By Marilyn Quigley

Last March, 38,000 “got-aways” were last seen hightailing it into the U.S. interior. Immigration Studies explains that “known got-aways” is the official term for immigrants seen illegally crossing into America.

These runners are “thought to include presumed criminals, ineligible prior deportees, contraband smugglers, or people from terror-harboring nations who would naturally want to evade Border Patrol.” Through August, that number had swelled to perhaps 228,000.

Democrats did not learn from 9/11 that securing our home country is as necessary as securing our private homes.

A president’s first day in office reveals his priorities. On President Biden’s first day, he signed executive orders reversing six immigration mandates of his predecessor. One signature immediately stopped border wall construction. “We do not agree with the building of the wall,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas recently told “Fox News Sunday.”

“We” Americans — including Secretary Mayorkas — have doors and walls on our homes as entrances for guests but barriers to those intending harm. Quite a contrast to leadership’s ideology.

Biden’s first-day orders also included revoking Trump’s “harsh and extreme” immigration enforcement and placing a 100-day moratorium on deportations by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

These acts announced to the world, in essence, “Come ye masses yearning for a free ticket into America, where we lift our restrictions and remove our walls and doors.” And come they did.

Biden, realizing things were out of control even by his standards, got a plan. Here are his words on March 24 in the State Dining Room: “I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts … in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border.”

It took three months for the new border czar to take a peek at the border situation she was assigned to fix.

On June 25, Harris’ four-hour visit included only one border town, El Paso, which U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) called a “politically safe” place to visit, according to the Texas Tribune. Harris avoided the humanity-packed lower Rio Grande Valley, where most of the illegal activity is occurring.

Perhaps her stay was abbreviated so she could rush back to DC and continue work on her new plan. In all fairness, she produced a sweeping Root Causes Strategy that boggles the mind. It calls for a complete “overhaul” of at least three countries — El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras — so that their residents have no reason to leave for better life elsewhere.

The Harris plan has five pillars: “Addressing economic insecurity and inequality; Combating corruption, strengthening democratic governance, and advancing the rule of law; Promoting respect for human rights, labor rights, and free press; Countering and preventing violence, extortion, and other crimes perpetrated by criminal gangs, trafficking networks, and other organized criminal organizations; Combating sexual, gender-based, and domestic violence.”

Lofty goals, for sure.

But to clarify, aren’t these goals similar to those in Afghanistan for the last 20 years? And didn’t that plan fail?

Two facts: It is not America’s right or ability to restructure others’ domains in order to secure our borders. Furthermore, a country that could not manage a peaceful exit from Afghanistan certainly cannot renovate the economics, rule of law, and basic values of three other countries.

In the meantime, add another country to the list of do-overs — Haiti, from which over 30,000 crossed into our homeland in September. The vast majority now abide throughout the U.S., waiting to appear for court dates. Statistics show 44% will not do so.

The Harris “solution,” mere pie in the sky, would take decades even if it were possible.

Her plan completed, Harris then turned to castigation of our Border Patrol equestrians for using what she mistakenly thought were whips against would-be immigrants. Furious, the border czar, in effect, threw our hard-working professionals under the horses, removing their use as tools for securing order.

So much for checking facts before jumping to conclusions.

In the meantime, we need an immediate plan to remove the Biden-Harris welcome mat and install a safe security system that admits worthy people, sends criminals back, and has the ability to tell the difference.

President Biden can also stop blaming Trump for the problem and start using a pen for a real plan.

Such a plan would mandate a complete border wall, several wide doors, and ample Border Patrol treated with respect by the nation’s leaders.