As the Biden border crisis has continued to grind on, with migrants being shipped all over the country, an almost amusing pattern has emerged. The leaders (and many residents) of so-called sanctuary cities had declared their towns to be safe spaces for illegal aliens… until illegal migrants began showing up. Then the situation turned into a crisis, with mayors in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and elsewhere talking about the “onslaught” of people requiring resources and shelter. But despite their protests, they all sought to blame the governors of border states who bussed migrants to their cities. (Despite the fact that the Biden administration has been shipping them all over the country also, including to New York.) The only mention of the federal government you hear from most of these leaders is that they want Washington to send them more money to deal with the crisis.

At the New York Post this week, Mark Krikorian asks the correct question. The flow of migrants is never going to stop if the border isn’t closed and there will never be enough money or beds to take care of them all. So when will these leaders start pointing the finger of blame where it belongs, at Joe Biden and his open border policies?

What the Biden administration has done in refusing to enforce immigration law is to pit these cities and states against each other, creating an “every city for itself” atmosphere.

While we can relish the hypocrisy of sanctuary mayors complaining about an “onslaught” of migrants, Adams was right when he said “no city should have to make a decision if they’re going to provide for their citizens . . . or if they’re going to deal with an onslaught of migrants and asylum seekers.”

But the sanctuary mayors who acknowledge they’re facing a crisis of Washington’s making still can’t bring themselves to call for the real solution: immigration enforcement. Adams and his fellow sanctuary mayors still see this mainly as a budgetary problem. That’s what Adams meant when he said, “This is just unfair for local governments to have to take on this national obligation.”

What we’re seeing from most of these mayors, including Eric Adams, is clearly a Democratic version of Reagan’s 11th Commandment: Though shalt not speak ill of any fellow Democrat. But that commandment is clearly growing threadbare after two years of Biden’s border policies.

Krikorian makes another excellent point when he describes the flawed theories that these mayors still seem to embrace, or at least pretend to embrace. They still see the onslaught of illegal migrants as a budgetary problem rather than a policy problem. They act as if an unending flood of literally millions of illegals into our country would be fine and dandy if we only had enough money and housing to take care of them all.

This situation depicts several parallels with the current homelessness epidemic that we’re witnessing. That’s probably not terribly surprising since many of the illegal migrants wind up camping with the homeless. If federal, state, and municipal governments are going to somehow come up with all of the money and real estate to put these migrants up for free, how long will it be before legal residents who have to pay their own way in life begin asking where their free food, housing, and utilities are? Americans are generous by nature, but there are limits. Why should those who break our laws get a free ride while our own law-abiding citizens foot the bills?

As I mentioned above, this problem isn’t going to simply go away on its own. The answer is not to find more cots, blankets, and Subway sandwiches. The answer is to seal the border and start shipping the illegal aliens back to their home countries at an industrial pace. In their hearts, the sanctuary city mayors obviously must know this already, but they fear criticizing a President from their own party. If they want to demonstrate some integrity and provide for their own residents, they need to demand that Joe Biden finish the border wall and provide massively larger numbers of people to support our border patrol agents and the immigration courts. Seal the border, clear out the administrative backlog, and respect the rule of law. That’s how leaders are supposed to act.