Biden administration must plan now for chaos at the southern border

The date has been set. On May 23, the Biden administration ends the emergency health policy invoked under Title 42 of the U.S. Code that restricted asylum at the nation’s southern border under the aegis of stemming COVID-19.

This time nobody can say that the immigrant surge at the southern border, which is sure to follow, caught them by surprise. The only question is whether federal officials will be ready, and if so, in what ways. In this midterm election year, Republicans in House and Senate races can already be said to politically salivate at the prospect of “we-are-overrun” optics under a Democratic administration. And in fact, the scene on the ground could get as graphically ugly as before.

As before, poverty, violence and climate change south of our border will drive desperate surges, replete with unaccompanied minors. That’s why during the pandemic migrants were turned back more than 1.7 million times, to Mexico or Central America. Blame all you want our lack of comprehensive national immigration laws that would protect security while allowing the right number of legal newcomers. But that, too, is an old dilemma unlikely to change soon.

What would be a first is having the Biden administration put its plans out in advance and expose them to public assessment. How unaccompanied minors are transported and where, for example, has on previous occasions seemed opaque.

To get through the coming surge with minimal disruption, skillful timing on the government’s part will help. A Southwest Border Coordinating Center has been created to respond. Department of Homeland Security efforts to provide vaccines will be substantially increased in the next two months. Already, DHS provides 2,000 vaccines a day at 11 locations.

A staggering 18,000 arrivals per day are projected, with perhaps 8,000 border arrests per day. Ground and air transportation and tents are being prepared. The Border Patrol has hired civilians so agents can spend less time supervising and feeding people in custody and more time patrolling and chasing down smugglers.

Certainly the U.S., as before, must prod Mexico to better stem the flow through its territory. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has accommodated U.S. policies under both Biden and President Donald Trump to pick up interdictions and hosting of asylum-seekers, and more is needed.

These are bandages. Even the fiercest anti-immigration postures in Congress and loudest screams of “build that wall” have had no legacy of success. The current administration is under pressure to be even more ambitious — achieve order at the border with humanitarian progress.

Before anything else, the administration will have to master the complicated with an organized clarity of direction and the patience to explain to the public what is happening — a commitment to real-time, transparent planning it has yet to fully demonstrate on this subject.