The beginning months of Joe Biden’s presidency have seen a border crisis that has yet to be quelled. Instead of addressing that problem, the administration is focusing on allowing more immigrants access into the country.
CBS News reported Tuesday that according to a notice sent to Congress, the administration is welcoming back select “asylum-seekers” who were deported under a program instituted by Biden’s predecessor, President Donald Trump.
Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols, known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, required asylum-seekers to stay on the southern side of the U.S.-Mexico border while awaiting a hearing on their status.
Under the policy, immigrants who were seeking asylum but failed to attend their court dates were deported.
Biden suspended the “Remain in Mexico” policy on the day he took office and officially terminated it on June 1.
In its phased approach to reversing aspects of the policy, the administration already has admitted more than 11,000 asylum-seekers with pending cases, according to CBS News. Now it is going further.
The Department of Homeland Security said that starting Wednesday it was “expanding eligibility for U.S. processing to also include MPP enrollees who had their cases terminated or who were ordered removed in absentia (i.e., individuals ordered removed while not present at their hearings).”
CBS News said 27,000 immigrants were deported under Trump for missing their court hearings, but it is unclear how many of those would qualify under the latest phase of Biden’s plan.
It would seem that an asylum-seeker who missed his court date would forfeit his chances to enter the United States. If one cannot follow the law, he should not be admitted into the country.
However, Democrats have made excuses for immigrants who did not follow immigration procedures. For example, they said crime rates in Mexico could have caused certain asylum-seekers to miss their court dates.
While this may be true for some immigrants, it is certainly not the case for all of them. It is not logical to excuse illegal behavior from an entire group of people simply because a certain few of those people had mitigating circumstances.
“With these changes, thousands of people will finally be able to seek protection within the United States and leave the nightmare of the past several years behind them,” said Taylor Levy, an independent immigration attorney who assists asylum petitioners, according to CBS News.
In reality, asylum-seekers who missed their court dates already had their “chance” to seek protection in America, and they lost it by failing to show up in court. That fact does not seem to matter to Levy, who attempts to paint every asylum-seeker as a victim.
To Democrats, immigrants often seem to take priority over American citizens. The Biden administration is intent on giving immigrants who broke the law another chance at admission.
To make matters worse, the United States is still in the midst of a severe border crisis. On June 9, the Washington Examiner reported illegal border crossings in the month of May reached their highest level in over 2o years.
Federal law enforcement officers encountered 180,034 illegal immigrants in May, the report said. That was an increase from 178,622 encounters in April. For reference, the Examiner said the average number of illegal immigrants encountered over the past decade was between 30,000 and 50,000 per month.
Of those encountered at the border in May, approximately 8,000 were denied entry. The other 172,000 immigrants illegally entered the country via “unfenced areas,” the report said.
Even some Democrats are sounding the alarm about Biden’s border crisis. Earlier this month, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas expressed his concerns to MSNBC.
“If you notice, this administration, with all due respect, talks about how we’re handling the unaccompanied kids, but that’s one thing,” he said.
“I’m glad that we’re doing a much better job, but what about the rest of the people? What about the individual adults [that] are coming in? We have to talk about that.”
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If the Biden administration wants to reform the legal immigration process, that is its prerogative. But before doing so, it needs to fix the massive illegal immigration problem fueled by its unintelligent policies.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.