International drug cartels stand to benefit greatly after the termination of the Title 42 coronavirus border control policy.
Retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent Derek Maltz is predicting that Mexican cartels will capitalize on a tidal wave of illegal migration after Title 42’s planned expiration, according to Fox News.
“They’re just going to take advantage of the volume of distractions to our brave men and women on the front lines, and they’re just going to continue to move high-value targets into America,” Maltz predicts.
In other words, Border Patrol agents will be so overwhelmed with processing migrants that drug and human smugglers will succeed in slipping through an unguarded border.
“It’s going to increase the deadly supply of fentanyl and this tsunami of these lethal substances that are entering the country daily.”
Another national security expert is warning of the consequences of ending Title 42.
“What we are facing on the U.S. southern border is more than a crisis, it’s a catastrophe, and it’s about to get worse,” Joseph Humire of the Center for a Secure Free Society warned of the imminent border situation.
“Removing Title 42 sends the wrong message and creates perverse incentives for Mexican cartels and their human smuggling facilitators eager to maximize profits.”
If the ceaseless wave of illegal immigrants crossing the border was effectively deterred, front-line agents would be more capable of focusing on these international criminals.
Title 42 was set to expire Wednesday, but on Monday, the Supreme Court delayed the final termination of the policy due to litigation on the part of governors and attorneys general in 19 Republican-led states, according to the New York Times. It’s unclear how long the delay will last.
“The Supreme Court could now let the Biden administration end the use of Title 42 in a matter of days, or the justices could hold off for weeks or months as they consider the challenge from the 19 states,” the Times reported.
The problem isn’t so much that America’s existing immigration laws are insufficient at deterring illegals; it’s that the Biden administration refuses to enforce them.
The Department of Homeland Security has made the mass “catch and release” of most illegal aliens a fact of life for the last two years.
The people arriving at the border often don’t try to evade the authorities — they turn themselves in and request asylum, setting up a byzantine legal battle the federal government increasingly refuses to fight.
Conservatives sometimes tend to point to a border wall as the end-all border security objective. But the wall doesn’t provide an answer to the warping of American immigration law by pro-migration bureaucrats and self-interested immigration lawyers.
It’s very much true that the wall has proved an effective measure — especially in preserving law enforcement resources — but it’s far from the only answer to restoring the integrity of the nation’s borders.
Former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” asylum policy proved the most game-changing border security reform of his presidency.
Under this reform, migrants had to wait for the adjudication of their (mostly baseless) asylum cases in Mexico, rather than being set loose in American communities with a court date. (Of course, the Biden administration canned it.)
A 2019 summer wave of illegal immigration was blunted by Remain in Mexico. The coronavirus pandemic (which limited illegal immigration) prevented the policy from being tested on a long-term basis, and Biden made sure it wasn’t in place as he opened the floodgates.
What would be even better would be fundamental reforms that treat America’s existing asylum law as the dated policy that it is.
If you travel from Central America through the entirety of Mexico to the American border, you’re not fleeing persecution in your home country. You’re trying to acquire American wages and welfare benefits as an economic migrant.
Until our leadership stops believing the nation’s borders are a mere partisan distraction, don’t expect a credible, long-term alternative to Title 42.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.