Supreme Court’s Title 42 ruling is chance for Biden to pivot on his border disaster
The Supreme Court’s Tuesday ruling on Title 42, the Trump-era rule that’s the last real remaining brake on migrant flow, has done the Biden administration a huge favor — even if our oblivious president doesn’t know it.
The court’s decision, a 5-4 ruling, puts on hold the November ruling from a federal judge that Title 42 had to end. The decision will allow ongoing legal challenges to the rule to play out; oral arguments at the Supreme Court on the rule are scheduled for February with a decision expected this summer.
Plenty of time, in other words, for the Biden administration to get its act together, come up with serious steps for dealing with the migrants and send a loud and clear signal that the border isn’t open.
It could, for example, develop a plan for the countries that serve as major sources of illegal migration to help share the burden of stopping it. Sure, Venezuela and Cuba aren’t likely to play ball, but the US has clout with Mexico, Honduras and other major contributors. Time to make use of our political and economic muscle to actually protect and defend the national interest.
The US also needs to send a clear signal that the border isn’t open. And having Karine Jean-Pierre and other flacks call the patently true statement that it is open “misinformation” won’t cut it. All a potential illegal immigrant has to do is log onto Facebook or see the pictures of people freely crossing the border.
No, that’ll take a radical change in domestic enforcement policies. Bulk up resources for Customs and Border Protection enough to actually let them do their jobs; stop undermining the very idea that border enforcement is a necessary federal-government activity; put an end to the rhetoric that every migrant who comes here for economic reasons somehow has a valid asylum claim.
Above all, stop whining and deflecting. For Team Biden, at the moment, when it comes to the border disaster everyone is to blame except the president.
“We are willing to work with anyone — Republican or Democrat alike — on real solutions, like the comprehensive immigration reform and border security measures President Biden sent to Congress on his first day in office,” a White House flack mewed after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent three busloads of illegal migrants to Vice President Kamala Harris’s DC residence on Christmas Eve.
Of course, Biden’s “comprehensive” solution was, more or less, a stalled 2021 bill to let anyone and everyone in.
That same flack called the busings a “cruel, dangerous and shameful stunt.”
Really? If letting three busloads of migrants wander the streets of DC is “cruel, dangerous and shameful,” then Biden’s overall border policy — which has invited millions in and left them to their own devices, while pushing border towns to the breaking point by overwhelming their human-services capacities — must be an outright atrocity.
“Political games” like Abbott’s bus move, per the White House, “only put lives in danger.” Bull. Biden, DHS head Alejandro Mayorkas and every other enabler of the border catastrophe are the ones endangering people. Abbott is simply pointing out the obvious fact that Biden needs to get serious on the border now, before the disaster becomes even worse.
