Biden’s Potemkin trip to the southern border

Days before President Joe Biden visited El Paso, Texas, this afternoon, local and federal authorities began clearing out migrant encampments. Federal agents said this was a response to community complaints of rising crime, but it is more likely that the president’s impending visit and the need to avoid embarrassing photos was decisive.

Biden will learn nothing from his trip because he doesn’t want to learn anything. He already announced his new immigration policy Thursday, days before his trip. He is obviously going in hope of grabbing the initiative on a policy area he has botched spectacularly as he rolls out his as-yet undeclared reelection campaign.

In his speech announcing an expanded parole program that grants work visas to 360,000 people a year, Biden mocked the idea that migrants were coming to the United States just to make more money.

“It’s not like people are sitting around a table somewhere in Central America and saying, ‘I got a great idea. Let’s sell everything we have. Let’s give it to a coyote, a smuggler. They’ll take us on a harrowing journey for thousands of miles to get to the United States, then we’re going to illegally cross the border.’”

Actually, Mr. President, that is exactly what is happening.

Biden’s border crisis was exposed by the first question he was asked Thursday: “Mr. President, do you believe that migration is a human right?”

The president answered, “Well, I think it is a human right if your family is being persecuted. … I thought it was a human right for, you know, Jews in Germany to be able to escape and get help where they could.”

But the migrants flooding our southern border aren’t being exterminated like Jews in Germany. They are not being persecuted based on the five criteria identified by immigration law — race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.

More From The Federalist: