HOMELAND SECURITY — With Joe Biden’s presidential win seemingly cemented by the Electoral College vote on Monday, thousands of migrants in Central America are launching new caravans to flood the U.S. border with Mexico. As I warned earlier, Biden’s statements promising amnesty to all illegal aliens residing in the U.S., and proposals for massive increases in the number of ‘refugees’ allowed in the country, have emboldened illegal crossers to surge into the U.S. prior to Biden’s inauguration.

This may be one of the first crises of the incoming administration and one partly of his own creation.

As American Military News (AMN) noted:

Jose Luis Gonzalez, coordinator of the Guatemala Red Jesuita con Migrantes, said President-elect Joe Biden’s immigration policy changes and the transition to a new administration encourage impoverished Central Americans to risk the long journey to the U.S. Biden has vowed to reverse a number of President Donald Trump’s migration policies, including illegal immigration deterrents like prolonged detention and family separation.

“When there is a change in government in the U.S. or Mexico, caravans start to move because they are testing the waters to see how authorities respond,” Gonzalez said, according to Bloomberg. And Biden’s statements have encouraged illegal migrants to go to the United States.

The Miami Herald has reported that the migrants aren’t only limited to residents of Central America, though. Thousands of Cuban migrants, including pregnant women and children, are hoping to join the caravans traveling from Guyana, Paraguay, and Chile.

But Biden seems to have placed himself in a corner with his premature pronouncement of radical changes to Trump’s immigration policy.

According to Bloomberg:

Biden’s advisers are hoping to shift away from Trump’s policies without signaling that the border has been flung open, according to people familiar with the planning. They know that swift, sweeping changes will spur more people to attempt the journey to the U.S.

Ironically, adds Bloomberg, Biden’s controversial nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, dealt with migrant surges during Barack Obama’s administration by “adding detention facilities for adults with children and increasing enforcement and deportations, drawing criticism from civil and immigration rights groups.”

These policies, of course, were very similar to President Trump’s.

Paul Crespo

Paul Crespo is the Managing Editor of American Defense News. A defense and national security expert, he served as a Marine Corps officer and as a military attaché with the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) at US embassies worldwide. Paul holds degrees from Georgetown, London, and Cambridge Universities. He is also CEO of SPECTRE Global Risk, a security advisory firm, and President of the Center for American Defense Studies, a national security think tank.