Viewpoint 1: Douglas Blair

As busloads of immigrants here illegally sent by border states Texas and Arizona make their way to the nation’s capital, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is feeling overrun.

Bowser on July 28 formally requested deployment of the National Guard to deal with the influx of migrants as she claimed her city, the nation’s capital, was at a “tipping point.”

“This is a very significant issue,” Bowser acknowledged in mid-july in a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “Our collective response and service efforts have now become overwhelmed.”

The call for help comes after Bowser and other Democratic politicians initially downplayed the massive wave of immigrants here illegally flooding across the nation’s southern border and had done everything in their power to exacerbate the crisis.

President Joe Biden has made opening the southern border a priority by proposing to rescind his predecessor’s “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum-seekers and to revoke Title 42, a rule that allows the government to quickly deport immigrants here illegally over public health concerns.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas implausibly claimed July 19 that the border was “secure.”

Now that the problem of illegal immigration is in Bowser’s backyard and that of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, they’re seeing what it’s really like.

Bowser is experiencing a minuscule fraction of the problem that Texas is suffering through daily with illegal immigration, but she’s still complaining.

CNN reported that a little more than 5,000 immigrants here illegally have arrived in the District of Columbia to date. As of the end of June, the Border Patrol had logged more than 2 million encounters at the southern border since the beginning of the fiscal year last Oct. 1.

Bowser isn’t the only Democratic politician moaning about being inundated with a flood of migrants.

Adams, whose city sought to allow immigrants here illegally to vote in municipal elections, before the measure was struck down, also begged the federal government for aid.

For his part, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, invited Bowser and Adams down to the southern border to get a sense of how dire the situation really is. Adams refused and claimed Abbott was just looking for a photo-op.

If the District of Columbia and New York City are so overwhelmed by such a tiny fraction of the immigrants here illegally now in this country, how can Democrats say with a straight face that things are fine at the southern border?

From humanitarian concerns surrounding migrant deaths and human trafficking to exploding drug smuggling, the border is definitely not “secure.”

The United Nations says the U.s.-mexico border is the “deadliest land crossing in the world” and that 728 migrants died last year attempting to make the journey across. Meanwhile, drugs flow across the border like a river, and hundreds of pounds of fentanyl are seized each month.

In the face of this obvious crisis, what should be done?

Despite how hypocritical they are for begging the federal government to step in and help, Bowser and Adams correctly say that the influx of aliens here illegally requires federal intervention. We are experiencing unprecedented levels of illegal immigration that require a concerted effort at the national level.

The Biden administration can pull back from the foolish policies it has put in place and take things at the border more seriously. By pledging to keep both Title 42 and Remain in Mexico in place, Biden would signal that he is serious about combating illegal immigration.

Additionally, Democrats could stop making overtures to migrants and promising them citizenship or benefits for crossing illegally.

Those are commonsense strategies that the Biden administration could implement right now, but regrettably, it likely won’t do so.

Democratic Party leaders should be held accountable when they act like hypocrites. If the National Guard is good enough for the D.C. mayor now, why wasn’t it when she turned down the Trump administration’s offer to send in Guard troops ahead of what became the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021?

If the District of Columbia and New York need help dealing with illegal immigration, border states surely deserve federal help as well. Texas and Arizona shouldn’t be expected to face the consequences alone for the Biden administration’s policy failures.

Viewpoint 2: Jarrett Stepman

Millions of people have illegally crossed the southern border into the United States in the past few years, but the Biden administration says everything is fine, with “nothing to see here.” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas even said last week that the southern border is “secure.”

With scant evidence or justification, he’s been repeating that “secure” line since assuming his post in February 2021.

“Look, the border is secure,” he said at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on July 19. “We are working to make the border more secure. That has been a historic challenge.”

That’s quite a remarkable statement from the homeland security secretary. Almost none of it is true, except for the “historic” part.

Of course, Mayorkas followed up his assurance that all is well with a predictable call for “comprehensive immigration reform” that Democrats have been selling for generations.

Since President Joe Biden took office just over 18 months ago, there has been a historic surge of illegal immigration across the southern border. It’s been decades since we’ve seen anything like it.

In fiscal 2021, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 1.7 million border encounters. It was the highest number recorded, but fiscal year 2022’s numbers are higher. More than 2 million people have been encountered at the border through June. And the fiscal year doesn’t end until Sept. 30.

On top of those detained are the hundreds of thousands of “got-aways” who have evaded Border Patrol, according to a Fox News report. Department of Homeland Security sources reportedly told Fox News that there have been nearly a million of these got-aways since the beginning of fiscal year 2021.

Not only are there millions of people coming across the border and breaking U.S. law in the process, but many of those crossing are drug smugglers, human traffickers, and even potential terrorists. Does that sound like the border is secure? Hardly. In fact, some Border Patrol agents took issue with Mayorkas’ assessment that all is well at the border.

“Hundreds of thousands crossing every month is not the definition of ‘secure,’” a Border Patrol agent told Fox News Digital. “They are liars, and anyone who believes them are fools.” Another agent, according to the Fox report, said that the administration is using “bogus” claims to help border-crossers dodge U.S. immigration laws.

“They’re using issues like poverty, crime, and climate change as reasons for [seeking] asylum, but those do not meet the legal standard of the law,” the agents said.

Another agent quoted in the report said that Biden and members of his administration haven’t upheld their oath of office.

It’s hard to blame Border Patrol agents for being outspoken. The now badly understaffed agency — thanks in large part to Biden’s policies — is now dealing with a generational crisis. It doesn’t help that the administration has maligned, and seeks to punish, Border Patrol agents for doing their job and simply trying to contain the administration’s self-caused mess. It gets worse.

Though the Border Patrol is detaining an incredible number of would-be illegal immigrants at the border, the administration isn’t prosecuting most of them.

A recent report by The Washington Free Beacon uncovered that the Biden administration “dramatically reduced migrant prosecutions by nearly 80 percent in the 2021 fiscal year.” That was a huge shift from the final year of the Donald Trump administration, as the Free Beacon noted:

Just 2,896 migrants apprehended on the southwest border were transferred into U.S. Marshals Service custody in the 2021 fiscal year, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security memo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. In the 2020 fiscal year, 13,213 migrants were transferred to federal authorities for prosecution.

The Free Beacon explained that this drop-off wasn’t just because of the Title 42 health policy that led to expedited deportations during a pandemic.

“Trump instituted Title 42 in March 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and still prosecuted far more migrants than in Biden’s first year of his presidency,” The Washington Free Beacon reported. “Moreover, illegal border crossings in 2020 were much lower than in 2021, which saw the most migrant apprehensions in U.S. history.”

Of course, the Biden administration has been trying to discontinue Title 42, a policy change that would only make things worse. A federal judge blocked the policy change, but it appears the administration is doing its best to make a farce of border enforcement in this country.