The border rush expected after the end of Title 42 never arrived, and liberal outlets reacted with a combination of relief and gloating. At the height of the pandemic, the Trump administration invoked Title 42, an old law that allows the government to swiftly remove would-be illegal migrants when there is a risk of infectious disease. By permitting its invocation to sunset, Team Biden dismantled the last major element of his predecessor’s border-protection architecture.
What the media largely refused to disclose is the reason no rush materialized: Biden has resolved to welcome migrants en masse—legally.
It’s true that the southern border is “much better than you all expected,” as President Biden put it with a smug chuckle on a bike ride last week. What Biden and his media allies failed to mention was why: His administration is opening “100 regional processing centers at key locations in the Western Hemisphere,” where migrants can seek “lawful pathways early in their journey and well before reaching the southwest border.”
The Department of Homeland Security has listed these centers as one of several steps it is taking to promote “deterrence.” Other measures include a push to double the number of refugees accepted from the Western Hemisphere; new family-reunification programs; and a plan to welcome an extra 30,000 individuals a month in total from Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Haiti.