Paul Mirengoff is a long-time critic of lax immigration policies. His warnings date as far back as his opposition to the George W. Bush Administration’s liberalization proposals. That he has posted “
The case for the Senate border deal” suggests that it has merits that its very vocal opponents have overlooked (links omitted):
The idea behind the proposal is to speed up asylum processing, raise the standard for sustaining asylum claims, and close the litigation loophole in the status quo. The plan is to knock out most asylum claims at the front-end and, in all events, to knock out all meritless claims within half a year. . . .
Now, let’s look at the second, and related, major thing the proposed legislation would do. It would require the president to close the border after average daily migrant crossings average 5,000 over seven days, or hit 8,500 in a single day. And it would authorize him to close the border after average daily crossings surpass 4,000 in a week. . . .
As for the numbers said to be in the proposed bill, it’s important to understand that the bill isn’t permitting up to 4,000 or 5,000 illegal entries per day. It’s fixing the asylum process and adding the staff necessary to process (and in most cases deport) undocumented migrants.
If 4,999 immigrants show up in a day, they won’t be granted entry. They will go into the toughened, expedited, and beefed up removal process. And if more than that number show up – as they do virtually every day – making it impossible to conduct the new removal process, that process shuts down at the border until the daily number of crossings dips below a manageable number – 3,750.
In other words, the border closing provision is a backstop – a circuit breaker. As Sen. Lankford has explained, “this is a new authority to say, when we can no longer detain and deport, when we can't process the people and actually make a decision right there at the border, then we’ll actually turn those folks back around to Mexico.” (Emphasis added [by Paul Mirengoff])
Coming as it does from someone who has no sympathy for the Biden Administration’s “open borders” policy, Mr. Mirengoff’s column is well worth reading in full.