If you're an illegal border crosser intent on making the U.S. your home, January 1 is the day to watch.

As of January 1, all you have to do to stay in the states is say the magic word: "Asylum."

That's the word from U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who ruled that the Biden administration can no longer use Title 42 pandemic restrictions to expel illegal border crossers, which up until now has been sporadically applied. 

According to Fox News:

A federal court has delayed an order that ends expulsions of illegal immigrants under the Title 42 public health order until December after the Department of Homeland Security said it needed time to prepare for the transition away from the order amid fears it will lead to an even greater migrant surge.

U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled Tuesday that the government can no longer apply Title 42, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) order that allows for the rapid removal of migrants at the border due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The judge said the policy, implemented during the Trump administration and continued to an extent by the Biden administration, was in violation of the Administrative Procedures Act. The Biden administration asked the judge for a delay of five weeks to prepare. 

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit against the order, did not oppose the delay, and Sullivan said he was granting the request "with great reluctance."

The back story here is that if Americans think the border surge has been big so far, wait till January 1.

Because even the Biden administration wanted to keep at least some restrictions in to prevent a mass inundation of illegal border crossers. They expelled a small number of migrants for this reason, leaving at least a hint of uncertainty to other would-be illegal border crossers, and thus, some deterrent.

The Title 42 restriction use against the migrants wasn't a great tool, given that the pandemic is largely over, but Sullivan, who is a far-left judge previously involved in the draconian judicial persecution of Gen. Michael Flynn, and the phony charges against Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, both cases of which ruined both Republicans' careers, used other logic, claiming the feds weren't considering the lawbreakers' point of view. Never mind the law.

Wikipedia had a pretty decent summary of that:

On November 15, 2022, Sullivan ruled that Title 42 expulsion, a tool used by presidents Donald Trump and Joe Biden to forbid asylum seekers from remaining in the United States was a violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, noting that the Title was an “arbitrary and capricious" violation of the Act. The ruling required the United States government to process all asylum seekers under immigrant law as previous to Title 42's implementation, and Sullivan specifically called out the CDC for intentionally ignoring the negative effects that Title 42 would bring about, as well as failing to allow migrants to reside with legal US residents. The ruling was celebrated by the ACLU, the plaintiff in the case.

Bottom line is, anyone can claim asylum now, and regardless of how flimsy or baseless the case, be allowed to come into the states, obtain a work permit, and then wait years for a full court hearing while their laughable case is being adjudicated. There are no costs to the applicant to file, and no penalties for lying. Any deportation orders that follow will be ignored on the Biden administration's policy grounds that the illegal asylum seekers have been entrenched in the states for years, so they are a "low priority."

The news that all comers will be permitted to stay in the states just for claiming asylum, combined with institution of online asylum applications from all corners of the world, and the development of online recruiting through social media by human smuggling cartels, ought to make the ongoing border surge that much bigger.

According to a 2021 Gallup poll, there are 42 million people who would like to leave their countries permanently in Latin America alone to live in the U.S. -- unvetted, undocumented, unknown -- so a huge bank of people is now waiting.

According to Gallup CEO Jim Clifton, they are watching how U.S. policy plays out and watching very closely:

Seekers of citizenship or asylum are watching to determine exactly when and how is the best time to make their move.

In addition to finding a solution for the thousands of migrants currently at the border, let's include the bigger, harder question -- what about all of those who would like to come? What is the message to them?

What is the 10-year plan?

330 million U.S. citizens are wondering. So are 42 million Latin Americans.

  You can bet the social media rackets used by the cartels -- Facebook, TikTok, WhatsApp and others are very busy right now, making for a bumper crop profit year for Mexico's human-smuggling cartels.

Look for some major instability in Mexico to follow from this new activity in the pipeline with the migrant surge. As Clifton noted, the migrants and their cartel sponsors watch these things closely -- and cartels would like nothing better than to seize full political power in Mexico.

The cartels and their paying migrant customers also act expeditiously. They know a Republican Congress is coming. Don't be surprised to see huge crowds form at the border as January 1 approaches. They all know the window for a full claim to live in the U.S. may be narrow.  A Republican-led House with a narrow non-veto-proof majority might not be able to do much with Joe Biden in the saddle, but they could enact some measures to prevent asylum abuse at some point, should the surge swell to monstrous proportions for the television news.

What we have here is full blown asylum abuse now legalized and institutionalized by Judge Emmet Sullivan. Asylum was designed for those special cases where someone is fleeing specific government persecution as a result of having challenged a government at some point. The migrants flooding are economic migrants -- uneducated, often illiterate, and zero social capital -- eager to make either bigger salaries with their unskilled labor compared to what they make back home or else to reap bigger taxpayer-paid benefit packages than even working at all in some cases can bring.

The prospect of 42 million unvetted people coming in to claim these things is a recipe for chaos. The Biden administration, like Sullivan, has been allowing their abuse of asylum laws with the greatest leniency possible. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has been augmenting that policy with the nakedest of lies to Congress, done with full impunity, claiming the border is under control. Now Sullivan has institutionalized that, saying anyone in the world now has a right to come to the U.S. and claim asylum. 

This won't end well.

Image: Official photo, via Wikipedia // public domain