Biden’s new COVID-19 travel ban ignores southern border

From Washington Times.com (Nov. 30, 2021):

As President Biden’s new coronavirus travel ban took effect Monday, security experts say he’s left a glaring hole in his scheme: the southern border.

Visitors coming from South Africa and seven other African nations are now banned from trying to reach the U.S., amid fears of the new omicron variant of the virus. But those same visitors, if they manage to reach America’s southern border through Mexico and bring a child with them, are likely to be caught and released into the country.

It’s the same loophole that’s existed for much of the year, with the Biden administration adopting a more lenient approach to families and children caught jumping the border, compared with those same people trying to come legally through an airport.

“Under the current administration’s policies a migrant can be banned from lawfully traveling to the U.S., but if you illegally cross our border from the same banned country — you’re welcomed in,” said Mark Morgan, who ran Customs and Border Protection in the Trump administration. “With Border Patrol apprehending illegal aliens from more than 150 different countries, with 25% having active COVID, the implementation of this administration’s COVID policies are inconsistent, non-sensical, and it puts our entire nation at risk.”

As a presidential candidate, Mr. Biden scoffed at travel bans, labeling the COVID-19 version announced by then-President Trump in early 2020 as “hysteria, xenophobia and fear-mongering.”

But the Biden team kept a version of the ban in place, even for vaccinated visitors, until early in November.

Now, as omicron spreads, the Biden team is once again turning to the tool that it labeled racist.

The eight countries slapped with the ban effective Monday are South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia and Zimbabwe. People who were present in one of those nations 14 days before they intended to travel to the U.S. are supposed to be blocked from entry.

The CBP did not respond to a request for comment from The Washington Times on the new policy and how illegal immigrants from banned countries would be affected.

Mr. Morgan, who oversaw implementation of the Trump COVID-19 ban, called the Biden stance “unmitigated and blatant hypocrisy.” [read more]

I don’t know about the policy being racist but there maybe a political reason. The Biden regime (and most Leftists) think people immigrating from Mexico will vote for the democrats. That might not necessarily be true.