At a time when the Biden administration's DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is appropriately getting a lot of heat over plans to create a "Disinformation Governance Board" apparently modeled after the "Ministry of Truth" in George Orwell's 1949 dystopian "Nineteen Eighty-Four" novel, he's already applying that propaganda strategy at America's southwestern border disaster.
Mayorkas has now also released a plan that purports to address the anticipated increase in mass illegal immigration when a Trump-era Title 42 restriction which allows patrol officials to turn away unvetted and unvaxed migrants during the COVID health crisis is no longer in effect.
Titled: "Plan for Southwest Border Security and Preparedness," it provides a program to "counter disinformation propagated by human smugglers and warn migrants of the dangers of being exploited and facing death at the hands of unscrupulous criminal organizations."
The 60-page document claims in its first line that the "Biden-Harris administration" and DHS have "been executing a comprehensive and deliberate strategy to secure our borders and build a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system."
That statement was ironically issued less than four days after a Texas National Guardsman unsafely, disorderly and inhumanely drowned in the Rio Grande while rescuing two illegal aliens who were involved in illicit transnational narcotics trafficking.
The plan's second line delusionally blames the Trump administration for results of their own disastrously failed White House policies: "After inheriting a broken and dismantled immigration system, since January 2021 DHS has effectively managed an unprecedented number of noncitizens seeking to enter the United States and interdicted more drugs and disrupted more smuggling operations than ever before."
Topping off this whopper, when CNN's "State of the Union" host Dana Bash asked him, "So, just to be clear, if somebody is watching this from another country, considering coming. Your message is?," Mayorkas responded, "Do not come ... Because our border is not open."
That will come as big news to more than two million known to have already crossed, not counting countless others who have entered since President Joe Biden ended wall construction along with most other Trump border control policies.
Mayorkas lamely admitted that if a record-breaking 18,000 migrants are encountered on the US-Mexico border daily — a potential scenario put forth by DHS — it would put a "strain on the system."
Border Patrol agents encountered more than 220,000 migrants at the border in April, the highest number reported since 2000. More than 1 million encounters have already been reported so far this year, while 1.7 million were reported in the entire year of 2021.
Secretary Mayorkas also confirmed that 42 individuals who were on the terrorist screening database had been encountered on the border, telling Fox News that the administration has a "handle on it," referring to the entire U.S. enforcement and intelligence enterprise, including the FBI.
This, after all, is the same Biden administration that halted construction of the wall; attempted to rescind the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), better known as "Remain in Mexico" policy which is now before the U.S. Supreme Court; and declared that most illegal aliens are exempt from arrest and deportation.
It was Biden policies that declared virtually every community in America to be a "protected place" for illegal aliens ... places where ICE officers are largely prohibited from carrying out their duties.
Meanwhile, the Biden FY 2023 budget request seeks a decrease in funding for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).
As ICE data leaked to The Washington Times clearly outlines, at Mayorkas' direction, ICE arrests of illegal aliens have dropped to about 74,000 in FY 2021 compared to just over 143,000 in FY 2019.
In March, based on camera traffic, drone traffic and sensor traffic that the Border Patrol records but that the Biden administration prohibits responding to, 67,000 gotaways entered the United States. This brings Biden's post-inauguration total to about 700,000.
And whereas the Trump FY 2019 budget included a target of 151,000 criminal aliens to be deported from the country, the Biden administration has decided to target only 91,500 criminal aliens for removal in FY 2022, a goal that's unlikely to be reached.
Deportations have plummeted to just over 59,000 in FY 2021 compared to over 267,000 in FY 2019. ICE detainer requests to local law enforcement also fell dramatically to just under 66,000 in FY 2021 from over 122,000 the year before.
The Biden Homeland Security plan claims that it will increase U.S. Customs and Border Protection processing efficiency while "moving with deliberate speed to mitigate potential overcrowding at Border Patrol stations and to alleviate the burden on the surrounding border communities."
It also speaks of "Bus Technology" that will allow the government to process illegal aliens "while in transit."
We might read this to mean that we should somehow be comforted to know that illegal aliens will continue to be secretly bused and flown at dead of night into neighborhoods throughout the country — including one near you — at taxpayer expense even before their processing has been completed.
DHS Secretary Mayorkas has explained that his plan will allow for "significantly more expeditious adjudication," including a Family Group Legal Orientation Program in which nonprofit organizations provide referrals to pro bono legal services ... free lawyers.
Such a plan might otherwise seem too outrageous to be taken seriously were it not for the fact that the DHS controls a $52.2 billion budget, along with 240,000 employees to carry out its administrative directives.
Here, we have the nation's second largest Cabinet-level department — next only to DOD — which has become so politically compromised that it virtually invites unidentified foreign nationals to walk at will across the sovereign border, surrender to immigration agents, and be released secure in the knowledge that they'll never be removed.
In short, America's current DHS policy borders on insanity.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 11 books, "Beyond Flagpoles and Footprints: Pioneering the Space Frontier" co-authored with Buzz Aldrin (2021), is available on Amazon along with all others. Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.