Tea at Trianon: Did Biden Intentionally Cause the Border Crisis?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Did Biden Intentionally Cause the Border Crisis?

Well, it certainly seems that way. From Fox News:

The House Judiciary Committee issued a report recently on the Biden administration’s record-breaking undocumented immigrant apprehensions and releases at the border, and its refusal to enforce the immigration laws in the interior of the country. The report questions whether the administration intentionally caused the border crisis. It certainly does seem to be intentional.

When President Joe Biden was campaigning for the presidency, he promised that he would swiftly reverse the Trump administration’s border policies. Then he walked back that promise at a press conference a month before beginning his presidency. He told the reporters that he would establish a more humane policy at the border, but that his administration would need "probably the next six months" to prepare for the transition. Terminating Trump’s border security and interior enforcement measures without the necessary preparations, he said, could lead to having "2 million people on our border."

But he did it anyway. On Day One of his presidency, he rescinded the so-called Muslim travel ban; revoked Trump’s enforcement priorities; terminated border wall construction; and suspended enrollments in the Remain in Mexico Program. Then his administration resumed the catch-and-release practice that Trump had ended whereby illegal border crossers are apprehended and then released into the United States. The Border Patrol apprehended nearly 6 million illegal crossers from the beginning of the Biden presidency on January 20, 2021, through September 30, 2023, and released more than 3.3 million of them into the country. Approximately, 99.7% are still here. It currently is releasing more than 85% of the illegal crossers it apprehends.

The release figures would have been higher if the administration had not turned people away more than 2.3 million times pursuant to Title 42, which required border officials to expel illegal crossers to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The administration also has taken steps to ensure that the illegal crossers it admits will be able to stay in the United States. It replaced the removal provisions in the Immigration and Nationality Act with its own guidelines which shield illegal crossers from being put in removal proceedings once they have reached the interior of the country.

According to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, "The fact an individual is a removable noncitizen therefore should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them." He has limited enforcement measures to deportable migrants who pose a threat to national security, public safety and border security. (Read more.)