Biden Has Effectively Opened Our Border. He Is Once Again Vindicating Trump | Opinion

President Biden has been caught flat footed again in yet another avoidable disaster. Early in his term, Biden and members of his administration failed to comprehend that their rollback of President Trump's successful border policies were incentivizing an unprecedented surge of illegal immigrants at the southern border. As a result, the number of people risking the dangerous journey to our southern border has continued to rise, even during the treacherous summer months, even during a global pandemic.

We are encountering more people at our southern border than any other time in the last 21 years. Two months in a row, the numbers exceeded 200,000; in August 2021, the numbers represented a 317 percent increase over August of last year.

And now, another self-inflicted disaster has overcome the already beleaguered Border Patrol. Recently, close to 15,000 people, most of them Haitians, gathered under the International Bridge in Del Rio, Texas. Thousands camped out in quickly deteriorating conditions, awaiting Border Patrol processing as hundreds more simply walked across the river. It was not until the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety stepped in that the illegal crossings stopped, only to continue at other parts of the river.

This is not Texas's job; control of borders is a characteristic of national sovereignty and therefore one of the core responsibilities of the national government. Indeed, the Supreme Court has ruled that immigration enforcement is exclusive to the federal government, and states are prohibited from taking steps to enforce federal immigration law.

Yet the federal government under Biden's leadership is failing in this most fundamental of tasks, leaving Texas border cities overwhelmed and necessitating some sort of action.

Now, in an attempt to show the American public that it's doing something to solve the flood of illegal immigration (it's not), the Biden Administration is selling a "comprehensive strategy" to address the increase in migrants in Del Rio. The plan includes a surge of U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and officers and coordination with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the U.S. Coast Guard.

This strategy is really just a badly-played game of whack-a-mole. These efforts will do nothing to stop the flow of migrants; instead, they put public safety and national security at risk.

The plan's follies include closing ports of entry—which harms legitimate travel and trade—and pulling Border Patrol officers from other critical locations, meaning that drug traffickers, smugglers, and other criminals can game the system and walk right in elsewhere. And that's without discussing the fiscal irresponsibility of spending massive amounts of dollars to respond to avoidable and foreseeable conflicts.

The Administration was warned of the brewing crisis. Not only were they warned right after the election, but as far as the chaos currently in Del Rio is concerned, Customs and Border Protection has been sounding the alarm since early summer.

Unfortunately, instead of heeding the advice of well-informed officials, Biden ousted a 29-year veteran because he actually tried to do his job in good faith and reduce illegal immigration. The administration let far-left politics overcome rational border policies and made wholesale changes to a working border system just because they didn't like the guy who put them in place originally.

The situation is already bad, and will get much worse. We are relying on the migrants to stay peaceful. There are another 20,000 Haitians "staging" in Colombia. And a recent federal court ruling blocked the use of Title 42 authority for families, which has been the main tool to turn migrants away. This, too, will further incentivize migrant families to cross illegally.

Despite the Administration saying the border is closed, their actions show otherwise and reveal their true agenda. Like an open wound, if left untreated, it will fester. Rather than treating the wound, the Administration is merely putting band-aids on the problem because they have no desire to solve the issue.

It's hard to be this incompetent without some effort. We were told that the adults were back in charge when President Trump left office, but it's clear they are only playing politics and have no idea how to actually run the government. Assuming that they intend the obvious consequences of their actions, the Biden Administration appears to view success as processing migrants quickly and then releasing as many as possible to disappear into the country unsupervised. And they are succeeding at that.

Once again, Biden's failures at the border have vindicated Trump's successful efforts to do what every functional country must and secure its national borders.

Americans deserve a secure border. Unfortunately, their president doesn't seem to agree.

Dr. Ben Carson is the Founder and Chairman of the American Cornerstone Institute and the 17th Secretary of HUD.

The views in this article are the writer's own.