Washington, D.C. (August 29, 2022) - Two migrant children died, and an infant is clinging to life, after each was swept under by the waters of the Rio Grande during two separate illegal entry attempts on August 22. Those casualties — and more than 600 others, as well as nearly 19,000 Southwest Border Patrol rescue operations in FY 2022 with two more months of the fiscal year remaining — reveal the largely ignored perils created by the president’s border policies, and aptly define the inhumanity of the administration’s non-enforcement stance.

Record numbers of foreign nationals are entering the United States now that Biden is president because unlike every administration that preceded it, stopping migrants from entering the country is not Biden’s “objective”. Biden and his immigration advisors have concluded that the INA is inherently “inequitable” and that justice would be better served by providing migrants with “safe, orderly, and legal pathways ... to be able to access our legal system”, in immigration court cases that can take years to complete.

Andrew Arthur, the Center’s resident fellow in law and policy writes, “Biden could slash the border death rate tomorrow by detaining migrants and prosecuting single adult migrants. That would dissuade other illegal entrants who are coming here to live and work indefinitely, goals his administration is currently helping them to achieve. But he won’t, because under the administration’s twisted definition, that would be ‘inhumane’.”