Biden expands bor­der workarounds despite major drop in ille­gal cross­ings

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion has, for the time being, bailed itself out of the country’s worst ille­gal immi­gra­tion cri­sis in his­to­ry — just in time for the Novem­ber elec­tion.
The num­ber of migrants encoun­tered attempt­ing to enter the Unit­ed States by com­ing over the south­ern bor­der ille­gal­ly dropped in July to the low­est lev­els seen in the Biden admin­is­tra­tion, com­pa­ra­ble to his­toric norms under the Trump and Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tions.
The steady decline in cross­ings has been months in the mak­ing since peak­ing at 371,000 total migrants encoun­tered last Decem­ber.
As the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has worked with Mex­i­co to deter migrants from head­ing north and imple­ment­ed its own deter­rence mech­a­nisms through exec­u­tive action, how­ev­er, it is simul­ta­ne­ous­ly expand­ing workarounds for migrants out­side the coun­try to be admit­ted.
Repub­li­cans have object­ed to the Biden admin­ist …