Former President Donald Trump is enemy number one for the Democrats. There’s a big reason for that.
And now this deportation news has left Donald Trump completely stunned in disbelief.
In response to the huge number of illegal immigrants from Venezuela, which has recently escalated an already tense situation at the border, the Biden administration has resumed direct deportations to Venezuela.
Venezuelans who “do not establish a legal basis to remain” in the U.S. will be transported back, a high-ranking Biden official stated Thursday.
Venezuela has promised to take in migrants “who do not take advantage of the lawful pathways and instead arrive irregularly at our southern border and do not qualify for relief,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a news conference in Mexico City.
Some Venezuelan migrants now in federal prison have been identified and will be “removed promptly in the coming days,” the official said.
A senior Biden administration source told NBC News, “This also reflects a long-standing approach by the Biden-Harris administration that balances historic expansion of safe, orderly, lawful pathways with harsh consequences for those who seek to cross our border irregularly.”
The administration’s move comes as thousands of migrants, many of them from Venezuela but also from Central America and other places, flood into the country through the southern border. CBS News reports that in September, a record number — roughly 50,000 — of Venezuelans were apprehended by U.S. authorities after entering the country illegally.
Almost half a million Venezuelans who arrived in the United States by the end of July will be granted temporary legal status, allowing them to live and work in the country without fear of deportation, as announced by the Biden administration last month in an effort to accommodate and integrate some of the thousands of Venezuelan new arrivals.
The government gave the excuse of political instability at home in Venezuela to grant temporary stay in the first place. Before the adjustment, the TPS designation applied to about 242,700 Venezuelans; it is estimated that an additional 472,000 migrants may now qualify. By changing their status, the migrants are safe from deportation and can legally work in the country.
Thursday, NBC reported that a senior administration official had claimed that the deportation order did not contradict the broadening of TPS for Venezuelan migrants.
“We as a matter of policy and as a matter of historical practice continue to remove individuals to countries that have TPS designations after the date of the TPS designation,” the official explained. “So this is not something any new or different from the long-standing practice of this administration, but really all previous administrations.”
The border situation has deteriorated to the point when Mayorkas, in defiance of President Biden’s campaign promises, declared on Wednesday that the government would get back to completing the border wall for the first time since former president Donald Trump left office. Mayorkas disregarded 26 federal statutes as part of the order.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Mayorkas stated in a notice.
The freshly begun project will add more than 20 miles to the border wall in Starr County, Texas, which has been disclosed as an area dealing with “high illegal entry.” The county is located in the Rio Grande Valley area of the Border Patrol, which has seen more than 245,000 illegal immigrants enter the United States in the current fiscal year.
At a press conference in Mexico on Thursday, Mayorkas acknowledged the latest deportation developments.
His exact words were, “We have made a determination that it is safe to return Venezuelan nationals who have arrived in the United States after July 31 and do not have a legal basis to remain here.”
From Donald Trump’s perspective, this is incredibly frustrating. But it’s also good news for the former President looking for a second term.
He ran on “tough-on-illegal-immigration” policies back in 2016 that were a major part of his success in winning against the heavy favorite in Hillary Clinton. 2020 did not carry the same political emphasis for obvious reasons.
Now, Donald Trump, or whoever the GOP nominee is, has the chance to expose how hypocritical Joe Biden and the Democrats have been. They say they won’t build any more to the border wall, but then they cave. They say “no one is illegal” and yet they deport people when they deem it necessary.
The Democrats are being forced to acknowledge that securing the border is the only way to earn the trust of the American people. But it’s likely too little too late for them.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
