Reading Jim’s Jolt today, I was struck by his excerpt from the Washington Post about the negotiations between the Biden White House and congressional Republicans. They are discussing a compromise in which Biden would agree to tighten border security in exchange for Republicans’ green-lighting over $60 billion in aid for Ukraine. (Israel and Taiwan funding are in the mix, too, but those are less controversial than the Ukraine piece.)

What’s reportedly being discussed is a “triggering mechanism” that would empower government agents to close the border to illegal aliens — oh, sorry, “migrants” and “asylum seekers.” Not surprisingly, Democrats do not want border closure triggered until 5,000 aliens have crossed. Republicans object to this, but led by Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina moderate, they have signaled they’d agree to 3,000 crossings a day.

I see two huge problems with this.

First, it is the law of the United States — you know, that thingy that President Biden took an oath to faithfully execute — that a non-American who enters our country without legal authorization, even if that non-American is the exceedingly rare one who may have a colorable asylum claim, is to be detained until a “final determination” over his status has been reached. (See §1225(b)(1)(B)(iii)(IV) of the immigration laws.) At that point, the vast majority should be deported, and the comparative handful found to have a credible fear of persecution should be granted permission to stay.

Post-sovereign progressives do not believe the United States should have borders. They call the tune in the Biden era. Their theory is that the executive branch need not comply with the letter of the law because (a) aliens supposedly have a right to attempt to qualify for entry under the relevant legal processes (i.e., they may not be turned away); and (b) there is such a backlog of immigration cases that it would be inhumane to detain people until their cases are resolved, which would take years. To me, this is absurd. Asylum is a discretionary extension of a privilege; no alien has a right to it. And people who enter a country in which they have no lawful license to be should expect to be detained — if that’s not a risk you want to run, don’t come; since it is unlawful for you to be in the country at all, don’t expect to be at liberty.

Democrats also counter that the detention law that Congress prescribed should be ignored because lawmakers have not backed it up by providing adequate detention space — there are facilities only for 30,000 people to be held. Because the detention space is overwhelmed by the number of illegal crossings, over 4 million since Biden took office, Democrats deduce that Congress has implicitly approved the release of illegal aliens into our country by not funding more detention space — indeed, reducing it during the Biden years, notwithstanding the staggering increase in illegal entries. This, too, is absurd. Given that law mandates that aliens who cross illegally must be detained, the logical implication is that the border should be closed once we have maxed out detention capacity.

I say this a prelude to what seems the starkest implication of the bipartisan negotiations: The border can be closed. In essence, two sides are just haggling over the price; the fact that closure is legally and practically achievable has been established.

That being the case, why isn’t the border being closed when the law forbids catch-and-release? To be clear, I could not agree more with Jim’s observation that in negotiations, neither side gets everything it wants — to get, you have to give. But here, we’re not talking policy negotiations. We’re talking about the law. For all the brouhaha over a House impeachment inquiry that is scrutinizing the Biden family business of monetizing Joe Biden’s political influence, what Biden most deserves to be impeached over is the gross dereliction of his duty to secure our borders. I’m not surprised that Democrats are saying: We want to indulge lots and lots of lawbreaking. What I find astonishing is that the Republican response seems to be: We’ll go along with lots, but not lots and lots.

I accept that compromise is essential to governing in a democratic republic. And while I am against funding (not just foreign aid but any funding) that fails to account for debt consequences (we’re soon to pass $34 trillion in national debt), I’m in favor of countering Putin’s forcible aggression and helping Ukraine inflict damage on Russia’s armed forces without having to commit any American troops.

Yet, Republicans are not so much being asked to compromise as to conspire in Biden’s lawbreaking — and not petty lawbreaking but rather a betrayal of the core security duties of the presidency that is destroying the social welfare and law-enforcement capabilities of America’s border states and major cities. Given how boiling angry much of the country is over this issue, I don’t understand why Republicans aren’t driving a much harder bargain.

Second, as I’ve previously related, during the Obama-Biden administration, then-Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson, who carefully followed the daily illegal-crossing numbers, observed that he got major agita on days when it exceeded 1,000. That pace, he said, “overwhelms the system,” which is what causes a crisis.

Contrast the current situation: We are no longer courting crisis; we have a raging crisis. There are days when Biden’s policies result in ten and more times the number of crossings that Johnson conceded was too overwhelming. I understand why Democrats would want to normalize illegal crossings totally five times what Johnson conceded was too overwhelming — which, when you do the math, amounts to 1.9 million annually, a total larger than Phoenix, Philadelphia, and every other major American city save four. But why would Republicans counter with overwhelming times three?

To put it in context, 3,000 per day is about 1.1 million per year. That is bigger than the population of each of Fort Worth, Columbus, Indianapolis, and San Francisco. It would be like annually allowing enough illegal aliens into the country to fill Boston or Milwaukee twice. It would exceed the population of seven states and Washington, D.C.

Biden’s border policies have been so disastrous, have so enraged even blue-city Democrats that, according to NBC News, Republicans now hold an 18-point lead in public-opinion polling about which side is more competent to handle immigration. (During Trump’s presidency, Democrats enjoyed a six-point advantage.) Why on earth would Republicans agree to a number of illegal-alien crossings that, until Biden’s presidency, would have been regarded as historically catastrophic?