New York Post, August 30, 2022
The Biden administration’s border policies are so preposterous that even the White House press secretary can’t believe they’re real.
Earlier this week, Peter Doocy of Fox News questioned press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about tennis star Novak Djokovic being barred from entering the United States to play in the US Open because he hasn’t been vaccinated against COVID.
(Having just returned from overseas, I can attest that the airlines repeatedly warn travelers that foreigners without green cards must show proof of vaccination to be admitted.)
Doocy asked, “Somebody unvaccinated comes over on a plane, you say that’s not OK. Somebody walks into Texas or Arizona unvaccinated, they’re allowed to stay?”
Here’s Jean-Pierre’s answer: “That’s not how it works … It’s not like someone walks over.”
Actually, it’s exactly like that. From October of last year through July, the Border Patrol apprehended more than 1.8 million illegal border-crossers at the southern border, more than any year in history, and there are still two months to go in the fiscal year. Each day in July, an average of nearly 6,000 illegal migrants were arrested at the border — or “encountered,” in the new PC jargon.
And while some of these people didn’t want to get caught, a huge share of them did, in fact, just “walk over” and turn themselves in, secure in the knowledge that the Biden Department of Homeland Security would allow them to stay. Just last weekend in south Texas, three groups of illegal migrants, totaling nearly 500, just walked over the border and flagged down the Border Patrol.
In Yuma, Ariz., so many illegal migrants are walking over the border through a gap in the fence left by President Biden’s Inauguration Day stop-work order that there are chairs next to the fence for those waiting for rides from the Border Patrol.
Some of the border-jumpers really are returned to Mexico under a COVID-era public health order called Title 42 (which the Biden administration is trying to end). But since Inauguration Day, this administration has released well over 1 million illegal border-crossers into the US, few if any of whom will ever leave. They may or may not show up for an asylum hearing at some point in the future, but even if they do and lose, they’ll just stay. Because who’s going to look for them?
Some might imagine that the press secretary’s “it’s not like someone walks over” comment was a brazen lie, but I don’t think so — she just doesn’t strike me as being as cunning as her predecessor. Instead, I think that, like many Americans, especially Democrats, she really has no idea what a disaster the border is and how much Biden’s policies are responsible.
It’s natural to discount comments from political opponents, and when Doocy (whom the White House clearly sees as a political opponent, in contrast to the poodles from friendlier outlets) said migrants were just walking into the United States, Jean-Pierre responded like it was an absurd falsehood. Because, really, what government would allow millions of illegal migrants to just walk across the border?
Her government, as it turns out.