants naturally interpreted Biden’s actions and rhetoric as a welcome mat and quickly began pouring across the border, including record numbers of unaccompanied minors. Biden and his team have made halfhearted attempts to tell migrants not to come, but only as they continue to gut the whole enforcement part of the equation.

Border Patrol records show that encounters with illegal border crossers grew from 78,417 in January to 212,672 in July. That doesn’t account for migrants who evaded capture. No one knows how many that is, but the Center for Immigration Studies estimates that “just 68% of illegal border crossers get caught.” August numbers aren’t available yet, but in the Biden administration’s first full six months, there were more than one million encounters at the border, and the pace accelerated every single month. If that trend continued in August, it means Border Patrol agents have now apprehended more than 1.3 million illegals since Biden took the helm. Perhaps another half-million or more got away.

Many of the apprehended are deported, but the New York Post editorial board says, “The feds are losing track of tens of thousands who do get admitted into the interior, as officials demand only a promise that they check in with authorities after they land somewhere.”

Maybe it’s time to update that old “11 million undocumented workers” trope.

Even Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted recently: “This is unsustainable. We can’t continue like this, our people in the field can’t continue, and our system isn’t built for it.”

So where does that leave us in Biden’s seventh month as president? As Mark Alexander notes, “Biden is flooding the country with illegal immigrants and has no intention to slow the the influx, hoping to curry favor with Latino voters and to increase their ranks.”

The one glimmer of good news is that after the Supreme Court recently blocked Biden’s rescinding of Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy, deportations to Mexico have increased. Still, Team Biden is looking for new ways to dismantle that policy and leave the border wide open. The crisis is indeed by design.