More than 250,000 unaccompanied minors have been released into the United States by U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The Biden administration is deliberately initiating a DACA 2.0 situation during the Biden border crisis. The children are apprehended by Border Patrol and released to sponsors across the country. They should be returned to their home countries and their families, but they are not.

The number of unaccompanied minors coming across the Mexican border into the United States has never been seen before the Biden border crisis. The numbers far outpace those during the Obama or the Trump administration. This is a growing crisis that will not likely be fully felt until the minors reach adulthood and face the possibility of deportation. Congress hasn’t dealt with DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) as it is, now a new version of it is deliberately being created by Joe Biden.

When Barack Obama put DACA into effect in 2012, he knew it was unconstitutional and even admitted as much. It is the responsibility of Congress to pass legislation for immigration law. DACA allows children brought into the United States with their parents or other adults illegally to stay in the United States without fear of deportation for renewable two-year periods. They can become eligible for work permits as long as they do not have felonies or serious misdemeanors on their records. It does not, however, provide a path to citizenship. In 2014, Obama tried to expand DACA to include even more illegal immigrants. Then, in 2017, President Trump announced a plan to phase out DACA. Since that time lawsuits have been pursued and DACA still hasn’t been either phased out or solved by Congress. This new unaccompanied minor population will only explode the situation. They will not be eligible for DACA so something new will have to be put in place for them – DACA 2.0.

“Here’s the problem that this administration is not even realizing — they’re creating the next generation of DACA,” said Rudy Karisch, a former senior Border Patrol agent who oversaw operations within the southern border’s top region for apprehensions. “We have not even figured out what we’re going to do with the previous generation, and they’re creating the next generation.”

Last Friday marked the ten year anniversary of DACA. Nothing has changed in that time.

“[I]t was, at the time, seen as a stopgap measure to provide relief to unauthorized immigrant youth after Congress had repeatedly failed to offer a path to legal status for these ‘Dreamers,’” Migration Policy Institute’s Muzaffar Chishti and Julia Gelatt wrote in a recent report. “Ten years on, DACA has proven more enduring than expected and remains the only large-scale policy change implemented during this period related to the legal status of unauthorized immigrants in the country.”

A federal court in Texas in 2021 ruled that DACA was illegal but allowed those in the program to continue to renew their permits. The Biden administration reimplemented DACA last December. Because of how DACA is set up, the new unaccompanied minors will not be eligible.

“The DACA program, as created in 2012 and kept alive by the courts, requires the applicant among other criteria to have entered the US and been resident there since June 15, 2007,” wrote MPI Communications Director Michelle Mittlestadt. “So as currently configured, the program would not be open to arrivals who have been in the country less than 15 years.”

Democrats continue to introduce bills to legalize DACA recipients. None have passed. Democrats insist on blanket amnesty for DACA recipients, as well as their family members. Republicans insist that this only incentivizes people to enter the United States illegally and hope to receive the same benefits as those already in the program.

As it is, the backlog for immigration judges is insane. There are over 2 million cases before 500 judges nationwide. It will take years at this rate for the cases to be processed. Again, this is intentional on the part of the Biden administration. There are not enough immigration judges in place to handle the flood of migrants. As long as Biden and DHS Secretary Mayorkas continue to lie to the American people and say the border is closed and not provide adequate resources to handle the flood of migrants coming across the border, nothing will change. Joe Biden is fine with that. It is a dereliction of duty and puts American lives at risk. It is a humanitarian crisis for the migrants, as they fall prey to human traffickers and drug cartels. The United States is not a sovereign nation as long as there are open borders.