“We know that the influx on Wednesday will be incredible. … We felt it was a proper time today to call a state of emergency.” So said El Paso Democrat Mayor Oscar Leeser during a press conference Saturday, as reality began to set in that a crucial Trump-era immigration policy would soon expire.

That Trump policy, Title 42, which effectively reduced the number of asylum seekers our nation would allow by permitting deportation as a COVID-19 health-emergency measure, will expire on Wednesday. And when it does, we can expect the humanitarian nightmare on our southern border to become even more nightmarish.

If you think we’re exaggerating, take a look at some recent footage from El Paso:

BREAKING: A huge migrant caravan of over 1,000 people crossed illegally into El Paso, TX last night, making it the largest single group we have ever seen. The city of El Paso reports Border Patrol now has over 5,000 in custody & has released hundreds to city streets. @FoxNews pic.twitter.com/ewUQX757Lt

— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) December 12, 2022

How bad might it get? Consider: More than two million illegals have been sent back across our southern border since Title 42 was implemented in 2020.

A group of Republican attorneys general tried to avoid this scenario by filing suit to protect Title 42. No dice. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals denied their attempt, which means that only a successful last-second appeal to the Supreme Court can save the policy now.

Frankly, though, we don’t see much hope of preserving it if Joe Biden wants it to expire. Even rotten presidents are afforded certain constitutional powers.

West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin thinks Biden, lacking any other ideas, will ask for an extension of Title 42 before it expires. Beyond such speculation, though, Biden has been mum. That’s leadership for ya.

If there are any good tidings to be found among all this bad news, we might point to a recent bipartisan immigration deal proposed by North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Arizona Independent Kyrsten Sinema. That lump of Christmas coal, which included a mass amnesty for millions of so-called DREAMers, never actually made it into legislative text and now appears to be dead in its tracks. We suspect some GOP senators got a good earful from their constituents.

As for conditions in Oscar Leeser’s border town of El Paso, Texas State Representative Tony Gonzalez recently shot footage at the Border Patrol Central Processing Center there. The facility’s capacity is 1,040, but it’s been overwhelmed by the recent arrival of as many as 4,600 illegals.

Elections — rigged, stolen, and otherwise — have consequences, and Joe Biden’s willful refusal to secure our southern border is one such consequence. As our Lewis Morris noted last week: “At least five million people have illegally entered the country since he took office. The largest caravan on record just crossed this week. Crime along the border is at record levels. Border Patrol and regional law enforcement are swamped and unable to handle the surge. And with illegals being shuttled around in the dead of night to hide their numbers, nearly every state in the union is now a border state.”

This is what happens when you don’t build a wall and don’t enforce our immigration laws, but you do invite “all those people who are seeking asylum” to “immediately surge to the border,” which is exactly what candidate Joe Biden said during a nationally televised Democrat presidential debate in 2019.

We wonder: What did the, er, 81 million people who voted for this guy think was going to happen? Or were they just not paying attention?

Nor does it help that the Open-Borders Party has been further enticing illegals by expanding access to taxpayer-funded health benefits. Hey, who wouldn’t want “free” healthcare?

Of course, if you support Rule of Law, then you naturally oppose illegal immigration. In which case you’re branded by the Left, and by the cheap-labor Chamber of Commerce types, as a bigot. But not in so many words. The insinuation is subtle:

Finally, as if we needed additional proof that Joe Biden is unserious about — indeed, even hostile toward — border security, we need only look at the lawsuit filed last week by the Biden Justice Department against Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, whose administration has been using shipping containers to build a makeshift wall along the state’s border with Mexico.

On what grounds, you ask? The DOJ claims that the project trespasses on federal property. “Arizona has unlawfully and without authority failed to remove the shipping containers from lands owned by the United States or over which the United States holds easements, thereby damaging the United States,” the lawsuit argues.

You read that right: Restricting the flow of illegal immigrants into our country is “damaging the United States.”

We can’t make this stuff up.

UPDATE: On Friday, a federal judge ruled that the Biden administration improperly ended President Trump’s highly successful “Remain in Mexico” border policy, although the legal effect of Judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk’s ruling is still unclear, as he didn’t order that the Trump policy be reinstituted.