The Biden administration has been running out of shelter space for the illegal migrants it’s been catching along the southern border. Early this week, the numbers in shelters were reaching 20,000 with little remaining overall capacity and with some facilities already at near double capacity. A legal solution could be to return the apprehended to Mexico under Title 8, now the operative protocol since the ending of Title 42. But Title 8 removals require more administrative overhead than removals under Title 42, and the CBP is insufficiently staffed for it.
Instead, officials have ordered field agents to simply release the illegals they catch, ostensibly long enough to get the shelter census down but without any specific end date.
Breitbart News is reporting that the directive came down on Monday. By Tuesday, the shelter census had been reduced by at least 2,000, but with apprehensions running at 6,000 per day, they’ll never get ahead at that rate. And release is exactly the wrong thing to do anyway. Keeping the scofflaws in Mexico in the first place would be the right thing, but that’s the one thing this government will never agree to. As is customary for the Biden regime, they’ve decided to solve the shortage by skipping that stage altogether.
They’re still keeping up the charade of law enforcement however. To make up for their lack of action, the administration employs empty words. A video “warning” to would-be border crossers went out on Twitter this week that said the following:
Don’t listen to the lies of smugglers, US immigration policies have not changed. Under Title 8, individuals and families who arrive without authorization will be subject to removal and can be returned to their country of origin.
All of that is just empty bluster, of course, because–as we noted above–the agency has no resources to do it. What they’re saying is, don’t listen to the lies of smugglers. Listen to our lies instead.
For more, see Breitbart News.