(NewsNation) — President Joe Biden is now ordering 1,500 more active duty troops to the U.S. Mexico border at the request of the Department of Homeland Security.
This comes as officials brace for a surge in migrants when Title 42 ends in just over a week. The Trump pandemic-era policy allows border agents to expel migrants who cross illegally.
Now, the border is a major problem. It needs a bipartisan congressional solution, which, sadly, will not happen anytime soon. Because any deal, any compromise, would be assailed by the extremes in both parties. It’s not enough or too much.
It’s for the same reason that we can’t get any sensible legislation passed that Biden is already getting criticized by the extremes of both sides for trying to do something, anything. We need to stop weaponizing this serious issue. But since no long-term solutions are on the horizon, we can only deal in the short-term. And the short-term issue is that expected surge and it sure seems like it’s already at the border, with a number of migrant apprehensions as of last week far outpacing average daily totals in March.
The Washington Post reports that on certain days last week, there were up to 8,000 apprehensions a day. Illegal crossings are expected to surpass 10,000 per day after May 11 when Title 42 expires. These numbers are staggering.
And I’ve been critical of what I view as the Biden administration’s double talk when it comes to Title 42. They extended the policy late last year, while the White House also making a big show of trying to get rid of Title 42 in court — an attempt to appease the left. Even though, of course, the reality on the ground was that they needed Title 42 more than ever and the stricter policies actually worked, at least initially showing a 95% or greater drop in the number of migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti down more than 95%.
Now, that drop didn’t last as we get closer to the date of the policy expiring.
Still, nothing that the Biden administration does is going to win him any praise on either side. For example, the additional troops are too little, too late for the right.
“I’m not sure why he didn’t take this action a year and a half to two years ago, frankly. The border has been in crisis for some time. They’ve known that Title 42 is going to be lifted on May 11. I’m not sure why they don’t have a more comprehensive and robust plan in place,” former Acting U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said on Fox News.
On the left, they really don’t want any troops at the border at all. Remember, Trump sent troops to the border and the left claims he was abusing the military to push an anti-immigrant agenda. Here’s Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on MSNBC just after the troop deployment was announced.
“Well, I’m not a big fan of sending troops to the border. However, what the Biden administration has said is that these troops will not be there for law enforcement, they will essentially be there to help with transport, logistics processing,” she said.
This is the problem with anything border-related. It gets politicized. Too few want to come up with the tough solutions to a really tough problem. And now, the partisan media will only cover angles of the story that fit into their worldview. We’ll try to do something different.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author, and not of NewsNation.
