With border encounters rising to record levels, the Biden administration is scrambling to prevent overcrowding at facilities along the border. They are no doubt aware that photos of children in overcrowded rooms doesn’t play well on television. Earlier today, Sec. Blinken put the “challenges” at the border in perspective:

“We’re dealing with a challenge that, for a whole variety of reasons, is beyond anything that anyone has seen before, which is exactly why the approach that we’re taking, including here at the summit, is so important,” Blinken told CNN en Español’s Juan Carlos López during an interview conducted on Tuesday at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles…

The secretary added that the US is working with countries at the summit to try to get at “specific actions” they can take to address the issue, and made reference to a new migration document, dubbed the Los Angeles Declaration, that the US and other countries are expected to sign this week. It’s meant to spell out how countries in the region and around the world should share responsibility for taking in migrants.

So we’ll have to wait and see how the Los Angeles Declaration works out but in the short term, the actual plan to avoid massive overcrowding is being jokingly referred to as the “Abbott plan.” That’s a reference to what Gov. Greg Abbott did a few months ago when he announced he’d be busing migrants directly to Washington, DC as a way to bring the problem to the doorstep of lawmakers and President Biden. Now DHS is going to do the same thing by sending migrants to cities around the country, starting with Los Angeles.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to transport migrants awaiting immigration proceedings from U.S. cities along the southern border farther into the interior of the country, beginning with Los Angeles in the coming weeks, according to internal documents obtained by NBC News…

The new model would use federal funds to send migrants to shelters in cities farther inside the country before they go to their final destinations. Besides Los Angeles, they will be sent to Albuquerque, New Mexico; Houston; Dallas; and other cities. DHS is working with shelters in each of the cities in advance of moving migrants. The agency’s Southwest Border Coordination Center, which combines officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, CBP and other agencies, is coordinating the effort.

Internally, DHS officials have jokingly referred to the model as the “Abbott plan,” an official said, referring to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to bus migrants from Texas to Washington, D.C., to bring the migrant surge to the feet of the nation’s political leaders.

I don’t know if this scoop is something DHS was trying to keep under wraps or if they handed this to NBC News themselves. But DHS did react to the story by saying no decision had been made yet. So maybe this is intended to be a trial balloon?

A DHS spokesperson told CNN, “No decision has been made. Should a decision be made, DHS will continue to closely coordinate with and support cities and NGOs to facilitate the movement of any individual encountered at the Southwest border who is placed into removal proceedings pending the next steps in their immigration proceedings.”

Despite the administration’s best efforts, Title 42 is still in place but the Biden administration has been using it less and less. The NBC story closes by noting that “fewer than 50 percent of migrants were expelled under the order in April.”