“Alonso said he arrived Jan. 15 in California after crossing over from Tijuana, Mexico, and turned himself over to Customs and Border Protection agents, hoping he could apply for asylum and begin working in the U.S. while his case was decided. He was quickly detained.”—The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 29.
Every so often, a parable explains a complex situation in a few words.
The story above explains in a nutshell what changed on Monday, Jan. 20, when President Donald Trump took control of U.S. border and immigration matters.
Joe Biden pretended that mass illegal migration was due to forces beyond his control. But in the last year of his term, fearing the issue was hurting his election chances, he sent senior officials to persuade Mexico to slow down the flow. Proving he had the power to act all along, encounters of illegal aliens at the border went down for Biden’s last few months in office.
Now, Trump has shown that the “deter, detain, deport” model reduces the incentives for economic migrants to try and enter the U.S. illegally and game our asylum system.
Further, he has shown that a tough, immediate, and clear foreign policy can persuade reluctant countries to cooperate and accept their people when duly deported from the U.S.
Throughout the Biden years, people all over the world knew that if they made it to our borders, they would almost certainly be released after a purely pro forma border “arrest.” If that was too much trouble, they could apply for one of Biden’s made-up parole “pathways,” assisted by billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars funneled to the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations.
No longer. Parole-a-palooza is over. Border and interior enforcement are back.
On Jan. 20, with a flurry of executive orders, Trump ended the Biden border bonanza. Aliens now entering the U.S. illegally at the border are increasingly being detained as the law requires. Trump just announced that an additional 30,000 detention beds for criminal illegal aliens at Guantanamo, which will double U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s current capacity.
For aliens who do manage to get in, or for those released or paroled under Biden, the odds of being able to stay indefinitely–even with no credible asylum claim–just nosedived. People here illegally, and those lawfully ordered removed, are actually going home.
A “Mexican standoff” means mutually assured destruction by two similarly armed small groups. I shall now coin the term “Colombian stand-off”–where one side talks big, then folds when faced with overwhelming force. Here’s an example.
On Sunday, two American military planes carrying Colombians that the U.S. was sending home were suddenly denied permission to land by Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
Immediately, Trump told Petro what economic and visa sanctions would result from his refusal to take his citizens back. About an hour later, Petro changed his mind and decided to accept his countrymen. He even sent Colombian government planes to bring them back. On Wednesday, Colombian military planes brought home 201 people.
For four years, the Biden administration surrendered to–in fact encouraged–a mass influx of migrants to enter the U.S. illegally overland. Though the law required them to be detained until the conclusion of their immigration process, Biden’s Department of Homeland Security let most of them go. They were bused or flown all over the country.
Biden also allowed a million and a half more inadmissible aliens to enter the U.S. illegally via bogus parole programs. Millions of people were paroled or released into the United States on Biden’s watch.
The vast majority are economic migrants who want to enter the U.S., stay, work, send money home, and bring their families–like legal immigrants, only without the bothersome paperwork and wait.
Biden’s open border let them have everything they wanted. Very few were tracked, including many who turned out to have criminal records. All who applied for asylum got work permits.
Things have now changed. The free ride is over, and the message is getting out there.
Colombians will hear about it on social media. Many will decide to stay and fix their own countries–or if they are in need of protection, seek it in a safe country closer to home.
One of the Colombians repatriated this week said he “was surprised to find out that they weren’t letting anyone get in.” Most of the Colombians on that flight were picked up within days of arriving illegally in the U.S. They did not get the free pass they were expecting or had been promised by alien smuggling cartels.
The fact that the U.S. is enforcing its laws seems to be a shocker. But the word will soon get out, from Afghanistan to Zambia.
The BorderLine is a weekly Daily Signal feature examining everything from the unprecedented illegal immigration crisis at the border to immigration’s impact on cities and states throughout the land. We will also shed light on other critical border-related issues such as human trafficking, drug smuggling, terrorism, and more.
Read Other BorderLine Columns:
Savor the Border Wins For a While
The Anglosphere’s Migration Mess
Biden’s Border Legacy Is More Crime, Strained Cities
When Can Government Deport Foreign Students for Pro-Hamas Protests?
This article was originally published at www.dailysignal.com
