{"id":2293310,"date":"2024-07-12T08:51:59","date_gmt":"2024-07-12T12:51:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-u-turn-on-illegal-immigration-will-last-only-until-election\/"},"modified":"2024-07-12T08:56:37","modified_gmt":"2024-07-12T12:56:37","slug":"bidens-u-turn-on-illegal-immigration-will-last-only-until-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/bidens-u-turn-on-illegal-immigration-will-last-only-until-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden&#8217;s U-Turn On Illegal Immigration Will Last Only Until Election"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fbidens-u-turn-on-illegal-immigration-will-last-only-until-election%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2293310&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Summary for\u200c the provided article is as follows:<\/p>\n<p>The article discusses the issue of mass migration through the &#8220;Darien Gap&#8221; between Colombia and Panama\u2064 to reach the US border. The author suggests\u200b a large-scale deportation airlift as a solution, \u200can idea \u2062that is now being implemented \u2063by the Biden administration. The administration&#8217;s change in policy is\u2062 seen as a strategic move to address the\u2062 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/a-border-threat-so-taboo-that-few-dare-speak-of-it\/\" title=\"A Border Threat So Taboo That Few Dare Speak Of It\">mass migration crisis<\/a> and\u200d win reelection.\u200b The article highlights Panama&#8217;s new\u200d approach to close the Darien \u2064Gap and repatriate migrants,\u200b as well as Mexico&#8217;s\u200c actions to reduce immigration flows following pressure from \u2062the US. the article emphasizes the political implications \u2063of immigration control measures in\u200c the lead-up to the upcoming election.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>In both my books on the border, I offer the same remedy for halting the multinational onslaught of immigrant strangers transiting the <a href=\"https:\/\/cis.org\/Video\/Panel-Panamas-Darien-Gap\">infamous \u201cDarien Gap\u201d<\/a> between Colombia and Panama en route to the besieged southwest U.S. border.<\/p>\n<p>The Darien Gap passageway is a jungled 70-mile bottleneck of wilderness and foot trails, through which an estimated 1.5 million of more than 10 million illegal immigrants from around the world have crossed the U.S. border in the past three years. An American government that really wants to shutter the passage must fund a large-scale deportation airlift from Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica, and Mexico all at once, I advised in my 2021 book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.toddbensman.com\/americas-covert-border-war\/\"><em>America\u2019s Covert Border War, The Untold Story of The Nation\u2019s Battle to Prevent Jihadist Infiltration<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe United States should demand that these countries \u2026 install a U.S.-funded infrastructure that would fly all immigrants to origin countries anywhere in the world, on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/report-white-house-planning-to-refer-brad-raffensperger-to-secret-service-for-investigation-under-the-espionage-act\/\" title=\"Report: White House Planning to Refer Brad Raffensperger to Secret Service for Investigation Under the Espionage Act\">national security grounds<\/a>,\u201d I again recommended in a second 2023 book, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.toddbensman.com\/overrun-book\/\"><em>Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>No Republican border hawk ever took my homeland security-bolstering recommendation seriously, as I had hoped.<\/p>\n<p>But to my very great surprise, the most mass-migration-friendly administration in American history, Joe Biden\u2019s, the one that has widened the Darien Gap passage from a mere country lane into a superhighway, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dhs.gov\/news\/2024\/07\/01\/united-states-signs-arrangement-panama-implement-removal-flight-program\">has now announced<\/a> that <em>it<\/em> will be the one to put my deportation airlift idea into action, at least in Panama.<\/p>\n<p>Not because the Democrat administration ran with my idea or that I\u2019m some sort of policy genius, but because the administration knows a deportation airlift will serve the self-interest of winning reelection on Nov. 5 if done at scale, and because this remedy was obvious to just about anyone with a brain.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cUnited States Signs Arrangement with Panama to Implement Removal Flight Program,\u201d reads the headline of the Department of Homeland Security\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dhs.gov\/news\/2024\/07\/01\/united-states-signs-arrangement-panama-implement-removal-flight-program\">July 1, 2024, announcement<\/a>. Details remain scant, but the statement goes on to quote Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas saying that his new partnership with Panama will \u201cmanage the historic levels of migration\u201d pouring over the U.S. border for three years.<\/p>\n<p>The Darien Gap passage is a major contributing gusher in the worst mass migration crisis in U.S. history, funneling millions of illegal immigrants through an unlocked turnstile to find their forever homes. Whereas fewer than 20,000 economic immigrants per year ever passed through the Colombia-Panama passage before Biden policies unleashed the current mass migration on inauguration day of 2021, 250,000 passed through it in 2022, <a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/6547992\/migrants-crossing-darien-gap-2023\/\">520,000<\/a> last year, and a <a href=\"https:\/\/news.un.org\/en\/story\/2024\/05\/1149806\">projected 800,000<\/a> by the end of 2024.<\/p>\n<h2>National Security Threat<\/h2>\n<p>The multinational diversity of those passing through the gap from more than 160 nations is a unique affront to U.S. national interests, as border crossers may include Islamic terrorists from Muslim-majority nations, human rights violators from Africa, and spies from adversarial nations such as Russia and China.<\/p>\n<p>Terrorists, spies, and warlords are of little concern to the Biden administration. It has only ever <a href=\"https:\/\/cis.org\/Bensman\/New-Migrant-Superhighway-Bringing-World-South-America-Texas\">orchestrated the conversion<\/a> of the Darien Gap into the world\u2019s most trammeled immigrant thruway under its lenient \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/creating-a-comprehensive-framework-to-promote-safe-orderly-migration-in-north-and-central-america\/\">safe, orderly, and humane<\/a>\u201d immigration policies.<\/p>\n<p>So the Biden administration\u2019s deportation airlift plan constitutes a stunning, 180-degree policy U-turn.<\/p>\n<p>In 2022, for instance, Mayorkas and Secretary of State Antony Blinken <a href=\"https:\/\/www.state.gov\/the-united-states-and-panama-advance-migration-cooperation\/\">pressured the Panamanian government<\/a> to open a <a href=\"https:\/\/reporting.unhcr.org\/panama-mco-mixed-movements-through-darien-2021\">shorter sea<\/a> and river route, built larger and new hospitality rest camps to accommodate the increase, and arranged for dozens of United Nations and nonprofit migrant advocacy groups to provide all manner of aid and assistance. These moves induced hundreds of thousands more border crossers per year to make the trip.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the Biden administration will replace its \u201csafe, orderly and humane\u201d mantra of just five minutes ago with the new \u201csafe, humane repatriation\u201d one. Why a deportation airlift, and why now?<\/p>\n<h2>Election Concerns<\/h2>\n<p>The short answer is that the administration needs to slow the southern border flow to help it keep the White House in the Democrat Party\u2019s hands.<\/p>\n<p>The party well knows <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/politics\/elections\/election-2024-immigration-issue-voters-84916a17\">polls regularly<\/a> show that voters <a href=\"https:\/\/harvardharrispoll.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/HHP_June2024_KeyResults.pdf\">regard<\/a> Biden\u2019s three-year-long mass migration border crisis <a href=\"https:\/\/news.gallup.com\/poll\/611135\/immigration-surges-top-important-problem-list.aspx\">as an apex-level problem<\/a> for which they\u2019ll punish him and reward Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election.<\/p>\n<p>The campaign wants controls in place to reduce anticipated desperate last-chance border rushes as Election Day approaches \u2014 immigrants will want to reach the American border before a possibly victorious Donald Trump slams the gates shut.<\/p>\n<h2>Panama\u2019s New Approach<\/h2>\n<p>And just when it needed a solution most, the administration lucked into a most unexpected damage-control opportunity: Panama elected President Jose Raul Mulino on his keynote promise to \u201cclose\u201d the Darien Gap and to get the U.S. to help pay for repatriation flights.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe border of the United States, instead of being in Texas, moved to Panama,\u201d said Mulino, who served as security minister under former president Ricardo Martinelli. \u201cWe\u2019re going to repatriate all those people.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s a major U-turn for Panama. For years, the Panamanian government employed \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/cis.org\/Bensman\/Panama-and-Costa-Rica-Doing-Smugglers-Work-Controlled-Flow-Policy\">controlled flow\u201d policy bus trips<\/a> that transported immigrants exiting the Darien Gap toward the American border.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI won\u2019t allow Panama to be an open path for thousands of people who enter our country illegally, supported by an international organization [the United Nations] related to drug trafficking and human trafficking,\u201d Mulino <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pbs.org\/newshour\/world\/panamas-new-president-promises-to-stop-migration-through-darien-gap\">said at his July 1 swearing-in<\/a>, attended by Mayorkas. He appears to be serious. For the first time, Panama is already stringing barbed wire to block the major trails, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/investigations\/panama-using-barbed-wire-block-darien-gap-us-bound-migrants-rcna159774\">NBC News reports<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Mayorkas jumped at the opportunity to help Mulino \u2014 at least during the period of anticipated surges just before the election.<\/p>\n<p>The number of illegal crossings along the southern border will surely drop sharply if the U.S.-Panama deal works out, an almost certain boon to the Biden campaign that they will repeatedly claim as an achievement \u2014 until Nov. 5.<\/p>\n<p>This isn\u2019t the Biden campaign\u2019s first such move to suppress expected preelection surges and to claim the positive result to diminish those terrible polling numbers on illegal immigration for immediate political advantage.<\/p>\n<h2>Mexico Acts<\/h2>\n<p>After record crossings last fall (all-time records of 10,000-14,000 per day) produced terrible polls, Biden paid an official state visit to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador in Mexico City to discuss the torrential immigration flows. Mayorkas and Blinken followed up after Christmas.<\/p>\n<p>Almost immediately, as I was the first and only one <a href=\"https:\/\/cis.org\/Bensman\/Recent-SkyHigh-Levels-Illegal-Migration-Are-Dropping-Fast-and-Heres-Why\">to report for many months, on Jan. 17<\/a>, Lopez-Obrador deployed 35,000 regular army troops, who began rounding up tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in relentless sweeps of northern border towns. The Mexicans forced them onto planes and buses. They were shipped 1,500 miles south and entrapped in southern provinces behind militarized roadblocks and bureaucracy. Crossings fell by as much as 80 percent initially.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/BYgY1oODUGQ?si=tZ6MVpWTLvBF8bZU\">That wasn\u2019t all<\/a> the Mexicans did, but the resulting illegal crossings slowdown became as immediately apparent as the Biden administration\u2019s ability to have had Mexico do this at any time during the three-year mass migration cataclysm.<\/p>\n<p>President Biden and his deputies have been emphasizing the decline ever since, including during the otherwise disastrous televised debate with Trump.<\/p>\n<p>Look for much more noisy political messaging about even more declines if the Darien Gap closure further reduces the flow at the U.S. border, as it very well might.<\/p>\n<h2>A Biden Reelection Would Revert to Lack of Enforcement<\/h2>\n<p>But all of this is a paper tiger. No one should expect the Biden administration, should it win the election, to sustain the Mexico or Darien Gap crackdowns beyond Nov. 5. Their leftist wing engineered the whole crisis from the beginning because they believe in unimpeded migration and disdain enforcement, as I explain elaborately in <em>Overrun<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>If the Democrats win the White House, look for them to develop new diplomatic \u201cbeefs\u201d with President Mulino, ala Hungary\u2019s Viktor Orban, as an excuse to shutter U.S. funding for any deportation airlift.<\/p>\n<p>But there\u2019s a silver lining for border hawks here. If Trump wins, he can build mightily on the preparations that Biden\u2019s campaign managers are beginning now.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Todd Bensman is a Texas-based senior national security fellow for the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington D.C.-based research institute, and a writing fellow for the Middle East Forum. His latest book is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.toddbensman.com\/overrun-book\/\">&#8220;Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History&#8221;<\/a> (Bombardier Books). For nearly a decade, Bensman led counterterrorism-related intelligence efforts for the Texas Department of Public Safety&#8217;s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division. Follow him on Twitter @BensmanTodd.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In my books on the border, I suggest a solution to stop the flow of illegal immigrants through the Darien Gap between Colombia and Panama. This solution involves a large-scale deportation airlift funded by the United States. Surprisingly, the Biden administration has now announced plans to implement this idea in Panama to manage the historic levels of migration pouring over the U.S. border. This policy shift is driven by the administration&#8217;s need to slow the southern border flow to improve their chances of winning the upcoming election. While this move may temporarily reduce illegal crossings, it is unlikely to be sustained if the Democrats win the White House<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":635,"featured_media":2293311,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/42019936165_1918a0ccab_k-e1720721210648.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3620,33009,34786],"class_list":["post-2293310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-biden","tag-illegal-immigration","tag-u-turn"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/42019936165_1918a0ccab_k-e1720721210648.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/635"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2293310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2293310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2293311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2293310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2293310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2293310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}