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What Can't Go On, Won't Go On

  • crosbynorbeck
  • Jan 28, 2024
  • 5 min read

Updated: May 8

Upon assuming office, Joe Biden initiated his open border policy, resulting in a huge influx of illegal immigrants coming across the U.S. southern border. Border Patrol apprehensions and expulsions averaged 447,000 throughout the Obama and Trump Administrations and then surged to 2.215 million encounters in 2022 (Beginning in March 2020, U.S. Border Patrol changed its methodology to include counts for both apprehensions and expulsions as "encounters.")[1] Another source gives southwest border encounters as 1.73 million (2021), 2.37 million (2022), and 2.47 million (2024)  for close to 6.5 million since Biden’s been in office[2]. That same source notes that during that period, there have also been 1.7 million “known gotaways,” and in just FY 2023, the apprehensions included 35,433 aliens with criminal records and 169 individuals on the terrorist watchlist.

 

Interestingly, Biden’s not-so-clandestine mentor and shot caller Barack Obama’s immigration legacy was different:

 

But Obama’s immigration legacy is a complex one. On the one hand, he is the harshest enforcer of immigration laws in American history, deporting more illegal immigrants than any previous administration. On the other hand, his executive actions have also helped shield from deportation some 750,000 unauthorized immigrants who were brought here as children.[3]

 

Previous administrations' approach to the issue is no longer arrestive; the tsunami is breaking dams. This calls to mind how past “sudden” societal changes transpired as slowly accumulating developments until finally reaching a threshold weight such that there’s an abrupt crash through the floor of previous conventions. A drip-drip-drip went on for decades with the advent of sanctuary cities whose leftist governments could afford to entertain the trickle heretofore more effective border control allowed.

 

Changes have come in the composition of the subject cohort as well:

 

America’s tight labour market increases the incentive for people looking to earn a better living. Wars and global instability are also playing a part. Whereas most migrants used to come from just Mexico and the Northern Triangle (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras), people from these countries now make up less than two-thirds of all those apprehended (see chart 2). The share of Venezuelans is growing, and tens of thousands of people from as far as India, Russia and China are also seeking asylum in America.[4]

 

Now we are at a point where this is no longer a tolerable plight. A building strain on the most immediately impacted communities near the border caused requests, prominently led by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, to the Biden administration to begin faithfully discharging its Constitutional duty to protect our nation’s borders.

 

With no action forthcoming, Texas installed floating spherical buoys in the Rio Grande as an impediment to crossing, and the Biden Administration sued Governor Abbott to compel their removal, arguing they represent a navigation disruption not sanctioned by the Corps of Engineers. A federal judge ordered that they be moved to the embankment.[5]

 

Subsequently, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reconsidered that order. As well as the buoys, Texas has placed concertina wire on both state and private land to deter further invasion, as well as passing a state law authorizing law enforcement to arrest, prosecute and deport people who cross the border illegally.[6]

 

Also, an accelerant was introduced when Abbott began bussing many immigrants to left-governed “sanctuary cities” like New York and Chicago. This, unsurprisingly, caused uproar as the new arrivals disrupted life – and economies – whereever they arrived. Mayors, notably Eric Adams, complained that this immigrant crisis was more than New York could absorb, as if the small Texas border town of Eagle Pass was better able to take in hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants.

 

Sharing the flood of immigrants with the North and Northeast introduced significant dissent among those cities’ lawful residents whose interests were now being ignored in favor of the newcomers, a dissent accentuated by the disparate favorable treatment afforded relocatees including shelter, food, space at the expense of the locals, and differential treatment concerning exemption from requirements for identification and photographs.[7]

 

Federal failings have not only engendered anger in our own citizenry over the misallocation of taxpayer money (over $20B to HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement since 2022)[8] and the devaluation of our citizenship, but they have also made this experience no picnic for the migrants. Apart from the upheaval and often less than welcoming residents, undocumented children are not faring well. HHS has lost track of 85,000 minors, and some are known to be exploited as child labor by sponsors whose vetting is “rushed” while it’s feared that this whole diaspora is feeding human (child) trafficking.[9]

 

But the temperature has come up a notch with the Biden Administration demanding removal of Texas border area concertina wire. The U.S. Supreme Court on January 25, 2024 granted an Administration request to allow federal Border Patrol agents to cut or move the wire. The Supreme Court notably did not require anything from Texas. Abbott has said that Texas National Guard and Department of Public Safety personnel will maintain said wire barrier. So far 25 State Governors have pledged support and governor Abbott says at least 10 states have deployed their National Guardsmen to Texas.[10]

 

Is there a showdown brewing? Possibly, but CBP has said they are not doing anything yet, while the head of the Border Patrol union has been ambiguously quoted speaking favorably of Governor Abbott, and Biden has demanded Texas’ retreat with some opining that he could federalize the NG. Neither appears imminent, and the Governor has strong justification from the U.S. Constitution for his actions to defend his state:

 

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and the other visionaries who wrote the U.S. Constitution foresaw that States should not be left to the mercy of a lawless president who does nothing to stop external threats like cartels smuggling millions of illegal immigrants across the border. That is why the Framers included both Article IV, § 4, which promises that the federal government “shall protect each [State] against invasion,” and Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which acknowledges “the States’ sovereign interest in protecting their borders.” Arizona v. United States, 567 U.S. 387, 419 (2012) (Scalia, J., dissenting).

 

 

The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary. The Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and other Texas personnel are acting on that authority, as well as state law, to secure the Texas border.[11]

 

Prevarication by the Biden Administration continues, abetted in its sustainability by favorable coverage in much of the media. But those legs appear to be weakening.

 

Just to add a little spice to proceedings, a clown convoy (https://takeourborderback.com/) is supposedly on the way with 700K(!) trucks to, in all likelihood, give the feds grist for another “insurrection” myth.[12]

 

So, what now?  Well, sometimes you just have to wait for history to happen.




 

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