Thomas S. Warrick

Thomas Warrick was DHS Deputy Assistant for Counterterrorism Policy from August 2008 to June 2019 and is now Director of the Future of DHS Project and Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council. 

OPINION — Border security is back on the front pages and needs urgent action to head off the crisis that’s coming. The March 2021 numbers of Department of Homeland Security encounters at the US southwest border are, almost literally, off-the-chart (see graphic). The Biden administration campaigned on major changes to immigration policies, and delivered on those promises with a combination of day-one executive orders and proposed legislation.

To some, especially Congressional Republicans and Trump supporters, southwest border security is an existential security threat that the Biden administration is failing to address. Everyone agrees the current system is broken, even if there’s no consensus on how to fix it.

The surge that’s coming needs to be treated simultaneously as a homeland security challenge, a humanitarian emergency, a foreign policy priority, and as a reason to kickstart the efforts required over the long term to more effectively manage the southwest border.

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Southwest Border Encounters Through March 2021

Failure to address the coming crisis will have cascading consequences for other national security challenges. Success, on the other hand, would demonstrate the Biden administration’s ability to respond to fast-moving challenges beyond COVID-19.

The Biden administration has already taken a number of steps to address the surge, but it should be increasingly apparent that the solution will require an emergency infusion of cash for the Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS), Homeland Security (DHS), and Justice (DOJ). This surge will not wait until fiscal year 2022 starts in October 2021. Congress—especially the appropriations committees—need to act with the utmost urgency.

Many people misunderstand when this surge actually started. It started before the November 3 election. The start was less due to Biden administration policy pronouncements or post-January 20 executive orders and was more due to the simple fact—apparent to people in the “Northern Triangle” of Central America—that Joe Biden is not Donald Trump.