Open borders. That sums up Joe Biden’s immigration policy in just two words. Yet even he has to bow to reality and polling — or at least pretend to — at some point. The Biden administration yesterday announced a deal with Mexico to restart “Remain in Mexico,” the Trump administration policy of making asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for approval by American authorities. Biden once called Donald Trump’s policy “dangerous and inhumane” and ended it on his first day in office. Now it’s his own policy … begrudgingly and only for now.

Trump initiated the policy formally known as the Migrant Protection Protocols in 2019 to deal with a surge of families migrating from Central America. Those families and others, by the way, are primarily coming here for jobs, not to flee violence. That’s a perfectly legitimate reason to attempt to legally emigrate to the U.S., but it should not qualify them for asylum.

Trump’s policies, of which Remain was only a part, effectively reduced attempted illegal border crossings to a manageable level. On the other hand, Biden’s sanctimonious moralizing and reversal of all of those policies created the open border Biden wanted, which will yield roughly two million Border Patrol encounters with illegal border crossers this year — a record. Some are repeat crossers, but the Border Patrol also doesn’t encounter every migrant. And the Biden administration has been catching and releasing untold numbers, not to mention considering massive payouts to migrants allegedly mistreated by the Trump administration.

Even with this colossal disaster on the border, Biden is only restoring Remain in Mexico because a federal judge ordered him to, and he’s not happy about it, he’ll have you know.

This was conveyed by DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who a spokesman insisted “has repeatedly stated that MPP has endemic flaws, imposed unjustifiable human costs, pulled resources and personnel away from other priority efforts, and failed to address the root causes of irregular migration.” You know, those “root causes” like better jobs.

Nevertheless, “As required by a federal court order, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been working in good faith to re-implement the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) program,” the DHS added in a statement. “In coordination with the Departments of State and Justice, DHS announced key changes to MPP to address humanitarian concerns raised by the Government of Mexico and shared by the U.S. Government.”

The reinstatement will continue only until the Biden administration figures out how to lawfully end the program entirely. New Jersey Democrat Senator Bob Menendez urged this result for a program he too called “xenophobic and anti-immigrant.” Other activists piled on the administration for this seeming capitulation.

With Biden’s poll numbers in the toilet, however, the president probably doesn’t mind a bit of distraction from the idea that he willingly created this border crisis. That’s especially true when monthly jobs reports continue to disappoint and inflation remains persistent.