The New Yorker Tries to Spin Harris's Immigration Efforts

 
On July 28, the New Yorker put its own unique spin on the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate's immigration efforts, in an article headlined "The Real Story of Kamala Harris' Record on Immigration". While it offers unseen insights into White House border debates over the past four years, much of it is little than tendentious spin intended to cover the migrant surge.

H.Res. 1371. I'll start where the article really begins, with a House resolution, H. Res. 1371, introduced by Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) (chairman of the House Republican Conference) captioned "Strongly condemning the Biden Administration and its Border Czar, Kamala Harris's, failure to secure the United States border".

The first clause in the resolution states that "President Biden tasked Vice President Kamala Harris with working to address illegal immigration into the United States, including "root causes", and came to be known colloquially as the Biden administration's 'border czar'".

What follows in that resolution is largely a laundry list of disasters that have unfolded at the Southwest border in the past three and a half years.

Here's how the New Yorker interprets the succeeding clauses in H.Res. 1371:

    The rest of the resolution is replete with falsehoods, misrepresentations, and other inanities. At one point, its authors claim that border crossings in May, 2024, were "higher than even the highest month seen under President Trump," which is untrue. They also cite the chief of Border Patrol, who had "stated that Vice President Kamala Harris has not spoken with him since he was appointed in July 2023"; this simply proves the point that she was not, in fact, in charge of the border. On Thursday, in a party-line vote scheduled before the House adjourns for its August recess, Republicans passed the measure. It is purely symbolic.

While I concur that the resolution is "purely symbolic", nearly all House resolutions are symbolic, so I'm not sure what point the author is making, save to reiterate the obvious.

In any event, there are so many "falsehoods, misrepresentations, and other inanities" in that paragraph that I need to break them up.

"Border Crossings". The resolution's sponsors didn't actually "claim that border crossings in May 2024, were 'higher than even the highest month seen under President Trump", as the article contends. Rather, clauses 11 and 12 in H.Res. 1371 state:

    Whereas, in May 2024, there were 170,723 illegal immigrant encounters at the United States southern border, a 185 percent increase from the average May encounter total under President Trump; [and]

    Whereas May 2024 was the 39th straight month where monthly illegal immigrant encounters have been higher than even the highest month seen under President Trump . . . [Emphasis added.]

Both of those claims are dispositively true, as CBP's own statistics reveal. The problem is that either the author of the article doesn't know what an "encounter" is, or he elided some fairly salient facts.

By way of background, I must first note nearly all in the media (including the New Yorker) assess the rate of illegal migration by focusing solely on just one statistic, "Border Patrol apprehensions".

An apprehension occurs when a Border Patrol agent arrests a migrant who has crossed the border illegally, between the ports.

Up until January 2023, the monthly number of apprehensions was the most useful metric to determine how many migrants were coming to the border illegally, even though that stat didn't tell the whole story. That's because by definition, apprehension totals exclude aliens who crossed illegally but weren't caught (identified in statute as "got aways").

Apprehensions, however, are just part of what DHS identifies as "encounters", a term the department has been using since March 2020, when Title 42 first took effect.

In addition to apprehensions, "encounters" include aliens who were deemed inadmissible by CBP officers in the agency's Office of Field Operations (OFO) component at the ports of entry.

In FY 2020, for example, Border Patrol agents at the Southwest border apprehended 400,651 illegal entrants, while CBP officers in OFO stopped 57,437 other inadmissible aliens at the ports of entry there, for a total of 458,088 Southwest border encounters that fiscal year.

That OFO "inadmissible" figure has always been somewhat useful, for it showed how many aliens were trying to talk their way past CBP officers at the ports each month. Ports are meant for lawful travelers, and aliens without visas trying to exploit them have long been an issue to be addressed.

The concept that the ports are intended only for lawful travelers was turned on its head on January 5, 2023, when the White House issued a fact sheet titled "Biden-?Harris Administration Announces New Border Enforcement Actions".

In a break from every prior administration, it announced that the Southwest border ports of entry would now be open to facially inadmissible aliens without visas or other admission documents, provided they scheduled port appointments using the CBP One app (what I refer to as the "CBP One app interview scheme").

At present, 1,450 interview slots are available each day for inadmissible CBP One migrants, or roughly 43,500 per month.

https://cis.org/Arthur/New-Yorker-Tries-Spin-Harriss-Immigration-Efforts