Biden Needs a Spine, Not New Laws, to Shut Down Open Border

(Daily Signal)—President Joe Biden tells a lot of tall tales about the border crisis, but his claim that he needs the reckless bipartisan immigration bill being negotiated in the Senate to give him the authority to “shut down the border” and he “would use it the day” he signs the bill into law to end the crisis is one of his tallest tales yet.

In truth, this deal is a political ploy that would support his open-border policy and fund his unlimited illegal immigration plan.

Why is Biden’s claim a tall tale? Because federal immigration law already gives Biden the ability to close the border—and he, his advisers, and his political allies know it.

And anyone who believes that, if this bill passes, Biden will close the border is a modern-day Charlie Brown who actually believed time and again that Lucy wouldn’t snatch the football away when he tried to kick it.

The president’s already existing authority to shut down the border was specifically upheld in 2018 by the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii over the so-called travel ban issued by then-President Donald Trump.

As Biden’s political allies will no doubt remember, since they led the charge against it, Trump “shut down the border” to aliens from certain terrorist and other nations until the Department of Homeland Security could determine whether it was able to accurately verify and investigate the backgrounds of aliens from those countries.

Trump acted under 8 U.S.C. § 1182, which states that when “the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens … .”

Trump also acted pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1185, which provides that the president can set the “rules, regulations, and orders” for entry of aliens into the U.S. “subject to such limitations and exceptions as the President may prescribe.”

The Supreme Court upheld the travel ban since these existing immigration statutes give “deference to the President” to decide when the entry of aliens should be restricted, and provide him with “‘ample power’ to impose entry restrictions in addition to those” already outlined in federal immigration law.

Moreover, the Supreme Court refused to second-guess Trump’s national-security rationale for issuing the travel ban because such national security determinations made by the commander in chief are entitled to great deference, since courts are not in a position to make such determinations.

In addition to this broad, virtually unlimited authority, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, acting Commissioner Troy Miller, is authorized by 19 U.S.C. § 1318 (b)(2) to “close temporarily” any port of entry into the U.S. “when necessary to respond to a specific threat to human life or national interests.”

The open southern border of the U.S. is clearly a national security problem of the highest order and is obviously a threat to our “national interests.” Millions of illegal aliens are overwhelming communities across the country, and human traffickers, drug smugglers, criminals, and terrorists are freely entering with little to no obstacles in their way.

A coalition of former FBI officials recently issued a warning to Congress about the “imminent danger” we face from this flood of aliens, which those officials say is “one of the most pernicious ever to menace the United States.”

As they point out, “military-aged men from across the globe, many from countries or regions not friendly to the United States, are landing in waves on our soil by the thousands—not by splashing ashore from a ship or parachuting from a plane, but rather by foot across a border that has been accurately advertised around the world as largely unprotected with ready access granted.”

Biden doesn’t need this Senate bill to fix this problem.

What he needs to do is to exercise the will power to actually shut down the border; accept the help of states and cooperate in their efforts, like those of Texas, to install barbed wire fencing and eventually a wall everywhere it is needed; stop his “catch and release” policy; quit unlawfully granting mass parole and work permits to illegal aliens; reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum-seekers; and take the many other actions to enforce federal immigration law that have proven effective in the past.

In other words, quit sitting on the sideline telling tall tales and get into the arena, and do the right thing. The country is waiting, but its patience has run out.