A senior White House official boasted about a clandestine effort to resettle 13,000 migrants across the southern border and into the United States, calling it "beautiful to watch."
In a New Yorker profile on President Joe Biden's former director of border management, an anonymous official lauded Biden's policy that "allowed 13,000 migrants, many of whom had spent the better part of two years in makeshift encampments, to enter the U.S."
The resettling of the 13,000 migrants was likely part of the Biden administration’s ending of the "Remain in Mexico" program, which places asylum seekers in Mexico before their court dates in the United States, according to one individual who works for the Department of Homeland Security. Ending the policy, critics say, resulted in a number of flights and buses full of migrants arriving across the country with local governments receiving no notice or details in advance.
"No one heard about it because it ran so smoothly," the administration official told the New Yorker. Another White House official said the plan "was how government was supposed to work." Local governments, such as in Laredo, Texas, have attacked the Biden administrations's border policies for overwhelming local services.
The anonymous official's remarks were part of a lengthy New Yorker profile on Andrea Flores, the former director of border management on Biden’s National Security Council. Flores’s policy portfolio was broad and included some of Biden’s most controversial immigration priorities, such as ending "Remain in Mexico" and liberalizing requirements for foreigners to apply for asylum.
Flores's profile reveals how far-left activists such as Flores, who worked as an immigrant advocate for the ACLU, have pushed Biden to the left on immigration. Though Biden has taken more liberal positions than his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama, including not pushing back against "sanctuary cities," many far-left Democrats and activists are demanding more from an administration taking bipartisan criticism for being too lax on border security.
Polls showed Biden's approval rating on immigration cratered last year, as the border saw more attempted crossings in the 2021 fiscal year than any other period on record. That year, Border Patrol arrested roughly 1.6 million migrants.
Flores left the White House last fall, citing disillusionment with administration officials not doing enough to enact more left-wing immigration policies. In her interview with the New Yorker, Flores recounted how senior Biden officials, such as Jake Sullivan, initially saw immigration as a "top priority" for the White House and listened to her pleas to wind down Trump-era border policies. In particular, she emphasized to administration officials that "immigration was becoming this democracy issue."
"They were following family separation," Flores said. "They had a high awareness of [the Migrant Protection Protocols]. They were really concerned with what they were watching in Europe—how right-wing politicians were using immigration as a political tool to win elections, just as Trump had."
The total consequences of the White House’s immigration policies remain shrouded in secrecy. The Washington Free Beacon reported last month that Biden has yet to authorize the release of an annual accounting of the number of illegal immigrants removed from the United States in 2021.
DHS revealed last month that the department cannot locate nearly 50,000 migrants released into the United States between March 21 and Aug. 31 of last year.