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| Photo Credit: AP. |
President Joe Biden has now adopted former President Donald Trump administration policy to expel illegal migrants from Venezuela amid a chaotic open border, a policy he once chastised as cruel.
Mr. Biden’s
move is coming less than three weeks to the November midterm election as the president
seeks to drum up support and convince voters he is serious about addressing the
hotly debated immigration crisis as hundreds of thousands of aliens pour into
the country from the Mexican border per month.
In 2020
Biden while campaigning to be president said then President Trump’s immigration
policy inflicted “cruelty and exclusion at every turn,” including toward those
who fled the “brutal” government of socialist Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela, The
Associated Press reported.
Today Biden
is adopting the same policy to paint a good image that his administration has
control over the chaotic U.S.-Mexican border that is now a key route for drug and
human smuggling.
Last week
Biden invoked a Trump-era rule known as Title 42 – which the president’s own
Justice Department is fighting in court – to prevent Venezuelans who fled their
economically battered country from seeking asylum at the border, according to
The Associated Press.
The Trump
rule which was first invoked in 2020 uses emergency public health authority to
allow the United States to keep migrants from seeking asylum at the border
based on the need to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, according to The
Associated Press.
The Biden
Administration policy aims to expel Venezuelans who walk or swim across America’s
southern border. Any Venezuelan who illegally enters Mexico or Panama will be
ineligible to come to the United States but the policy will allow up to 24,000
Venezuelans who arrive U.S. airports.
Mexico has appealed to the U.S. to admit one Venezuelan on
humanitarian parole for each Venezuelan it expels to Mexico, a Mexican official
who pleaded anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter
publicly told The Associated Press. That means if the Biden administration
paroles 24,000 Venezuelans to the U.S., Mexico would take no more than 24,000
Venezuelans expelled from the U.S.
The White
House has repeatedly criticized the busing of illegal migrants by Texas Gov.
Greg Abbott, and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to democratic sanctuary cities calling
the move “cruel political stunt”.
The White
House lashed out at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who recently flew some migrants
to Martha’s Vineyard and Abbott busing of Venezuelan migrants “fleeing” what it
called “political persecution” to cities run by Democrats.
“These were
children, they were moms, they were fleeing communism,” White House press
secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at the time, according to The Associated
Press.
The Biden
administration argues that its policy would ensure a “lawful and orderly” way
for Venezuelans seeking to enter the United States.