VICTOR JOECKS: Biden’s border disaster is his plan

No matter how bad you think the situation is on the southern border, you’re wrong. It’s worse.

Last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended almost 2 million people along our border with Mexico. That’s a record. In December, the government picked up more than 178,000 illegal immigrants. In December 2019, the number was fewer than 41,000.

In fiscal 2019, there were 369,000 single adults apprehended. Last fiscal year, the number skyrocketed to more than 1.1 million.

Of course, that’s just the people who are caught. It’s unknown how many immigrants made it over the border without being detained.

In audio obtained by townhall.com, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted how bad things have gotten at the border. “Look, it’s worse now than it, frankly, has been in at least 20 years, if not ever,” he said in a recently recorded meeting with Border Patrol agents.

So much for Vice President Kamala Harris addressing the “root causes” of illegal immigration.

It’s so bad that the Biden administration is taking a page from Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” playbook. Mayorkas told the agents that he gave the go-ahead to fill gaps in the border wall. Biden created those when he halted construction on the project.

The Biden administration is driving the surge by all but rolling out the welcome mat for migrants. During the first few months of his presidency, deportations plummeted by 90 percent. Immigrants know that if they cross the border illegally, there’s a good chance they’ll be allowed to stay.

“We were on scene as ICE mass released another a large group of single adult male migrants at San Antonio airport this morning,” Bill Melugin, a reporter with Fox News, tweeted Wednesday. “People at the airport told us they’ve seen these mass ICE releases happening for months.”

The agency isn’t being too picky about who it releases either.

“An ICE source tells me the agency has been releasing some illegal immigrants with misdemeanor criminal histories, including assault, DUI, drug possession, &illegal re-entry,” he tweeted.

That’s not all. The government is even paying for bus or plane tickets for some illegal immigrants to travel to see family members in the United States, the source told Melugin. In other cases, the government is secretly chartering flights for illegal immigrants to various U.S. cities.

One might wonder how an illegal immigrant could board a commercial flight. Doesn’t the TSA require identification? It does, but there’s a work-around. The TSA allows illegal immigrants to present their civil immigration arrest warrants as identification.

No, that’s not a headline from the Babylon Bee. It’s official U.S. policy.

It would be easy to chalk this up to Biden’s incompetence, which he has amply demonstrated on many fronts. But mere ineptness doesn’t explain contracting charter flights or releasing illegal immigrants with criminal records. That takes planning, especially the effort to keep these actions under wraps.

A more likely explanation is that this is Biden’s plan. Open borders isn’t a political palatable position. But Biden has effectively embraced it nonetheless.

Contact Victor Joecks at vjoecks@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4698. Follow @victorjoecks on Twitter.