Democrats Buckle Under Biden Border Chaos

Opinion By the Washington Examiner

The decision of Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) to bus immigrants from Texas to New York City is putting a squeeze on President Joe Biden, who refuses to enforce immigration laws. It has made every community in the nation a border community, and Democrats are starting to squeal.

This Wednesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams delivered his strongest condemnation of Biden’s border policies yet, telling a crowd of wealthy Upper West Side Manhattans, “I don’t see an ending to this. This issue will destroy New York City.”

“We have to feed, clothe, house, educate their children, wash their laundry sheets, give them everything they need,” Adams continued. “One time, we were just getting Venezuela. Now we’re getting Ecuador. Now we’re getting Russian-speaking coming through Mexico. Now we’re getting western Africa.”

“Every community in this city is going to be impacted,” Adams said. “We have a $12 billion deficit that we’re going to have to cut — every service is going to be impacted. All of us.”

This is exactly the message Abbott was trying to send back in April 2022, when he first began busing immigrants from Texas — not just to New York City but also to Washington, D.C., Chicago, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles.

Biden’s border crisis affects “all of us.” Democratic mayors can’t now comfortably waive away a problem that burdens the Texas border. These immigrants will move to other communities, and when they do, those communities will be overwhelmed as well.

Adams called Abbott a “madman” during his Wednesday remarks. But the reality is that Biden is to blame for New York’s troubles, not Abbott. Texas has bused just 35,000 immigrants to destinations across the country, including about 10,000 to New York City. Those numbers are dwarfed by the hundreds of thousands Biden has caught and released into the United States, including more than 100,000 who chose New York City as their destination.

New York is not the only Democratic city suffering. Washington, D.C., and Massachusetts have declared states of emergency to deal with the problem Biden has dumped on them. Over 2,000 immigrants are sleeping on the floors of police precincts in Chicago, where residents have questioned why immigrants get millions of dollars unavailable to ordinary citizens.

Faced with a backlash from his own party, Biden is not thinking of fixing the real problem but is contemplating the ruse of forcing them to remain in Texas.

This remain near Mexico policy, a contemptuous echo of the "Remain in Mexico" policy that worked and Biden scrapped, has not been finalized, but it reportedly would force migrants released by the president into the U.S. to stay in border states. It is unclear how it would be enforced. The heads of each family released into Texas would be fitted with a GPS monitoring device. But what would happen if immigrants removed the device? Or what if they kept it on but traveled out of Texas anyway?

Would Biden send Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials after them? Would the offending immigrants be deported for the crime of crossing state lines? It’s unclear. It’s also a terrible policy that would either fail from non-enforcement or cause more suffering in Texas communities forced to house all immigrants, who are now spread more evenly across the U.S.

There is only one way to end the Biden border crisis, and despite his blaming Abbott, Adams knows what the real solution is. “Any plan that does not include stopping the flow at the border is a failed plan,” Adams said last month. That is the truth. Until Biden stops the flow at the border by ending his "catch and release" policies, his crisis will get worse, and communities across the country will continue to suffer.