'Incoherence' of Biden border crisis strategy may lead to Democrat election losses: Washington Post editorial

The Washington Post criticized the Biden administration's handling of the southern border crisis Sunday and pushed for a coherent strategy to deal with the record number of migrants trying to enter the U.S. illegally.

In an editorial, the Post predicted the "incoherence" of the Biden administration's policies could lead to Democrats losing control of the House and Senate in the 2022 midterm elections, and there was likely nothing in its current strategy that would change that outcome. 

"In its apparent desperation to fashion an immigration strategy that will impose order on increasingly out-of-control migration, the Biden administration has unleashed a torrent of words and goals untethered to specific policies and timetables," the Post wrote. "Officials have effectively reversed and rolled back some of the Trump administration’s most pernicious policies, but without a clear road map to address the immediate crisis — a decades-high surge in illegal border-crossing — or the long-term challenge driving migration: dysfunction, disorder and decay in Central America."

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The Post noted that Vice President Kamala Harris laid out a long-term strategy to address the factors in Central America currently driving illegal immigration, but that it was missing an actual plan for action. It added her "convoluted messaging" telling migrants not to attempt the journey to the U.S., while also scrapping or relaxing measures to dissuade the journey, had been a "failure."

"That failure is measurable, and it is politically toxic," the Post wrote before detailing the "staggering" number of apprehensions seen at the border this year. 

In June, a record monthly high of nearly 190,000 migrants were detained by border officials, despite the usual deterrence of the summer heat. According to reports, another record of 210,000 was set in July, although those numbers have not yet been released. A total of 1.1 million migrants have been detained since the beginning of the fiscal year. 

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"Alarmed by the numbers, the administration infuriated immigration advocates by announcing it would retain a Trump-era public health measure, originally justified on grounds of the pandemic, that blocks migrant families from seeking asylum at the southern border," the Post wrote. "Yet that measure, known as Title 42, has proved increasingly ineffective as a deterrent. Even while knowing they may be expelled without an asylum hearing, migrants often attempt to cross the border again and again."

"For the most part, the administration’s impulses are humane. However, they have driven a policy whose incoherence has yielded pressure at the border that may cost the Democrats control of one or both houses of Congress in next year’s midterm elections. So far, there is nothing in the administration’s short- or long-term strategizing that is likely to shift that dynamic," it added.