As RedState reported on Tuesday, the United States has now had more than two million apprehensions of illegal aliens at the Souther border in the current fiscal year. That’s the most in history and represents a major crisis, both for those charged with enforcing the law and for those breaking it.
With that being the setup, you’d think the Biden administration would be scrambling to enact better policies and provide some semblance of security at the border. After all, what’s going on is a political liability, and one that is becoming more front and center as each day pass.
But nah, instead the White House is gnashing its teeth about Fox News reporter Bill Melugin, who has been the go-to source for information about the current border crisis. You see, they don’t want to actually fix the problem, they just want you to not know about it.
.@politico reports that the White House has become “irritated” with me & our @FoxNews team’s reporting at the border. https://t.co/SuJvqzgbey pic.twitter.com/fZiRK46ZRp
— Bill Melugin (@BillFOXLA) September 20, 2022
Immigration has been a key issue that has filled many hours of programming for Fox News since its inception. The network regularly dispatches people to the border to cover illegal border crossings, stoking fears about caravans of immigrants. The coverage is often accompanied by stories of crimes committed, despite studies showing the immigrants have a lower propensity for committing such acts.
Everything about those two paragraphs is mind-numbing. “Stoking fears about caravans of immigrants?” Again, two million illegal aliens have been encountered at the border this fiscal year alone, and that doesn’t count those who made it through unscathed. How is it “stoking fears” when those fears are completely fact-based and rational?
As to the idea that illegal aliens commit crimes at a lower rate, that’s questionable given that all the studies done on the matter are done by pro-immigration organizations. It’s also irrelevant. Any crime committed by an illegal alien is by definition preventable given they shouldn’t have been allowed into the interior of the country in the first place. And even past that, the fact that illegal aliens might be marginally more well-behaved that some Americans doesn’t justify crossing the border illegal. In other words, it’s a mindless talking.
For his part, Melugin just reports the facts on the ground. If things seem sensationalized, that’s because what is going on at the border is sensational. Yet, the petulant children in the Biden administration are “irritated” that he’d dare expose their failures.
As Melugin has become an increasingly visible figure on the network, his coverage has caught the attention of the White House, which has become increasingly irritated by his reporting. During a press conference last week, press secretary KARINE JEAN-PIERRE noted that Fox News got the heads up on the Martha’s Vineyard flight before local, state and federal agencies.
“The fact that Fox News — and not the Department of Homeland Security, the city, or local NGOs — were alerted about a plan to leave migrants, including children, on the side of a busy D.C. street makes clear that this is just a cruel, premeditated political stunt,” she said.
One administration official who used to work on immigration issues told West Wing Playbook that the Biden team has complained about the lack of nuance in the network’s coverage of the topic, which focuses more on the number of migrants rather than explaining the root causes of the situation. Another administration official believesthat the conservative network amps up border coverage whenever there are bad headlines for conservatives in the news.
Why would DeSantis have let the Department of Homeland Security, which is largely responsible for this mess, know what he was doing? But I digress, this idea that Melugin doesn’t talk enough about the “root causes” is a weak deflection. The “root causes” of the current crisis are the Biden administration’s policies, specifically its rescinding of Remain in Mexico and the president’s open invitation to illegal aliens to “surge the border” upon him taking office.
The world has always been full of poor, desolate countries. The current situation in South America, for example, is not unique. There is no major driving factor today that didn’t exist a decade ago. What has changed is having a president who makes a joke of border security for partisan reasons. When you basically light up a giant billboard telling illegal aliens to come on in, there should be no surprise when they come on in.
This only gets fixed by having leadership in Washington that takes the issue seriously and is willing to make the tough choices to stem the tide. Unfortunately, all we can count on the Biden administration doing is crying about press coverage.
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