“Doing nothing is not an option,” President Biden declared of the border crisis Tuesday — after three-plus years when he did far worse than nothing — as he offered up a scheme that still won’t do much.
His new executive order is simply a deceitful press stunt he hopes will shore up his rock-bottom ratings from voters on the crisis.
The order will “allow” the prez to shut down the border when crossings between points of entry top 17,500 over seven consecutive days — a level that permits nearly 1 million illegal entrants a year.
And that’s on top of close to another million or so entering via the countless “legal” pathways he has created without congressional approval, such as his CPBOne scheduling program.
So his new “limits” still mean historic highs of continued border-jumping — double the highest figure under Donald Trump.
The figures don’t even include the up the 800,000-plus-a-year “gotaways” (those spotted but not stopped) that have become standard under Biden, nor the unknown number who sneak in completely undetected.
Plus, of course, he claimed back in January 2023 most would-be illegal crossers would be “increasingly subject to expedited removal to their country of origin and subject to a five-year ban on reentry” — but never enforced that rule.
And he’s still explicitly exempting unaccompanied minors from being turned away, guaranteeing a renewed flood of kids.
What to know about the Biden administration's "crackdown" on the border:
- President Biden announced an executive order that would shut down the US-Mexico border if illegal crossings exceed 2,500 for seven consecutive days.
- The order prevents migrants from applying for asylum during the shutdown period, but the restrictions will be lifted once crossings average 1,500 per day for seven straight days.
- Critics have pointed out that the border “crackdown” would still allow 1.8 million asylum seekers into the county if fully enforced.
- Border Patrol agents told The Post that the Biden administration plan is “too little, too late.”
This looks like just one more in his long string of phony fixes, another effort to do nothing while insisting he’s gotten tough.
He’s delivered an endless series of lies on this issue (as everywhere else), repeatedly insisting the border is “secure,” then claiming he has no authority to take any action unless Congress acts: “I’ve done all I can,” Biden claimed just months ago.
Now he admits he can act (in fact, he has the power to set the level at zero, not 17,500 a week) . . . five months before Election Day and as seven voters in 10 say Biden has “mostly failed” on border security.
Biden acted dramatically to open the border the day he took office; he refused to reverse himself even as the mix of migrants swelled from the Central Americans of the initial surge to include every nation on the planet.
And he’s offered nothing but bogus fixes ever since.
Even if his new order does finally, actually slow the tide (from preposterously unsustainable to merely unsustainable levels), voters have to wonder if he’ll reverse it the day after the election.
And hold him to account for the millions of illegal immigrants he’s already waved in (and giving mass amnesty too secretly), and the hundreds of thousands of this “plan” will continue to wave in.
America’s border nightmare won’t end until the country has a new leader in the White House.