Pavlich: A border crisis Biden is comfortable with

Americans are watching in horror as towns like Del Rio, Texas, continue to be overrun with a historic wave of preventable illegal immigration. Drone images recently captured by Fox News shocked the nation as 12,000 illegal immigrants from Haiti built an encampment under a bridge and waited in 100 degree heat for their ticket into America. 

“The President has a plan for taxes. Where is the plan to protect our southern border?” Democratic Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano asked on Twitter. “The VP is able to visit the fun events across the country, while American communities continue to grapple with failed immigration reform. Where is the visit to Del Rio, TX?”

Vice President Harris, who was appointed as border czar in March, has been absent from the scene. President Biden, who has spent 40 years in Washington D.C., has never taken the time to visit. Not just as president, but throughout his long political career. Border Democrats have invited both to come see the situation firsthand and have been ignored. 

While Republican and Democratic lawmakers look for ways to stop the crisis, the Biden administration isn’t changing the policies that led to the disaster and they have no plans to implement new tools to stem the flow. 

“It is the policy of this administration. We do not agree with the building of the wall,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a recent interview with “Fox News Sunday.” “I wouldn’t call it a flood.”

Now, Border Patrol agents and Mexican authorities are warning another wave of 19,000 Haitians, who have been living in South America safely for years, are on their way. More than 12,000 have been released into the U.S. without mandatory court dates. 

But a quick look back at then-candidate Biden’s presidential campaign indicates this situation was coming. 

“We should not be locking people up,” Biden said in a June 2019 Democratic primary debate, adding that people who break federal law by illegally crossing the border shouldn’t be prosecuted or jailed. 

“We could afford to take in a heartbeat another 2 million people [per year],” Biden followed up during remarks to the Asian and Latino Coalition PAC in August 2019. 

Now working from the Oval Office, it’s obvious Biden is carrying out these positions through Department of Homeland Security policy. For one, Mayorkas won’t use legal language embedded in U.S. code to describe illegal immigrants, simply calling individuals in the country without permission “migrants.” 

“We don’t use the term illegal immigrants. I actually issued a policy in the Department of Homeland Security. We use the term non-citizen,” Mayorkas said during an interview with CNN. 

The bolstering of this strategy again became clear recently when Border Patrol agents on horseback were falsely accused and smeared by the White House of “whipping” illegal Haitian immigrants who were disobeying orders while crossing into the U.S. from the Rio Grande. 

“To see people treated like they did? Horses nearly running them over? People being strapped? It’s outrageous. I promise you, those people will pay,” Biden said from the White House. 

Despite the fact that “strapping” or “whipping” never happened, horse patrols were stopped in Del Rio, eliminating another important tool Border Patrol agents need to do their jobs. The White House moved with the narrative as a distraction, claiming “that’s not who we are,” while again watering down border security. 

Border communities have been directly and negatively impacted by Biden’s open border policies. Americans with legitimate concerns about public health and vetting have been lied to or ignored. Officials in the administration, including Biden, have made it clear they don’t think there is a problem or crisis at the border. It’s simply a “challenge” they are “managing,” which proves they have no plans to put a stop to the situation.

Politically, Democrats are underestimating the blowback from the crisis. In the 2020 presidential election, former President Trump won Zapata County. It was the first time a Republican won the county in 100 years. 

“After losing the county [Starr] by 60 percentage points to Hillary Clinton, President Donald Trump lost it by just 5% to Joe Biden. In neighboring Zapata County, which Clinton won by 33 percentage points in 2016, voters didn’t just swing more to the right — the county flipped all the way red,” the Texas Tribune reports. “And that trend continued all the way up and down the Texas-Mexico border, where Trump won 14 of the 28 counties that Clinton had nearly swept in 2016 while winning by an average of 33 percentage points. This year those same counties went for Biden by an average of just 17 points.”

Congressional Democrats representing border districts have also lost patience. 

Pavlich is the editor for Townhall.com and a Fox News contributor.