FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) released the following statement after President Joe Biden announced another executive order ostensibly aimed at ending the border crisis that he, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and other open-borders advocates in the administration have created, and which has raged since they assumed office.
Former Obama DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson once stated that 1,000 apprehensions a day ‘overwhelms the system.’ However, this order only permits CBP personnel to implement asylum restrictions once apprehensions exceed 2,500 per day, over the period of a week.
“President Biden has effectively legitimized crisis levels of illegal immigration well beyond those laid out by the DHS secretary he once served with. And this number doesn’t count any of the roughly 70,000 monthly encounters through Biden and Mayorkas’ unlawful CBP One, CHNV, and other mass-parole programs.”
“The reality is that President Biden possesses every tool he needs to end this self-inflicted crisis—he just doesn’t want to, because this has been intentional all along. He could reimplement the Migrant Protection Protocols. He could restore Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Central American partners. He could finish construction of new border wall system that Congress funded years ago—but which Biden halted. He could end mass catch-and-release. He could stop the flow of hundreds of thousands entering this country via unlawful mass-parole programs created by his DHS secretary. And he could encourage Senate Democrats to pass H.R. 2, the only border bill passed by either house of the 118th Congress, to further close loopholes and end avenues for exploitation of our borders by the cartels.
“But he won’t, because the rabidly anti-enforcement, open-borders left is calling the shots for the Biden administration. And the rest of us are paying the price.”
Background: On Jan. 30, 2024, Biden falsely told reporters, “I’ve done all I can do, just give me the power,” when asked about the ongoing chaos at America’s borders. Biden’s actions now belie the disingenuous rhetoric he and congressional Democrats have employed in support of the flawed and failed Senate border bill, and the Biden administration’s fundamental refusal to simply enforce our immigration laws—as every administration prior has managed to do.
The reality is that the Biden administration is refusing to make use of numerous statutory authorities enacted by bipartisan congressional majorities in the past that would allow Biden to change course and end the crisis he and Mayorkas created. In addition to ending policies that exercised that authority, like the Migrant Protection Protocols, Biden and Mayorkas have willfully and systemically refused to comply with the laws passed by Congress. That is the root of this unprecedented crisis that began in early 2021. Pushing illegal aliens with illegitimate claims to the front of the line not only is deeply unfair to those with legitimate claims who will now have to wait even longer for resolution of their claims, but does nothing to end the incentives to cross illegally when would-be crossers see that they are far more likely to simply be released into the interior by the administration than promptly removed.
Even as a presidential candidate, Biden declared he would make sure “we immediately surge to the border all those people who are seeking asylum,” encouraging the filing of hundreds of thousands of illegitimate claims. A recent New York Post report showed that since 2022, the Biden administration’s strategy on the backlog has been to neither deny nor grant those claims, and remove or release individuals accordingly, but simply to terminate their cases, allowing more than 350,000 illegal aliens to remain in the country with no oversight indefinitely.
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