In a rare occurrence, Biden took questions from reporters after his big meeting on the debt ceiling with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, and was asked about the end of Title 42. In the meeting itself, the gentlemen came to no consensus, and the default on the debt ceiling looms.
"Title 42: is the United States ready for the surge of people that are gonna come across the border starting later this week?" A reporter asked.
"I spent close to an hour with the Mexican president today," Biden said. "We're doing all we can. The answer is it remains to be seen. We've gotten overwhelming cooperation from Mexico. We also are in the process of setting up offices in Columbia and other places where someone seeking asylum can go first."
"But it remains to be seen. It's gonna be chaotic for a while," he continued.
"And as an example, as I raised in the meeting, when they said 'well we're gonna cut and no spending more money,' well what the hell happens, if you cut, are you gonna people at the border? You're gonna cut agents at the border? We need more at the border, not less at the border," he said, concluding the question period.
Title 42, the order that kept illegal immigrants in Mexico during the pandemic for health reasons, is set to expire late Thursday night. In anticipation of that expiration, and knowing the incredibly lax border policies of the Biden administration, migrants have been lining up as far south as Panama to make the journey to get into the US.
Vice President Kamala Harris was tasked early on in the administration with getting to the "root causes" of illegal migration. Her job was to go into, specifically, the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicuragua in Central America to encourage migrants to not make the dangerous journey. That was Biden's job when he was Obama's VP, and before taking the Oval Office he said eight years wasn't enough to get it right.
Yet, they continue to come. Department of Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas may have had something to do with that, when he said in 2021 "we're not saying don't come, we're saying don't come now," encouraging migrants to give it a little time for the administration to get their ducks in a row at the border before crossing illegally. Mayorkas would go on to deny multiple times to Senator Josh Hawley that he'd said it, but he said it to reporters in the briefing room in front of God and everyone.
In fact, prior to Biden even taking office, migrants began getting ready to make the crossing, believing that he was welcoming them to commit the border-crossing crime. Since then, there have been massive spikes in human trafficking, drug smuggling, and the drug cartels practically run Mexico. Human traffickers extract exhorbitant sums for the task of facilitating border crossings. Young girls who leave their homes in the global south take birth control pills and bring condoms. They expect to be raped multiple times along the way.
Yet to the Biden administration, facilitating child rape, the abandonment of unaccompanied toddlers, and children drowning in the Rio Grande is all in service to the greater, more compassionate goal, of opening to borders to all seekers of a better life, even if that better life involves the rape of their children, being forever indentured to criminal cartels, and living in tent cities in border towns that are buckling under the strain.
