The Border Battle with Biden for 2023

Some help from the Supreme Court, but the real test awaits the incoming House GOP...

In an inexplicably narrow 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court delivered an 11th hour ruling for some border sanity, ensuring temporarily that President Trump’s Title 42 protections for American sovereignty will remain in place. This provision allows for the expedited return of uninvited migrants attempting to game America’s asylum generosity.

What are the practical implications of this decision? What should be the next steps for the incoming House Republican majority?

This welcome sanity from the High Court provides a modicum of security back to the chaotic US border, at least giving the brave law enforcement officers of Customs and Border Protection a useful tool to partially stem some of the human tsunami of economic migrants trespassing into our nation. Unfortunately, though, the Biden administration has largely ignored actual enforcement of Title 42.

Consequently, the tide of uninvited, unvetted illegal migrants grows markedly worse year by year.

As shown by CBP data, the torrent of trespassers accelerates due to Biden’s incentives to break-and-enter into America.  The total number of migrant encounters at the border for November exceeded 233,000, the highest level for that month ever, and a 30% increase over the same period last year.

Unsurprisingly, the Biden administration released these horrible numbers right into Christmas, hoping to bury the news into a holiday-focused weekend. As the chart displays, 2022 finishes well worse than 2021, and now fiscal year 2023 starts off appreciably higher still (the highlighted grey line).

Source: CBP

Importantly, the vast majority of these illegal migrants simply do not qualify for legitimate asylum protections from America. Our generous asylum laws clearly state that refugee status should only be granted to people fleeing serious persecution based on factors such as religious belief or political affiliation. President Barack Obama himself expounded upon this reality in his 2014 White House conference on migrants:

“Typically, refugee status is not granted just based on economic need or because a family lives in a bad neighborhood or poverty.  It’s typically defined fairly narrowly -- the state, for example, that was targeting political activists and they need to get out of the country for fear of prosecution or even death.”

Presently, the overwhelming preponderance of migrants entering America come from democratic countries that do not, in any way, apply systemic political persecution. Even biased AP coverage inadvertently concedes this point, reporting that the newcomers are “fleeing violence and inequality in Latin America.” Surely, many of these migrants do indeed come from “tough neighborhoods” – but so do many American citizens, who must always remain our country’s priority.

So, aside from the partial and temporary efficacy of Title 42, what tactics into year 2023 can finally establish order and reason at the US border?

Unfortunately, the recent abominable surrender of the Senate GOP caucus on the Omnibus spending monstrosity removed powerful political weapons from the arsenal of the incoming House GOP. Not only was that $1.7 billion orgy of spending and borrowing terrible economic policy…it also deprives the new House of key negotiating leverage with the Biden administration via the key power of the purse.

With Biden’s bloated and unfunded inflationary programs already passed into law for the coming year, the political corpse of Nance Pelosi largely remains the de facto Speaker of the House well into the new year.

But, some leverage remains, especially regarding the debt ceiling. America’s $30 trillion plus debt continues to spiral out of control. This debt bomb will only grow worse because of the unmitigated surrender of key GOP Senators last week, from Mitch McConnell to Tom Cotton. In addition, the gargantuan costs of financing that debt explode higher. Over the past year, Ten Year Treasury Yield soared from 1.48% to nearly 4%, at 3.83% presently.

As such, repeated increases in the total federal debt ceiling will be required in 2023 – and here the GOP still possesses a powerful lever to demand border security. Whether the incoming speaker is Kevin McCarthy or another Republican, he simply must draw a line in the sand on the border, forcing Biden to at last implement his most basic responsibility in office of ensuring public order, to “insure domestic tranquility” as prescribed by our Constitution.

Specifically, the GOP House must demand that Biden immediately repel all economic migrants arriving at the border to abuse our asylum openness. The new speaker must also establish strict metrics for revived internal enforcement of US migration laws, given that Biden has effectively halted deportations. Unless these conditions are met, the House must refuse to increase the debt ceiling to finance Biden’s inflationary madness and accept the political standoff of the White House choosing to shut down the government to protect illegals.

If the GOP brings this political heat, America can begin to re-establish sovereignty and border legitimacy. In addition, such actions would provide voters with a compelling value proposition for the Republicans into 2024 elections – a key, distinguishable partisan contrast, rather than some rhetorical puffery that merely masks uniparty Beltway behavior.