But this is not about Haiti. While the latest flare-up of the border crisis involves thousands of Haitians, the fact is, over the last several months, Border Patrol officials have detained people from at least 90 countries all around the world crossing illegally into the U.S. It’s not just Mexico or the Northern Triangle area, either. Ninety countries.
They’re all drawn by one thing: the belief, encouraged by the Biden administration, that if they can manage to cross the border into the U.S. illegally, they will be allowed to stay. Given Biden’s policies, that is an entirely rational calculation on their part.
Remember that from his first days in office, Biden threw out President Donald Trump’s Remain in Mexico policy, which required asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico while their claims were adjudicated in the U.S. Now, illegal crossers know they will be allowed to stay in the U.S. during that period, which often stretches for years.
Also, Biden threw out a Trump agreement with the Northern Triangle countries requiring those countries to take in migrants. Then Biden selectively stopped applying rules that allowed U.S. officials to return illegal crossers in the interest of controlling the spread of COVID-19.
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