The dire border situation

Whatever you think about what's going on at the border, writes Byron York, it's worse:

MISSION, Texas -- Anyone paying attention to the news knows the situation on the U.S.-Mexico border is terrible. Anyone who actually visits the border discovers it is worse than that.

Here is what is most striking about the government's response to the unprecedented surge of illegal border crossers: It is entirely improvised. Jury-rigged. Thrown together in a scramble to accommodate thousands of migrants who were not coming just months ago. And the reason it is being improvised is that during his first days in office, President Joe Biden blew up the foundation of the government's handling of migrants. With a series of executive actions, Biden threw out key policies with nothing ready to replace them. And he did it using rhetoric that invited migrants to rush to the border -- more than 172,000 in March alone, including nearly 19,000 unaccompanied children.

This is the sort of problem in our nation that causes anguish, because we ordinary citizens can do nothing about it. And yet, we also knew it was coming when Biden was elected. 

The Republicans pointed to several things Biden has done to create the current crisis. First, he did away with President Donald Trump's Remain in Mexico policy, which required asylum seekers to stay in Mexico, not in the United States, while their asylum claims were adjudicated. Second, Biden ended Trump's asylum agreements with the Northern Triangle countries -- El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras -- to steer would-be asylum seekers from those nations into safe countries other than the U.S. Third, Biden gutted Trump's use of Title 42, the government's authority to expel most migrants for the purpose of controlling the spread of COVID. Biden did not throw Title 42 away altogether but is by some accounts now letting most would-be migrants stay rather than be turned away because of the pandemic.

The surge, Scalise said, "was created when President Biden got rid of things like the Remain in Mexico policy. He could put that back in place tomorrow and stop this surge of illegals coming over."

I don't think Republicans necessarily have the answer; I know Democrats are making things exponentially worse, and getting a pass from the mainstream media about that.