Originally published March 24, 2021
https://www.queensjewishlink.com/index.php/opinion/4269-the-crisis-that-must-not-be-named
Over the last few weeks, an unprecedented number of illegal aliens have crossed the border between the United States and Mexico. The Biden administration is completely overwhelmed, refusing to provide information or access to the media. The word “crisis” is certainly appropriate, yet the administration refuses to use that term. Word games aside, this is a crisis.
This is also a crisis caused by President Biden. After halting construction of the border wall and ending the Trump-era policy that required asylum seekers to remain in Mexico, Biden all but put a sign that said “Come On In” on the Rio Grande. It is not hyperbolic to say that Biden wants an open border. In the first Democratic Primary debate back in September 2019, when asked by pseudo-journalist Jorge Ramos about his immigration policy, Biden said, “…all those people are seeking asylum, they deserve to be heard. That’s who we are. We’re a nation who says, if you want to flee, and you’re fleeing oppression, you should come.”
Well, they are coming. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that we are “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years.” DHS insiders claim that there are 6,000 illegal border crossings per day. In Obama’s time, when there were 1,000 illegal crossings per day, they called it a crisis. Biden refuses to do so.
Mayorkas also publicly encourages illegal border crossings, albeit now right now. “Do not come now,” he said on ABC’s Good Morning America. “Give us time to rebuild the system that was entirely dismantled in the prior administration.” He’s saying this to children. He’s encouraging parents to send their children on a dangerous and deadly journey, where (by some estimates) at least a third of the girls are raped. This is what is being encouraged by the Biden administration.
Biden doesn’t know what to do with the illegal aliens swarming the border. The Washington Post reports that CBP requested airplanes to fly thousands of migrants to processing facilities near Canada. Axios reported that the Biden administration is going to spend $86 million on hotel rooms to hold 1,200 migrant families. After making a lot of noise about “kids in cages” held by Trump, Biden is holding almost 300% more “kids in cages” – although the media now calls them “facilities.”
If anyone thinks that this is merely a coincidence, an interviewed illegal alien disabuses them of that notion. Martha Raddatz of ABC News interviewed a self-proclaimed “asylum seeker.” In the interview, Raddatz asked, “Would you have tried to do this when Donald Trump was president?” To which the man replied, “Definitely not. Definitely. We have a chance, you know. The same environment that’s been going on today wasn’t there last year. We used to watch the news and I definitely wouldn’t do this.” In a follow up question, she asked, “So did you come here because Joe Biden was elected president?” “Basically,” the man said.
Of course, the Biden administration is blaming Trump. Julie Chavez Rodriguez, director of White House Office on Intergovernmental Affairs, claimed that “we were inheriting an absolute mess from the previous administration.” Mark Morgan, former acting CBP Commissioner, said that the Biden team was “specifically warned again and again and again” about a massive surge if Biden goes through with his campaign announcements.
Meanwhile, Biden is covering up as much as they can. The administration is refusing to allow the same access granted to media under Trump and his predecessors. Photojournalist John Moore tweeted, “I respectfully ask US Customs and Border Protection to stop blocking media access to their border operations. I have photographed CBP under Bush, Obama and Trump but now – zero access is granted to media. These long lens images taken from the Mexican side.” Moore continued, “There’s no modern precedent for a full physical ban on media access to CBP border operations. To those who might say, cut them some slack – they are dealing with a situation, I’d say that showing the US response to the current immigrant surge is exactly the media’s role.” NBC reported that “Border Patrol officials have been told to deny all media requests for ‘ride-alongs’ with agents along the southern land border,” which is essentially a press gag order.
Democrat Senator Chris Murphy was one of the few granted a tour of the facilities. Murphy, who was quick to condemn Trump, is having a hard time covering up the conditions he had seen. “You’re sleeping on thin mattresses on the floor,” he told the media. “They are sort of bunched, you know, about six inches to a foot from each other.” He added that those conditions you would not “want your child in for more than 10 minutes.” Currently, around 15,000 children are being detained in those conditions.
When the media and fellow Democrats begin to blast policy, that is when Biden has truly failed the country. Democrat Representative Vicente Gonzalez, whose constituency lives on the border, is one of those Democrats. “When you create a system that incentivizes people to come across, and they are released, that immediately sends a message to Central America that if you come across you can stay,” he told The Washington Post. “It incentivizes droves of people to come, and the only way to slow it down is by changing policy at our doorstep. If they don’t change the policy, the flow of continued migration traffic isn’t going to stop or slow down.”
This crisis will not end because Biden does not want it to end. Biden does not care about the tens of thousands of lives that will be destroyed because there are millions of Democrat voters who believe this is “empathy.” This is not empathy. Bringing in half a million children into the United States will not help the tens of millions left behind in Latin America. All it will do is incentivize more migration – migration that the United States cannot afford and that the migrants must suffer through. This is not empathy; this is politics at the expense of the least fortunate. This crisis must end. But a crisis unacknowledged is a crisis with no resolution.
Moshe Hill is a political columnist and Senior Fellow at Chovevei Zion. You can find Moshe on his blog at www.aHillwithaView.com, www.facebook.com/aHillwithaView, or www.twitter.com/TheMoHill.
