Haitian Migrant Fiasco a New Low for Biden’s Border Mess

September 24, 2021

By Dale Wilcox

Those who watched the Biden administration’s destruction of our southern border earlier this year were appalled by the images of lawlessness, overcrowding and mismanagement. Some may have thought it couldn’t possibly be worse than that. As we are quickly learning, it can always get worse with Joe Biden’s handlers in charge.

Recently we saw another shocking scene. More than ten thousand migrants predominantly from Haiti were crossing the Rio Grande and taking shelter under an overpass bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Immigration enforcement officials were overwhelmed and forced to play a completely reactive game. It is time to call this what it is: the planned demolition of the United States as we know it, perpetrated by the elected officials who took an oath to protect us.

This situation raises a number of questions that our media will not ask because of their allegiance to the anti-borders left. How did so many destitute citizens of Haiti, on an island in the Caribbean, find their way to Northern Mexico? Thanks to reports from independent journalists who interviewed migrants, we learned that most of them were actually living for several years in Chile and Brazil, not Haiti. Still, one does not simply walk from Chile to Mexico. Like the caravans that have turned up on our border previously, these migrants are just pawns in an organized effort by cartels and non-governmental organizations who operate in the shadows while they are changing our country for the worse.

Despite the lack of critical media coverage, the meltdown at the border has greatly eroded Biden’s standing in job approval polls. To staunch the bleeding, the White House made a public show of deporting some Haitians on planes back to their homeland. This was little more than symbolic posturing to give Biden political cover. Immigration experts have determined that those sent back were a relatively small number of single adults who apparently forgot to claim fear of returning home as grounds for an asylum claim. Those still under the bridge, the vast majority of those who came across, are being processed for distribution throughout the United States.

Lost in the chaos is the fact that Haiti has one of the lowest COVID vaccination rates in the world. Are any of these people being vaccinated for COVID prior to release into the U.S? Doubtful, as Afghan refugees were merely given the option for vaccination but not required. But American citizens are held to strict mask mandates in schools and proof of vaccination to enter restaurants. How nativist and xenophobic can America really be when we hold our own citizens to high standards that aren’t required of those entering illegally?

While Biden runs a loose ship when it comes to immigration, he can turn into Kim Jong-un when it comes to hiding the embarrassing details from the public. As the Haitian migrant crisis was exploding, Biden’s Federal Aviation Administration issued a temporary flight restriction on drones operating around the overpass in Del Rio. The order was lifted only after Fox News and others publicly shamed the White House for its authoritarian tactics. This administration seems eager to do things that damage the country, they just don’t want you to know about it and hold them accountable for the damage.

Another tactic of this administration is to play fast and loose with immigration data to create the perception that they are tough on enforcing the border. They recently touted the statistic that migrant encounters at the border were down two percent in August compared to July. What they don’t tell you is that migrant encounters last month were up a whopping 317 percent compared to August 2020. Also, as Immigration Reform Law Institute Senior Fellow and former ICE Acting Director Tom Homan recently explained, any drop in migrant encounters is negated by the fact that border crossings and “gotaways” continue to rise. This is due to the fact that border agents are pulled away from their posts to deal with crises like the one currently unfolding in Del Rio. When that happens, cartels can traffic more people and drugs across unmanned border areas, and the problems worsen.

The Haitian migrant crisis has been a new low for the Biden White House’s border policies. Absent meaningful pushback from Congress, the courts and the American people, however, it would be foolish to think we have hit rock bottom.     

Dale L. Wilcox is executive director and general counsel at the Immigration Reform Law Institute, a public interest law firm working to defend the rights and interests of the American people from the negative effects of mass migration.

Also published at: Dale Wilcox, Haitian Migrant Fiasco a New Low for Biden’s Border Mess, Breitbart, September 24, 2021.