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Commentary By Jason L. Riley

If Biden Is Serious About Covid, He’ll Protect the Border

The government releases migrants, untested, to live in tight spaces alongside scores of strangers.

If it’s unfair to lay all blame for the mess on the southern border at the feet of President Biden, his administration certainly deserves the lion’s share.

For all the devastation that Covid-19 has heaped on us, the pandemic provided a breather for border patrol. Apprehensions at the Mexican border are a proxy measure of illegal entries, and in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2020, there were about half as many apprehensions as there were a year earlier.

After Mr. Biden took office, the initial rise in border arrests was thought to be no big deal. “What we’re seeing right now is a predictable seasonal shift,” the Washington Post reported confidently in March. “When the numbers drop again in June and July, policymakers may be tempted to claim that their deterrence policies succeeded. But that will just be the usual seasonal drop.”

Except that no serious deterrence policies emerged, and the numbers didn’t drop or even level off. They’ve increased every month of the Biden administration, even during the hottest part of the summer, when they normally come down. Customs and Border Protection announced in July that June apprehensions were not only higher than the previous month but significantly above the next-highest June in more than two decades. For the current fiscal year through June, CBP recorded more than 1.1 million apprehensions. The last time it reached even a million was 2006.

Don’t worry, it gets worse. As left-wing Pecksniffs like to remind us, the pandemic ain’t over, the Delta variant is spreading, and too few people are vaccinated. I don’t doubt that White House officials believe this and want to convey their concerns to as many vaccination-averse Americans as possible, but you’d never know it from their unserious approach to border enforcement. And Fox News isn’t the only media outlet that’s noticed.

In late April the New York Times reported that the government “has insufficient time and space to test migrants,” and therefore “testing is being postponed until their release to local community groups, cities and counties, usually after the new arrivals have spent days confined in tight spaces with scores of strangers, often sleeping shoulder to shoulder on mats on the floor.”

The report went on to note the obvious, which is that such a policy is at cross-purposes with fighting the pandemic. “As the United States vaccinates larger numbers of people and several states begin to reopen after seeing lower infection rates, the failure of U.S. authorities to test adult migrants for the coronavirus in jam-packed border processing centers is creating a potential for new transmissions, public health officials and shelter operators warn.”

No one can say for certain how big a role these high levels of illegal immigration have played in the spread of the virus, but the Biden administration can’t have it both ways. If the president wants the public to defer to public-health officials when it comes to masking and social distancing, he can’t expect people to ignore these same officials when they tell us that large numbers of recent migrants may be contributing to the crisis.

Team Biden insists that the problem is driven by forces beyond their control, which is a dodge. Last week, Vice President Kamala Harris released a 14-page plan for addressing the “root causes” of illegal immigration, citing high rates of violence and poverty in countries like El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which have become large sources of illegal immigration to the U.S. Collaborating with other governments is smart and necessary, but it’s insufficient. Violent crime, high unemployment and widespread poverty back home all play a role in sending people north, but so does lax U.S. border security and an unwillingness to enforce our laws.

El Salvador’s homicide rate fell by more than half between 2015 and 2018, and Guatemala’s economy was averaging 3.4% growth in the years leading up to the pandemic. Both countries continue to be much poorer and more violent than ours, but it’s worth noting that emigration to the U.S. from Central America kept rising even as these “root cause” trends moved in the right direction.

The situation is unlikely to change until the administration makes it clear that people who come illegally are unwelcome. Sure, Mr. Biden mouths the words, but his policies are telling people that if they make it here, they’ll probably get to stay. When the president plays down the need for better border security, tells asylum seekers they no longer have to remain outside the U.S. while a court adjudicates their claims, and urges Congress to pass an amnesty bill for millions of people already in the country illegally, he shouldn’t be surprised that would-be immigrants aren’t taking him seriously when he says don’t come.

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Jason L. Riley is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a columnist at The Wall Street Journal, and a Fox News commentator. Follow him on Twitter here.

This piece originally appeared in The Wall Street Journal