It’s been over 500 days since people were told to make sacrifices to help slow the spread of COVID-19.
The self-imposed and state-mandated decrees came at an incalculable cost. Children lost a year of in-person classes, deaths from addiction and despair spiked, small businesses shuttered — with some closing forever. Countless people said their final goodbyes to loved ones over Zoom calls, watching them die alone.
As we enter our fourth wave of this virus, government officials and much of the national media tell us there’s no personal sacrifice too great. Except, that is, it comes to migrants at the border. Many media outlets have gone into full political-defense mode, insisting that the border crisis is not contributing to the pandemic and that fears of 100,000+ migrants reaching the border every month are nothing more than Republicans playing politics.
CNN’s Brianna Keilar did nine minutes of mental gymnastics on Monday, equating concerns about the migrant border crisis with the Charlottesville protests and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. The New York Times’s Linda Qiu insisted that migrants couldn’t be contributing to the spread of the delta variant because it is more widespread in the United States than in most parts of Latin America. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler took aim at Gov. Ron DeSantis for saying Biden is “importing more virus from around the world by having a wide-open southern border.”
Kessler said that Biden’s decision to continue Title 42, which allows border agents to deny entry to migrants in greater numbers and more easily, has led to “a big effect in turning back migrants, whether coronavirus carriers or otherwise.” He also stated that worries of migrant infection rates were overblown since the number of migrants who were testing positive for COVID-19 was less than border counties’ native population.
None of these claims accurately reflect Biden’s disastrous border policy. Up until now, the policy hasn’t received the attention similar crises had under past presidents. The fact is, Biden spent two years campaigning for the White House with the promise that he would suspend deportations, offer a pathway to citizenship, and guarantee illegal immigrants access to government healthcare. Like clockwork, millions of people prepared to make a trip to enter our southern border because they knew Biden would do nothing to stop them.
Numerous interviews with migrants confirmed Biden was the key reason they decided to flood the U.S., creating a humanitarian and national security disaster that enriched human traffickers and the drug cartel.
Biden and the media’s claims that this crisis is just seasonal or is the product of Central Americans fleeing violence haven’t worked. The media’s insistence that the explosion of new variants such as the delta variant couldn’t be made worse by migrants because it’s rare in Latin America would make sense if all the migrants coming from Mexico were Central and South American — but they’re not. The Daily Mail reported back in March that migrants from Russia, Haiti, Syria, Vietnam, and Romania were regularly being apprehended, and at the beginning of the pandemic, 100 times more Indian nationals were being detained at our southern border than in the decade before.
Other variants, including lambda, originated in South America and have made their way to the U.S. Reports from Border Patrol have also shown that migrants are increasingly likely to test positive for the coronavirus. Back in March, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency reported that just 6% of the migrants tested had come back positive with the virus. Officials in McAllen, Texas, reported on July 30 that infections reached 13% of migrants reaching the border, and by the first week of August, that number hit 16%.
NBC News reported on Aug. 7 that the infection rate for migrant families was 18%, and for unaccompanied children, it was 20%. Media personalities defending the administration have often cited that Biden has kept the Trump-era Title 42, which expelled a majority of migrants attempting to come into the U.S.
That’s true, but it’s not being applied as frequently as it had under his predecessor. Under Trump, 91% of migrants attempting to reach America were expelled under Title 42; that number dropped to 73% under Biden, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. While a large number of the migrants are held by CBP, the Associated Press admitted that some migrants are released into border communities directly and other times directly into the care of nongovernmental organizations.
In late July, dozens of migrants were released into the care of Catholic Charities after it booked hotels for the migrants in La Joya, Texas. CBS-DFW reported that those COVID-positive migrants were seen around town and not quarantining. Those are, of course, just the migrants who are apprehended.
Sen. Ron Johnson stated that Border Patrol estimates that between 750 and 1,000 migrants successfully cross the border every day. CBP reported the number was around 40,000 in April alone. If those numbers are accurate and have about the same levels of COVID-19 infection as migrants apprehended at the border, that would mean over 5,000 COVID-infected migrants are successfully crossing the border every month.
Migrants are not the main driver of infections in the U.S., but they are contributing to the spread of the virus — all while people are increasingly concerned for their safety and politicians debate adding more destructive restrictions and lockdowns in their direction. The media’s defense of the border crisis that Joe Biden created is acting in the best interest of their politics, not the public.
Ryan Girdusky (@RyanGirdusky) is the author of They’re Not Listening: How the Elites Created the National Populist Revolution.
