A Real Crisis Is Looming on Our Southern Border

The Biden Administration has turned away from common sense at our southern border.  The result will be an immigration crisis that might surpass even the mayhem we saw last year.

From Day One, the Biden Administration has sought to replace the sensible, practical immigration policies of the Trump Administration with progressive open border chaos that has put every American at risk. They claim that to fix illegal immigration, we need to spend billions of dollars in other countries and address “root causes.”  But that progressive thinking is incorrect.

In the Trump Administration, there was a dramatic decrease in illegal immigration because we made it less attractive to come here with our strong border security and three key policies: Beginning to build a border wall, Title 42, and Remain in Mexico policies.  If this approach is paired with aligning our legal immigration system to match the demands of our economy, we could put an end to illegal immigration and keep our nation safe.  Our immigration policy should be based on who you are and how you will contribute to America.

To give you a sense of the problem, in 2021, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, over 2 million – 2 million – arrests were made at our southern border. The previous record for this number was 1.6 million, way back in 2000.  And of course, that doesn’t even take into consideration the number of illegal immigrants who made it through without being arrested. Some statistics claim that for every one that is caught, one is not.  Absurdly, President Biden is blaming this increase in illegal immigration on climate change.  In reality, it is being fueled by the Biden Administration’s policies that have intentionally created this crisis.

When Biden took office, his Administration immediately put an end to our Remain in Mexico policy. While a court order mandated they reinstitute it, Team Biden has completely changed their implementation and essentially rendered it worthless.  This means even when illegal immigrants are caught, they aren’t being sent back; they’re being allowed to stay in the U.S. on the taxpayer’s dime as they await court dates.  We are transporting and housing them in the interior of our nation as they await court dates that are months and months away, for which they may not bother to show up at all.  And who is paying for this?  You are – the American taxpayer.  The immigrants should simply be sent back to wait in Mexico for their court dates.

Now, the Biden Administration is planning to end Title 42, a public health expulsion order we in the Trump Administration drafted and implemented at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It gave us the ability to rapidly expel individuals seeking to enter our country illegally due to the health risks posed to the American public.  The current Administration kept our expulsion order in place though, using it more than 1 million times last year alone.  If that rule is terminated, there will be no other rules to keep our immigration numbers down.  So while many schools are requiring your children to wear masks, our borders will not even screen for those who might bring the next variant across the border.

This plan is only going to cause greater economic, societal, security, and humanitarian crises.  U.S. intelligence officials are assessing that nearly 170,000 immigrants will likely cross our southern border as a result of this rule change. There are currently about 25,000 immigrants camped out in shelters just south of the border, waiting for the right moment to cross.  And border crossings already hit 165,000 in February alone.  This is not responsible governance; it is a willful abdication of responsibility.

The first year of the Biden Administration already saw the worst year for illegal immigration in history.  In its second year, we likely will surpass those staggering numbers.  This is why, in both 2022 and 2024, we need to elect leaders who will be serious about securing our southern border, building the wall, and putting in place policies that discourage – not encourage – illegal immigration.