Yesterday, I wrote about Jen Psaki’s callous deflection when asked about the tragic death of Bishop Evans, a Texas National Guardsman stationed at the Texas–Mexico border under Governor Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star.
She said, “Well, of course, we are mourning the loss of his life, and we are grateful for the work of every National Guardsman.” BUT: “I would note that the National Guard worked for the states, and so he is an employee of the Texas National Guard, and his efforts and his operation were directed by there, not by the federal government.”
I argued that this was a callous deflection; though not totally wrong (Evans was, in fact, acting under Abbott’s orders), her answer neglected to acknowledge that Operation Lone Star, no matter how flawed, is a direct response to a federally induced border crisis.
In a hole already, Psaki kept digging.
After her deflection, Psaki was asked if the president would help increase “law-enforcement presence at the border,” a request from state legislators along the border, like Abbott. She responded:
Well, I would just say — if we just dial it back a few years to . . . what we inherited here — the former president invested billions of dollars in a border wall that was never going to work or be effective, instead of working towards comprehensive immigration reform.
Here we go again. Psaki employed Democrats’ signature strategy when backed into a corner: Blame Trump.
While the former president’s immigration policy was nowhere near perfect, Psaki is blaming a present crisis on Trump despite its having direct roots in her own administration’s policies.
Let’s start with just the numbers. As soon as Biden took office, promising a more humane border (which turned out to be less humane, as I argue) and the end of “Remain in Mexico,” migrants flocked with the incentive of an open-door policy:
That’s because the messaging changed. On my reporting trip to Del Rio, on the Texas–Mexico border, law-enforcement representatives kept saying the same thing: This administration is sending a message to migrants:
Jim Volcsko, a recently retired Border Patrol agent, told me that “whatever they say in D.C. has a ripple effect.” . . . The consequences are tangible: An on-duty 25-year veteran border officer told me that the border “is the worst I’ve ever seen it.”
Immigration experts agree:
Andrew Arthur, a senior fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and a former immigration judge, said the current surge is “the direct consequence of volitional choices that have been made in Washington, D.C.”
So it’s a bit rich to wholly blame the recent surge on the former administration. Especially when the current administration is unwilling to do anything to help the situation.
Psaki’s most futile claim was that the Trump administration failed at reform, thus causing the crisis.
The Biden administration itself has not achieved an iota of “reform,” though it riffs and riffs on the concept. Earlier in the same press conference, Psaki said, “The president’s view is that we have a broken immigration system that’s been long overdue to be fixed.”
The Biden administration keeps kicking the can down the road in order to not anger progressive proponents of a more open border. Instead of reforming, administration officials have declined to enforce the laws on the books, such as “Remain in Mexico” and detention protocols (not wanting to turn migrants away, officials are simply releasing them into the interior, violating the Immigration and Nationality Act). This is making the crisis worse, encouraging more illegal immigration without a system capable of accommodating so many migrants. They’re also lifting the Covid-era Title 42 rule in late May, which will trigger a massive surge, on top of an already-massive surge (though a federal judge in Louisiana temporarily blocked the termination of the order yesterday).
All this to please a wing of the party. On the Potomac Watch podcast yesterday, Kim Strassel said:
It seems at the moment that there is a feeling in the White House that they need to cater to those in their party that are very much for a more open border mentality, and that you can issue all the orders you want, they’re not going to move any faster.
Psaki’s right about one thing: Immigration policy is, indeed, “long overdue to be fixed.” So instead of exacerbating a crisis and pointing fingers to avoid political liability, this administration should buck up and fix it.