President Biden, shortly after taking office, in an issued statement: “Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution. It is a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security. My Administration is committed to ensuring that the United States has a comprehensive and humane immigration system that operates consistently with our nation’s values. In furtherance of that commitment, I have determined that the declaration of a national emergency at our southern border . . . was unwarranted. It shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall.”
President Biden, yesterday, in El Paso, Texas:
Q Mr. President, what have you learned at the border today?
THE PRESIDENT: They need a lot of resources, and we’re going to get it for them.
Biden’s comment doesn’t specify whether the “they” he is referring to is the migrants or border-patrol personnel. That said, Biden did not see or meet with any migrants. There’s a curious explanation for that:
[The] brief visit appeared largely focused on enforcement issues and speaking with border enforcement personnel. Reporters on the ground did not see any migrants at the respite center during the president’s visit there, nor along the motorcade routes throughout the afternoon.
Asked to explain the thinking behind having Biden visit this specific center and ultimately not meeting or interacting with any migrants there, a senior administration official told CNN, “There just weren’t any at the center when he arrived. Completely coincidental. They haven’t had any today.”
Huh . . . What are the odds that there wouldn’t be a single migrant in the El Paso migrant respite center on the exact day and time that the president visits?
Meanwhile, over in that big-name Washington publication, I point out that the fact that a Democratic governor like Jared Polis of Colorado was shipping migrants — voluntarily, he emphasizes — to places like Chicago and New York ought to be seen as evidence that Republican governors’ decisions aren’t being made out of xenophobic malice, but rather that states and localities really are seeing their resources stretched to the limit by the seemingly endless waves of migrants. After a few days of blistering criticism from Chicago mayor Lori Lightfoot and New York mayor Eric Adams, Polis backed away from the policy.