President Joe Biden is reportedly considering domestic travel restrictions to slow the spread of coronavirus variants while effectively opening the nation’s borders to unvetted foreign trespassers.
“This is a war and we’re at battle with the virus. War is messy and unpredictable, and all options are on the table,” an anonymous White House official told the Miami Herald, singling out Florida, where a third of all strains of the U.K. variant found in the U.S. has been identified.
The variant, known as B.1.1.7 is supposedly more transmissible, doubling in the United States every 10 days according to a new study published Sunday. The study has not yet been peer-reviewed. According to Stanford University professor of medicine Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the COVID-19 vaccines and previous COVID-19 infection currently appear to give good protection against the U.K. and other newer variants.
NEW: The Biden administration is considering whether to impose domestic travel restrictions, including on Florida, fearful that coronavirus mutations are threatening to reverse hard-fought progress on the pandemic. https://t.co/DoZO9pbV37
— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) February 10, 2021
Federal travel sanctions on Florida, where the state’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has allowed the economy to remain open with a focused protection approach to prioritizing the vulnerable that so far appears effective, would contradict the Biden administration’s embrace of open borders.
The new president has made undoing his predecessor’s legacy on immigration the hallmark of his first 100 days in office. Of the whopping 29 executive orders recorded by the Federal Register, at least five have targeted President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration, including a halt on construction of the southern border wall. Walls, meanwhile, still surround the U.S. Capitol to protect politicians from alleged domestic threats they have been unable to prove.
The New York Times reports that illegal entrants in Texas are not being screened for COVID unless they show detectable symptoms and are being released indefinitely into the United States instead of returned to their home countries:
Health authorities in San Diego have ruled that those crossing into California must remain at the hotel for 10 days before being allowed to go onward. There is no similar quarantine requirement in Texas for migrants who arrive with no coronavirus symptoms, according to volunteers working with the migrants; there, they said, those released by Border Patrol are being allowed to board buses and travel to other destinations.
The legacy outlet also reports that foreign citizens in Central America are telling each other “the United States will now allow anyone to cross” and amassing more caravans to do so.
Biden also reinstated sweeping Obama-era protections for illegal migrants and took an axe to Trump’s travel bans implemented to prevent international COVID spread. While Biden signed an executive order on international travel mandating COVID tests prior to entry, the new administration is appearing more committed to the left’s fantasy of open borders while punishing states that refuse to abide by the one-size-fits-all approach of draconian lockdowns and endless double-mask-wearing.
Red states light on lockdowns are already preparing to cough up trillions in the next coronavirus spending bill pushed by Democrats with a $1.9 trillion price tag. Below is a chart from the Committee to Unleash Prosperity highlighting how red states have led the economic recovery from devastating lockdown policies, the same states likely to bear the brunt of a domestic travel ban by the Biden administration if pursued.
Despite DeSantis’ refusal to embrace blue state-style economic self-destruction, Florida has fared far better than locked-down New York over the coronavirus pandemic. Florida, according to RealClearPolitics’ case tracker, has suffered just more than 28,000 deaths from the novel coronavirus, New York on the other hand, has witnessed more than 45,000 deaths. Florida has slightly higher residents, to boot.
