A new blockbuster report by the Washington Examiner’s Anna Giaritelli demonstrates anew that President Joe Biden’s recent “get tough” talk about border policy is a smoke screen. Even after creating a border crisis that has seen some 10 million illegal immigrants entering since he took office, the president quietly instructed Border Patrol agents in the San Diego sector to admit, rather than deport, migrants from all but six countries in the Eastern Hemisphere.

While the memo instructs Border Patrol to refer migrants from Russia, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to ICE for deportation, “extra-hemispheric migrants” from the other Eastern Hemisphere countries should be processed with the promise of a forthcoming “notice to appear” and released on own recognizance, per the White House’s orders. In practice, this means Border Patrol is instructed to expand catch-and-release-without-a-court-date for migrants who are, by definition, illegal immigrants.

Migrants from the Americas have been granted the catch-and-release-without-a-court-date treatment from the Biden administration for years now, with the plausible-deniability defense from the White House that these migrants who trudge by foot can claim they’re indigenous Guatemalans with legitimate fears of ethnic persecution or Honduran women with legitimate fears of femicide. Former President Donald Trump had once secured a “safe third country” agreement with Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, which would have required these safe third countries to grant asylum to legitimate refugees who reached them as their first safe country since their escape from their home country. But Biden tore up these safe third country deals.

Under Trump’s framework, a hypothetical Honduran refugee would have been required to apply for asylum when passing through Guatemala at the risk of deportation if she tried to shop for American asylum at our southern border. By ending these deals, Biden induced the influx at the border and provided a veneer of legal protection for asylum applicants who traversed the Americas to arrive at our doorstep.

Migrants from the Eastern Hemisphere have zero such justification. And by definition, plenty, if not most, of these asylum applicants are criminals, potentially multiple times over.

For example, of the 24,376 Chinese nationals that Border Patrol has recorded as crossing the southern border in the first five months of fiscal 2024, 24,214 of them entered between official ports of entry, a crime under U.S. law. While those who do illegally enter the United States can present themselves to authorities to apply for asylum, being “extra-hemispheric” often won’t provide “good cause for their illegal entry or presence” (the legal protection under the United Nations’s 1951 Refugee Convention) for doing so. Unlike the Northern Triangle migrant, even a migrant fleeing legitimate persecution across the Atlantic Ocean often has little justification for cutting the lengthy lines at legal ports of entry and instead illegally entering the U.S.

For example, take this report from the Washington Post on the recent explosion of migrants from the West African theocracy of Mauritania. Although the newspaper centers its story on the benevolence of a Mauritanian refugee based in Cincinnati named Oumar Ball, who provides food and shelter to fellow countrymen coming to the U.S., the real story is how basically all of this diaspora has come here illegally.

Ball, whose brother was murdered in Mauritania on the ostensible basis of his race (the “white moors” leading the country’s Arab government do discriminate against black Mauritanians such as Ball), may have had a legitimate claim to asylum initially. But after fleeing south to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ball illegally entered the U.S. with a tourist visa despite his intention of claiming asylum. That entrance arguably constitutes the crime of visa fraud. The Mauritanians who have followed suit are likely breaking laws in different ways.

“Like new arrivals from other corners of the world, Mauritanians have decided they can’t afford to wait for U.S. visas,” the Post reports. “Instead they are flying to Turkey, and then on to Brazil or Colombia. From there, they walk and take buses through Central America and Mexico to reach the southern U.S. border.”

From there, Mauritanians do what the majority of the migrants coming into the country do: cross the border between legal ports of entry, which by definition is a crime, one that is not likely justified by even a legitimate fear of persecution from any country, but especially a fear about a country across the planet.

In February of this year, Border Patrol recorded nearly 190,000 migrants entering the country from the southern border. A staggering 140,664 entered illegally between a port of entry. Mauritania constitutes a small but exploding microcosm of the crisis: Illegal immigration of Mauritanians increased by 750% from the end of 2022 to the middle of 2023, and the total immigration of Mauritanians increased by 2,800% from 2022 to 2023.

A cynic would say this is all intentional. Whereas Mexicans comprised a majority of migrants crossing the southern border 20 years ago and migrants from the Northern Triangle a majority just five years ago, the majority of migrants are now from non-Mexican, non-Northern Triangle nations. Asylum shoppers with bogus claims and a few thousand dollars to spare on flights believe they can traverse multiple countries to enter the U.S. illegally and avoid deportation. Alas, they are mostly correct.