The Biden Administration Must Acknowledge the Crisis on Our Southern Border

The White House once again made headlines this past week when Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre expressed incredulity at the notion that immigrants are just walking across the border.  Unfortunately, that is exactly what is happening.  And it made worse the fact that the Biden Administration seems so comfortable lying to the American people about it.

It is easy to be distracted by the war in Ukraine, high inflation and gas prices, unfair and illegal student debt forgiveness, and other bad headlines of the day, especially given how good the Biden Administration is at generating them.  But the crisis on our southern border remains one of the most critical crises facing our country. The disconnect between the facts on the ground and Team Biden, as evidenced by Jean-Pierre’s answer, is beyond troubling.

Let’s start with the facts.  Yes, immigrants are, in fact, “just walking” into our country.  Jean-Pierre’s refusal to acknowledge this is nothing short of a lie.  In July, Border Patrol reported that it “encountered,” or arrested, about 6,000 illegal immigrants per day. Thousands more got past Border Patrol.  Sure, maybe some of them were swimming across the Rio Grande – but “walking in” is exactly the right way to express how many of these immigrants are coming into our country.

In July, the Biden Administration set a record for the most immigrants (1.82 million) entering the United States in a single fiscal year.  The current fiscal year is not over until September 31st, meaning we will almost certainly surpass 2 million.  This is no longer just about political disagreement or calling out bad policy – this is a full-blown crisis, and it has been for months.

The Biden Administration must return to the practical, common-sense immigration plan of the Trump Administration. Our success was built on three key policies: Building more physical barriers (aka a border wall), Title 42, and the Remain in Mexico agreement. Building a border wall greatly enhanced our ability to keep immigrants from crossing our border illegally.  Title 42 allowed us to expel illegal immigrants who posed a health risk to Americans.  And our Remain in Mexico agreement kept illegal immigrants on the other side of the border as they made asylum claims and applied for immigration.  We knew that by calibrating our legal immigration system to match the demands of our economy, and by utilizing this strategy to effectively counter illegal immigration, all Americans would benefit. We could end illegal immigration, keep our nation safe, and make our economy more productive.  We realigned our immigration policy to primarily match the needs of our economy and society.

The Biden Administration has turned these necessities into political talking points.  They discuss the border wall as if it were the Berlin Wall, a ridiculous comparison.  (As someone who patrolled the Iron Curtain as an Army Captain during the Cold War, I know this better than most.)  Biden stopped enforcing Title 42 almost immediately, and even declared that we no longer faced a national emergency due to COVID-19 when they wanted to end Title 42 for good.  We should note that Biden recently claimed this same national emergency justified the canceling of student debt, months after he said it was over when he wanted to end Title 42. It’s all about politics, not about the American people.

The result of abandoning these policies and pursuing purely political goals is a wide-open southern border, with more illegal immigrants crossing into our country every day than ever before.

Team Biden would have you believe this is a good thing, that it allows more immigrants into our country who hope to build better lives for themselves.  But this is not the case.  It instead exposes immigrants to extremely unsafe, illegal methods of entering: children are left to smugglers and “coyotes” to get them across the border, while drug cartels and human traffickers profit immensely.  The opioid epidemic ravaging small towns across America, too, begins at our southern border.  Fentanyl produced by the Sinaloa and Jalisco cartels is shipped right across our border with Mexico, then makes its way into the towns and communities across our country.  Open borders have consequences.

Under normal circumstances, Jean-Pierre’s seeming unbelief at illegal immigrants strolling into our country would be the normal reaction of any American.  We are the most powerful country in the world, yet we cannot seem to manage our borders.  We managed to do so in the Trump Administration; only by returning to those policies will we be able to get this crisis under control.

At the ACLJ, I am proud of the fact that we are not only looking for creative policy solutions to this crisis, but we are holding the Biden Administration’s feet to the fire through our FOIA lawsuits, demanding the Biden Administration shoot straight with the American people and address this crisis head on.