Democrat Senators Sinema, Kelly sound off as CDC announces the end of Title 42

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Senators Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema would like to know if Joe Biden has lost his ever-lovin’ mind. The Biden border crisis is in full swing and rapidly growing worse so what does the president do? He finally caves to the progressive wing of the Democrat Party and thinks announcing that Title 42 will end on May 23 is a good idea. And, as an extra bonus, Biden promises COVID-19 vaccines to the illegal migrants crossing over into the US. What could possibly go wrong?

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Some moderate Democrats are pushing back and not mincing their words of disapproval. Senator Sinema said that the decision by CDC announced on Friday shows that Biden has shown “a lack of understanding about the crisis at our border.” She’s not wrong, of course. Joe Biden doesn’t have a clue and that is because not only has he been in denial since he took office and did away with the successful policies and agreements in use at the border during the previous administration, he has never bothered to even so much as take a day trip to the southern border. He hasn’t gotten a first-hand look at any of the US border with Mexico, except that one time in 2008 when he sped by in an SUV and was at a small portion of the border for about 5 minutes. That claim should be taken with a grain of salt as Mumbling Joe is known to make up stories. Anyway, that was in El Paso which is hundreds of miles away from the Del Rio Sector in Texas or the border in Arizona. Even the border in New Mexico is feeling the effects of Biden’s border crisis.

Senator Kelly agrees with his colleague from Arizona. Biden’s move is unacceptable. Biden announced his decision earlier this week and now has the blessing of the CDC – the agency that makes the recommendation to put Title 42 into effect as a public health policy – as of Friday but there is no plan in place to deal with the consequence.

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Joe Manchin is not happy, either. Let’s do something to reform immigration law loopholes and actually secure the southern border using the laws currently in place before we end one of the tools that mitigate the flood of illegal migrants. Is it too much to ask that some common sense be put into action once in a while?

If we can’t handle the humanitarian crisis on the border now, what does Biden think will happen when the caravans begin again? Oh, wait. It’s already started. Biden’s announcement of a specific date has given them the go-ahead to start their trip through Mexico to the border. Thanks, Joe.

Title 42 allows migrants to be expelled immediately upon arrival at the southern border due to public health concerns, like during a pandemic. It is a very rarely used policy but it has been effective as a tool to help ease the overcrowding at the border. The previous administration put Title 42 into effect at the beginning of the pandemic with guidance from the CDC. CDC doesn’t make the policy, but does make the recommendation to the president. Biden largely kept the policy in place, much to the aggravation of progressives, and it is about the only thing Biden has done that makes sense about border control.

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Biden promised COVID-19 vaccines to the illegal migrants. The problem is that there is no plan yet on how exactly that will be accomplished. There is already a lack of personnel working on the border. Where are the health professionals going to come from when medical communities are already stretched thin? This is a part of the problem with Biden’s habit of making sweeping policy statements without details. He has no plans. This is meant to appease the far-left.

The CDC determined that the public health order is no longer necessary after considering the wide range of mitigation measures and the low community levels of COVID-19 nationwide.

Terminating the order in two months will “enable the Department of Homeland Security to implement appropriate COVID-19 protocols, such as scaling up a program to offer COVID-19 vaccinations to migrants, and prepare for full resumption of regular migration under Title 8 authorities,” the CDC said in its public health assessment.

CDC Director Rochelle Walensky justified her approval of ending Title 42 by saying the time is right now.

While the introduction, transmission, and spread of COVID-19 into the United States is likely to continue to some degree, the cross-border spread of COVID-19 due to covered noncitizens does not present the serious danger to public health that it once did, given the range of mitigation measures now available,” Walensky wrote in her 30-page directive.

Walensky said she delayed the termination until late May to give Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials time to implement coronavirus mitigation measures, including a migrant vaccination campaign launched earlier this week.

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More than 1.7 million illegal migrants have been expelled in the last two years using Title 42. Since Biden took office, we have seen historically high numbers of illegal migration and it is only going to get worse. Democrat Maggie Hassan (D-NH) rightly calls out the Biden administration by saying it “does not appear to be ready” for the waves of migrants that are about to hit the southern border.

“Ending Title 42 prematurely will likely lead to a migrant surge that the administration does not appear to be ready for,” Hassan said in a Twitter post. “I’ll keep pushing the administration to strengthen border security & look forward to hearing directly from border agents during my upcoming trip to the border.”

We are on track to record one million apprehensions on the southern border in six months of this fiscal year. There is an expectation of more than two million illegal migrant apprehensions by the end of the year. We haven’t even entered the busy season for illegal migration. The numbers for March aren’t going to be any better than previous months.

More than 62,000 illegal immigrants evaded Border Patrol agents in March, averaging about 2,000 a day, according to multiple Customs and Border Protection (CBP) sources – showing the extent to which Border Patrol agents are already being overwhelmed by the massive number of migrants trying to get into the United States.

Per those same sources, there have been more than 300,000 known “gotaways” — migrants who were not apprehended or turned themselves in and who got past agents — since fiscal year 2022 began on October 1st. For comparison, former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott said there had been approximately 400,000 gotaways in the entirety of FY 2021.

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I’ll end with a couple of tweets that show current activity on the border and the communities that suffer from the Biden border crisis.

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | November 21, 2024
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