When former official president Joe Biden and former unofficial prexy Jill Biden decamped for the Left Coast yesterday, they might as well have taken the absurd, pretend-legal CBP One app with them, because it is as long gone as they are.
The app had been the Bidens’ way of seeming to restrict illegal border crossings by pretending that smartphone users could somehow hide their illegality by scheduling an appointment for a crossing at one of eight official crossing points on the border. Since January 2023, that pretense had enabled one million migrants to enter the US as though they were legally entitled to do so. They were not. The app was a sham program created by a sham government and the so-called “parole” it provided each of them was nothing more than a sham status of legality.
Yesterday, as one of his first acts as President, Trump issued an order abolishing CBP One, and by midday, it was gone, leaving would-be border crossers high and dry south of the border. Although Trump had long promised to shut down the border traffic that Joe and Jill had encouraged, the unhappily stranded migrants seemed surprised that the magic app and its miracle appointments had been canceled.
The Associated Press spoke with some of them, abandoned now in Mexico, who found that their scheduled “legal” crossings would not take place. One Melanie Mendoza, 21, along with an unnamed boyfriend were among the group. Mendoza said the two of them had left Venezuela more than a year ago and had spent more than $4,000 to reach Tijuana, Mexico. “We don’t know what we are going to do,” she said. Somehow those nice Bidens had kept hope alive, scheduling appointments into February, knowing that they themselves would be gone January 20.
Another dejected “asylum seeker,” Jairol Polo, 38, a Cuban, had flown Monday to Matamoros, Mexico, to take advantage of an appointment he had scheduled for Wednesday, only to learn at the border that that appointment had been canceled.
“Imagine how we feel,” he said, puffing on a cigarette.
Illegals were still being admitted throughout the morning yesterday, but by afternoon, CBP One, its spurious promise, and the criminal duo who let it happen were all gone. Adios to all.
For more, see the Associated Press.