Biden isn’t even trying to secure the southern border
Washington Examiner
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Any doubt that President Joe Biden is to blame for the crisis at the southern border was erased by Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz’s testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee in McAllen, Texas.
Asked if he was willing to contradict Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who is the chief’s boss and who previously testified under oath that the Biden administration has operational control of the border, Ortiz did so, loud and clear.
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“Does DHS have operational control of our entire border?” Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) asked.
“No sir,” Ortiz answered. “The migration flow represents challenges and, in some areas, a crisis situation.”
Ortiz’s written testimony, which was no doubt composed by the Biden White House, blamed the crisis on “evolving global and regional events.” But in person, Ortiz testified that the “driving force” of the calamity was Biden’s policies. Asked by Rep. Dan Bishop (R-NC) if the switch from “detain and remove” to “release” was the cause of the crisis, Ortiz responded, “Law enforcement’s pretty simple, sir. You have to have capacity, and you have to have consequences. And anytime you don’t have consequences, you are certainly going to see some increases.”
That sums up what has happened under Biden. Biden promised as a candidate to release immigrants into the country who were arrested after illegally crossing the border. On his first day in office, he ordered the Border Patrol to do that. Migrants responded by flooding in.
Asked later what specific policy the federal government could enact to restore order, Ortiz said, “You can call it Migrant Protection Protocols. You can call it ‘Remain in Mexico.’ You can call it a Safe Third Country. All of the tools that the Border Patrol and DHS have at their disposal are going to allow us to do a better job of managing this border.”
That is what this editorial page has been saying for more than two years now. The Biden administration has all the tools it needs to secure the nation’s borders, but Biden refuses to use them.
His complete failure to enforce immigration law extends far beyond the border. In former President Barack Obama’s last year in office, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported 138,669 convicted criminal illegal immigrants from the U.S. interior. In former President Donald Trump’s last pre-COVID-19 year in office, that number was 150,141.
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Not only did it fall to just 38,000 last year under Biden, but the president’s latest budget says he only plans to deport 29,000 this year. This comes at a time when Biden is letting record numbers of illegal immigrants into the country, so one would expect a lot more, not fewer, to be convicted of crimes meriting deportation.
Congress should hold Mayorkas to account for misrepresenting his department’s lack of control at the border. Voters, meanwhile, should punish Biden for flouting his oath of office and not even trying to keep our nation secure.