Corporate Media Distract From Biden’s Border Catastrophe With Mayorkas’ Deliberately Dishonest ‘Drop’ In Arrests Narrative
President Joe Biden’s border crisis is rapidly turning into a border catastrophe, but you wouldn’t know that from corporate media headlines which blared early Monday morning that the administration’s decision to end Title 42 resulted in a drop in illegal crossings.
The death of the Trump-era Title 42 was a long and slow one that the Biden administration claimed to support but repeatedly refused to end because of the pandemonium it would inflict on our already crumbling border.
The corporate media, seeing the Biden administration scrambling for excuses amid what has become the biggest border crisis in history, couched the imminent surge with optimistic coverage.
It didn’t take long for outlets like Wall Street Journal, Reuters, The Hill, CNN, and PBS to insist that the rush many border experts and reporters predicted after the end of Title 42 hadn’t come.
The press’s coverage painting the coming calamity as a “lull” and an “ease” is a deliberately dishonest reading of the state of the border, but they didn’t come up with that narrative on their own.
It was Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who first shrugged off concerns about the sudden surge on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Even after warning it is “too early” to tell if the peak of illegal border crossings has come yet, Mayorkas expressed optimism that the Biden administration’s border strategy is working.
“Over the past two days, the United States Border Patrol has experienced a 50% drop in the number of encounters versus what we were experiencing earlier in the week before Title 42 ended at midnight on Thursday,” Mayorkas said on Sunday.
This downplaying was quickly echoed by a bicycle-riding Biden who, mere days after he warned that the “chaos” ushered in by his administration would continue to plague the southern U.S. border, championed Mayorkas’ claim that illegal border crossings “have gone down.”
“My hope is that they will continue to go down,” Biden told a reporter in Delaware on Sunday.
Two days’ worth of apprehension data is hardly enough to draw a meaningful conclusion from, much less dominate front pages and headlines. Even if Mayorkas’ recent remarks were true, it still means that thousands of people were caught illegally crossing the border after the end of Title 42.
If Biden’s policies were actually reducing illegal immigration flow, as the corporate media so definitively claims, that would be reflected in Customs and Border Protection data. Yet, even CBP isn’t fooled by the Biden administration’s deceptions.
In April of 2021, nearly 1,000 illegal migrants crossed the border daily unpursued. In April of 2022, more than 8,000 migrants were expected to be apprehended at the southern border every day. As of April 2023, nearly 10,000 people were caught daily illegally crossing into the U.S.
Similarly, the most recent border arrest numbers from March (191,899) might appear to be trending downwards from last year (222,57). Historically speaking, however, apprehensions of illegal border crossers are still far higher than the number of arrests recorded in 21 of the past 23 years. Outside of 2022, there haven’t been this many arrests in the month of March since the CBP began recording apprehension data in 2000.
This jump is especially significant given the White House’s explicit instruction that law enforcement agencies avoid arresting illegal border crossers. It’s also notable considering the Biden administration’s attempts to expand “humanitarian parole” and inaccurately label illegal border crossers who come through points of entry as “lawful.”
Border Baloney
Mayorkas’ claims weren’t just inaccurate in terms of data — they were flatly wrong and extremely tone-deaf in the face of reality.
For days now, groups containing thousands of migrants have amassed at various crossings along the U.S.-Mexico border. Even before that, many migrants were waiting in Mexico for news of the end of Title 42. Many more are expected to join the influx into the U.S. in the coming months.
Mayorkas’ empty warnings that “there’s a consequence if one does not use those lawful pathways” means nearly nothing to migrants who base much of their decision to come to the U.S. on who is in power and how open that person will keep the border.
For years, word about the end of Title 42 spread among smugglers and other migrant networks. Now that the Biden administration’s removed yet another obstacle illegal crossers would normally face trying to enter the U.S., which is why they are rapidly amassing.
As a result, thousands upon thousands of illegal migrants trekked to the U.S. southern border with hopes of getting released into the United States.
Migrants aren’t stupid. They know that the price cartels demand for their journeys through Mexico can range anywhere from $4,000 to $20,000 dollars. Giving those profiting off of illegal immigration an annual $13 billion boost is only worth it to the thousands pouring across the border daily if they know they will be allowed to stay in the U.S.
Under the Biden administration’s inviting policies, most of the illegal crossers are not only guaranteed unlawful entry without significant consequences but they will also be allowed to remain in the country without any semblance of accountability.
Some illegal border crossers might even be assigned a court date in 2026 or later, but if history tells us anything, many won’t bother to show up. Others simply cross into the U.S. undetected or without being apprehended.
Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire, Fox News, and RealClearPolitics. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.
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