How Does Illegal Immigration Affect Independence of Americans?

            The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is independence, as in Independence Day. Americans lost some of their independence after terrorists attacked our nation on September 11, 2001, and under numerous administrations. However, no administration has destroyed American independence at the rate that the Biden administration has done.

            Under the Trump administration, the United States was oil independent. We did not have to dependent on anyone but ourselves to provide our oil, and we had oil and natural gas to export to other nations. Joe Biden came into office and began to shut down the oil and gas industry, beginning with the Keystone Pipeline during his first week as president.

            The Trump administration put several policies in place to stop the flow of immigrants from entering our nation illegally. The Biden administration has done away with each of those policies, and more than two million illegal aliens have entered the United States in the past eighteen months.

            Although the Supreme Court made many decisions that were good for our nation, they made a big mistake in my eyes when they approved the termination of the Remain in Mexico program (formally known as the Migration Protection Protocols). In a 5-4 decision, moderate justices joined the liberal justices to terminate a successful program. Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined liberal Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.

            The Supreme Court’s decision will make matters at the border even worse. Remain in Mexico was implemented in 2019 to stop the large caravans of immigrants from coming to the southern border, claiming a fear of returning home, and being released into the United States – never to be heard from again.

            In 1996 Congress gave authority to the Department of Homeland Security to return non-Mexican immigrants arriving by land to Mexico while their claims for asylum were determined. The program worked exceptionally well, and the caravans stopped. The numbers of travelers coming to the border declined once they and the human smugglers learned that the people would not be allowed to enter the United States. This was a good program because the vast majority of asylum claims proved to be fraudulent.

            The Biden administration was determined to throw open the southern border and invite the world into our nation. To do so, they ended every successful immigration policy and enforcement program put in place by the Trump association, including Remain in Mexico. Texas and Missouri sued the Biden administration, and the district court issued an injunction. The Fifth Circuit Court affirmed the decision by the lower court, and the case went to the Supreme Court.

Lora Ries and Hans von Spakovsky at the Heritage Foundation claim that the Supreme Court made a big mistake when the justices believed the arguments put forth by the Biden administration. Court Unwisely Lets Biden End Program Making Illegals Remain in Mexico (dailysignal.com)

In oral arguments before the Supreme Court, the government disingenuously blamed Congress for not providing enough detention resources for the administration to comply with the mandatory detention statute.

But the open-borders left that controls this White House doesn’t want to detain illegal aliens. The Biden administration does not use all the detention space it has, eliminated family detention centers, cut the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s budget, and relies on ineffective alternatives to detention that allows aliens to disappear into the anonymity of our vast nation.

Further, the government argued it could not implement the Remain in Mexico policy because it would be too difficult to negotiate an agreement with Mexico.

This cop-out ignores the fact that international negotiations are a regular function of the executive branch and that the last administration had no problem reaching an agreement with the government of Mexico to allow these aliens to remain there….

Third, the government argued that, instead of returning illegal aliens to Mexico, it has no other choice but to parole illegal aliens into the U.S.

Under the law, parole can only be granted on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit. The government made the ridiculous argument that it met the significant public benefit requirement because parole ensures that DHS doesn’t run out of detention space to house future aliens who might be higher priorities because of their criminal records or flight risk….

Despite the government’s weak arguments, the court majority rules that because returning aliens to Mexico is discretionary, not mandatory, the Biden administration did not act unlawfully in ending the program….

            The justices explained that Congress did not “state that the Remain in Mexico policy becomes mandatory if the government cannot comply with mandatory detention.” In other words, Congress did not do its job. In addition, the justices refused to “direct the executive branch to conduct foreign affairs. Rather, that’s Congress’ job. Finally, the majority gave the government a pass on the issue of mass parole in seeming violation of the statute, concluding that DHS can exercise parole.”

            Some of the justices saw through the government’s arguments. Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his dissent that “the number of aliens paroled each month – more than 27,000 in April alone – is a strong indication that the government is not making parole decisions on case-by-case basis.” He continued by stating that the “parole statute cannot justify the release of tens of thousands of inadmissible aliens.” Alito added:

… rather than avail itself of Congress’s clear statutory alternative to return inadmissible aliens to Mexico while they await proceedings in this country, DHS has concluded that it may forgo that option altogether and instead simply release into this country untold numbers of aliens who are very likely to be removed if they show up for their removal hearings.

            The authors concluded that this “practice violates the clear terms of the law, but the court looks the other way.” They said that the Court’s decision will embolden “the Biden administration to continue to allow an unlimited number of illegal aliens to flood our communities in violation of federal immigration law and encouraging asylum fraud.”

            While illegal aliens are flooding our border and entering our communities, the “Mexican drug cartels that control the smuggling and human trafficking across our southern border were the clear winners with this decision. And once again, Americans – including legal immigrants – are on the losing end.”

            As long as the Biden administration allows millions of people to enter the nation illegally, Americans will lose independence. Americans deserve to have secure borders and well-run immigration programs.