Is an open border reckoning at hand?  Migrants brought to the US under shady temporary legal status changes made by the Biden Administration seem to think so.  In June of this year Biden granted special immigration benefits to at least 300,000 Haitians (out of 500,000 already allowed into the US) brought into the country in 2022, allowing them to remain until early 2026.  The plan included minimal background checks and was originally touted by Biden as a way to "slow illegal border encounters".

Biden offered migrants from Haiti, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela easy access to work visa programs and special benefits so that the same people wouldn't cross into the US illegally.  In other words, Biden was desperate to reduce embarrassing border crossing numbers so he paid vast sums of money to transport and house hundreds of thousands of migrants under a veil of legality.

The administration, however, did not renew legal status protections in 2024 for a large percentage of these immigrants and they will be required to leave the US in the near term.  A host of NGOs advise migrants on how to use legal loopholes to stay within the country for extended periods of time, usually dragging out the clock until they can apply for permanent residency.  None of this, however, will matter much in the wake of Donald Trump's mass deportation plans.