Horowitz: We don’t need “border security”; We must make illegal immigration illegal

The most effective form of border security is not at the border itself.

Here’s a novel idea based on observations of the ebb and flow of illegal immigration over the past half century. If you invite illegal aliens into the country and offer them jobs and benefits, they will come. If you make it clear that they will not receive any benefits and if caught will be removed, they will not come. In other words, it is not some kind of natural disaster that requires more personnel at the border to improve the situation. If you just make illegal immigration illegal, they won’t come.

The Border Patrol has doubled its size during President Bush’s first term and has grown quintupled since 1993. We endlessly threw money and infrastructure at the border. But what good is staff and infrastructure when staff are dependent on coddling and releasing illegal aliens and then get jobs and social benefits inland? In the first 100 days of the 2023 financial year alone, it was a total 718,000 encounters with illegal aliens, of which 520,000 will be released. Also, the total number of short breaks averages 2,670 per day. So we assume an average of 1.9 million aliens released (out of 2.6 million encounters) and another 1 million escape attempts for a year.

Why? Because most of them go through a trial instead of being repatriated, and while staying in the country indefinitely, they can achieve their goals. On analysis of Syracuse University found that more than 2 million cases are pending in immigration courts presided over by only about 600 administrative judges. You can’t fight your way out of an invasion through litigation, nor can you fight your way out of people coming for benefits with manpower or infrastructure. It’s possible that we could stop the problem with a military operation, but obviously this government wouldn’t do that.

Thus, the problem of illegal immigration boils down to two elements: the ban on any catch-and-release for Everyone migrant encounters at the border and the ban on all services inside the United States. Anything else doesn’t do justice to the seriousness of the problem. This would be true even for a conservative president, but it rings even truer today for the Biden administration. You can’t just say, “There’s supposed to be border security,” and here’s yet another billion-dollar tranche for the DHS that’s likely to be used against Americans rather than intruders. The Biden administration will never secure the border and will only use the money for more benefits than enforcement.

Border security in the abstract rather than focusing on internal enforcement is a honey trap. Senate Republicans are working with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema on a “border security plan” that will include some of those elements of more funding and infrastructure at the actual border in exchange for an amnesty. But aside from the amnesty issue, let’s not forget that a border wall can only stop a physical invasion; it cannot stop an invasion of 1,000 Lamentations. As I reported in 2019, even in the Trump administration, border officials would bring illegal aliens in behind the fences as soon as they entered US territory (which is just a few feet behind the fence).

For this reason, House Republicans should avoid the problem of border security per se and instead advance the following:

• A categorical catch-and-release ban.
• Both states and Border Patrol agents (and ICE) can go to court to sue DHS for violating the INA to their detriment.
• Ban all federal benefits for illegal aliens, including K-12 education (reverse Plyler versus doe).
• Explicitly mandate states to enforce (reverse USA vs. Arizona).
• Assign a private cause of action to citizens or families harmed by shelter towns or the federal government’s lack of enforcement.
• Dramatic expansion of criminal penalties for identity theft, which is the linchpin of illegal aliens’ ability to remain in the country. allow states to enforce it.

This type of agenda will not only stop illegal immigration at a trickle, but also ensure the issue is not hijacked by vague bipartisan promises of border security in return for an amnesty. Because Republicans have failed for two generations to push for real enforcement, the problem is now so bad that we need states to step in, especially with a federal government that facilitates invasion. That’s the key element Republicans should be fighting for.

Republicans are a day late and a dollar short of focusing on the solutions they originally opposed 10 years ago when they were calling for amnesty. Thanks to the fact that Republicans have for decades adopted the Democrats’ premise on this issue (and Senate Republicans are still pushing for it), we need a much stronger response. We’re talking about an incredible four and a half million encounters since Biden took office. Anything other than cutting off magnets and allowing red states to enforce the law will not solve the problem.

Illegal immigration continues because we didn’t make it illegal. Illegal migrants come and fight over their status. When it becomes clear that all illegal aliens will be repatriated (not just under Title 42), that they will receive no benefits if they evade border policing, and that red states will enforce the laws against them (including criminal penalties), the numbers will do it fall by itself. Once the power runs dry, the cartels will have less money and a lot less cover and chaos to bring in bad guys and drugs. At this point we can discuss how best to counter the cartels with kinetic force from a position of strength.

What the border/immigration debates of the last 40 years should show is that everyone supports “border security”, but nobody really. That’s why it’s time to change the name of the game.