When Will Congress Do Their Job?

There is a humanitarian crisis and a national security crisis at the border. The Supreme Court decided on a 5-4 vote to allow Title 42 to remain in place temporarily. Conservatives questioned why Justice Neil Gorsuch did not vote with the majority. According to Jay Evensen, Gorsuch answered, “We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort.” 

Since Title 42 was created “to keep asylum-seekers from crossing the border because of the threat of COVID-19,” it makes sense for the policy to end. The threat is no longer present, or in the words of Gorsuch “… the emergency on which those orders were promised has long since lapsed.”

According to a poll by Politico and Harvard University, 55% of Americans want to keep Title 42” with or without COVID-19. Their reason? It is a “good way to control immigration.” In other words, Americans know that Congress has failed them.

The biggest problem with the immigration system in the United States lies with Congress. The legislative branch of the federal government refuses to pass legislation for a workable immigration system. Evensen wrote the following in his opinion piece in the Deseret News:

Congress couldn’t even come up with a way for the children of undocumented parents, who were brought here through no fault of their own, to receive legal status. These so-called “Dreamers” enjoy much higher support form Americans. One poll by Pew Research Center found about three-fourths in favor of granting them legal status.

And yet lawmakers have fumbled this away. Their failure led President Barack Obama to impose a program for these children through executive order, which was briefly overturned by President Donald Trump before the Supreme Court intervened.

That’s the pattern of congressional inaction – let presidents issue executive orders that get challenged in court. If Congress would do as the Founding Fathers intended – struggle to negotiate and do the hard work of passing difficult laws – the nation could have a solution in place by now. Title 42 might be meaningless and border surges might be handled in an orderly manner.

It is far past time for Congress to do their job and pass a comprehensive immigration law that would. Such a law should include funding to create a border wall/fence/barrier that would allow Border Patrol to do their job in an orderly way. Another part of the law should allow for “Dreamers” and others like them to become legal residents of the United States. However, there should be no amnesty and promises of citizenship for anyone who is in the United States illegally.

We should not reward illegal immigrants with citizenship. The immigration bill should also include a clear definition of birth citizenship. If the mother is here illegally, her baby is also here illegally and should not automatically become U.S. citizens.

What Border Crisis?

            The Biden administration is outright lying to the American people when they claim that there is not a crisis at the southern border or that “we are making progress.” According to Brandon Judd, a Border Patrol agent who is president of the National Border Patrol Council, “This surge is bigger than we’ve ever seen before.” He was speaking of the “day-over-day increase, the week-over-week, the month-over-month” numbers. He claimed that the hands of the Border Patrol agents “are completely tied.”

We define a crisis when our resources are overwhelmed, when we can’t control the border enough, where the [drug] cartels are able to create gaps in our coverage, cross products that are very dangerous, and make money to where we can’t control the border or stop what’s coming in….

Right now, we’re at that point.

            Rachel del Guidice said that the “proof of Judd’s perspective can be seen in the numbers.” She meant numbers that “continue to skyrocket” like the “178,622 arrests in April” that gave way to “180,034 in May,” according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The numbers continued to climb in June with 188,829 arrests at the border.

            The Border Patrol was so overwhelmed in July that the agency released 50,000 illegal immigrants into interior United States without a date in immigration court. Axios reported that illegal immigrants “are told to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office instead,” but “just 13% have shown up so far.” This is an “unprecedented” action for the Border Patrol.      

            Judd put the problem squarely on the shoulders of President Joe Biden because he ended successful policies that working successfully to curb the illegal crossings. He stopped Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy where asylum-seekers had to stay in Mexico while their claims were processed. If they were fleeing danger in a Central American country, Mexico was the first country they would reach, so it would be the country to apply for asylum. Judd explained why this policy cancellation led to the greatest surge in history.

Once the Biden administration got rid of that program that was extremely successful, he reintroduced the magnet that is called catch and release….

That’s the magnet that draws so many people here to cross our borders illegally. If they know they’re going to be able to cross the border illegally just to get released into the country, they’re going to continue to come, and that’s what we saw. President Trump, he solved that issue with the “Remain in Mexico” program. But because that program has been rescinded, now we’re seeing this huge flood. We’ve never seen traffic pick up as fast as it has over the last two months. Again, and that is strictly based on policy.

            The high traffic volume makes it impossible for the Border Patrol to do their jobs. “When the traffic is high, our hands are tied dealing with all of the unaccompanied children, the family units that are cross the border.” This problem pulls the agents out of the field and “allows the cartels to create artificial gaps in our coverage.” These gaps allow “them to cross their more dangerous products, such as the opioids, the cocaine, the heroin.”

            Migrants are coming to the border from around the world. Judd said that he had caught migrants from Poland, Russia, Brazil, China, and “all over the world.” “You name it, and we deal with people from those countries.” There is a huge crisis at the border, and the fault lies with the policies of the Biden administration.

Is the Biden Border Crisis Incompetence or Corruption?

            The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns the topic of illegal immigration into the United States. The steady stream of non-citizen travelers entering the United States was vastly decreased during the Trump administration. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris campaigned on the idea that they would open the borders to anyone who wanted to come to our nation. As soon as the results of the 2020 presidential election were announced, migrants began planning to come.

            The numbers of illegal immigrants crossing the border in March 2021 was the highest in history – until the numbers came in for April 2021, which were the highest until the numbers for May 2021 came in, which were the highest until the numbers for June 2021 came in. Here are some actual numbers provided by The Daily Wire. 

Democrat President Joe Biden’s crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border sank to new lows last month as U.S. law enforcement officials apprehended more illegal aliens trying to enter the U.S. than in any other month on record at the Department of Homeland Security, which was founded in 2002.

“In May 2021, CBP encountered 180,034 persons attempting entry along the Southwest Border,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a statement. “Single adults continue to make up the majority of these encounters.”

The disastrous border numbers for last month represented a staggering 674% increase vs. May of 2020 when 23, 237 illegal aliens were apprehended. Last month’s numbers were the worst numbers in more than two decades.

The Trump administration turned around the situation on the border starting late during Fiscal Year 2019 and kept them low throughout Fiscal Year 2020. Biden’s border crisis has worsened every month that he has been in office in terms of the number of illegal aliens apprehended at the southern border.

            The situation at the border is just one evidence that “elections have consequences.” Hopefully, this disaster will teach American voters to look further than the manners or looks or even the personal morals of a candidate. The single most important factor in determining which candidate to elect should be the policies put forth by the candidate and the candidate’s party. I will vote every single time for a candidate who promises to and works toward putting America first. However, I have digressed from the topic of this post and will now return to it.

            To put it bluntly, the policies of the Biden administration have been disastrous in many ways but especially on the southern border. The projected number of illegal immigrants to cross the southern border this year is more than two million. We should keep in mind that this number does not include the “got aways” – those migrants who did not come through Immigration. Biden tries to convince America that he inherited a bad situation at the border. However, he lies about this topic and many others. The fact is that he could have left the Trump policies in place, and there would not be a border crisis. The following quote comes from Axios. 

About 50,000 migrants who crossed the southern border illegally have now been released in the United States without a court date. Although they are told to report to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office instead, just 13% have shown up so far, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The sizable numbers are a sign of just how overwhelmed some sectors of the U.S.-Mexico border continue to be: A single stretch covering the Rio Grande Valley had 20,000 apprehensions in a week. The figures also show the shortcomings of recent emergency decisions to release migrants.

·         Its unprecedented for agents to release migrants without an official notice to appear in court. Where it has occurred recently, migrants have instead been given a list of addresses and contacts for ICE offices across the country and told to report to one of them.

·         The hope has been for migrants to show up at these offices after reaching their final destination, to get work permits.

By the numbers: Just 6,700 migrants who crossed between mid-March and mid-July showed up at ICE offices as of Monday, one source briefed on Department of Homeland Security data told Axios.

·         16,000 have not showed up and passed the 60-day reporting window they were given. That’s 2.4 no-shows for every one that has checked in.

·         Another roughly 27,000 migrants who crossed and were released during the same time frame have yet to turn up, but remain within the 60-day window for reporting….

More than 1 million arrests have been made involving people trying to cross the U.S.-Mexico border since last October. The last time we saw that many stops in one year was 15 years ago, and there are still two months left in the current fiscal year.

Further, the 178,000 arrests made in June alone marked a 20-year high for the month. That follows other, similar monthly records being broken.

            Under Biden, the Obama policy of “catch and release” has turned into “catch and misplace.” There are “repeated record-setting” numbers of people attempting to cross illegally into our nation, and there is no way that Biden can convince any honest person that this is just the normal annual surge at the border. This is definitely a crisis, and the Biden administration created it.

            On his first day in office, Biden signed an executive order to stop the construction of the border wall – costing American taxpayers several billion dollars for the contractors to NOT build the wall and to secure the building materials. Possibly the same day but soon after the first executive order, Biden reversed Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy. This policy caused immigrants to stay in Mexico while their asylum requests were processed and researched. It was also instrumental in slowing the stream of immigrants because they did not want to be stuck in Mexico.

To show their gratitude, many immigrants showed up at the border with Biden-themed T-shirts. One migrant told a journalist this month, “Gracias al President Biden por la oportunidad de venir aqui ahora,” meaning “Thanks to President Biden for the opportunity to come here now.” This statement alone shows that the migrants know that it is Biden who is letting them into our nation.

Biden’s border crisis brings not only a huge number of people that is currently overwhelming the system. It also brings many hundreds of COVID-19 infected individuals. At a time when the Biden administration is trying to convince Americans to wear masks once again, it is an ironic fact that he is allowing thousands of foreigners to enter our nation without knowing much about them or their health.

According to Axios, 30% of the illegal migrants in ICE custody refuse to get the COVID-19 vaccination. The numbers of COVID-19 cases in the southern states – states to which the migrants are transported – have jumped to something like 900%.

The Biden administration totally owns the border crisis, and the Democrat Party and the mainstream media support him in it. It is difficult to imagine that an administration could do so much damage to our nation in less than seven months. Since Biden promised that he would open the borders and followed through on his promise without any corrections, we must assume that corruption is the reason for the border crisis.

For some “Firsthand Accounts of the Illegal Immigration Surge,” click here.

Where Is the Compassion Promised by the Biden Administration?

             Former President Donald Trump visited the southern border today with Texas Governor Greg Abbott. They did not go to El Paso for a photo opportunity as did Vice President Kamara Harris, but they went to the “belly of the beast” – one of the places where hordes of illegal immigrants are crossing. Trump and Abbott met with the people working at the border and with the citizens being affected by the travelers crossing their property.

            Abbott has declared illegal immigration to be an emergency in his state, and his administration is taking steps to protect Texans and Americans. The situation at the border is a problem created by the Biden administration. They inherited the most secure border in the history of the nation where the streams of people had decreased to trickles – manageable numbers.

The Trump administration had done all the work and put in place all the policies. All the Biden administration needed to do was not mess it up – but they messed it up by changing all the policies and inviting hundreds of thousands of people to come into our nation illegally. The number of illegal immigrants that have crossed the border since January 20, 2021 – those that have been caught – have reached approximately one million. At least one million people have entered our nation in five and one-half months!

            While the Biden administration and its supporters are changing the makeup of our nation with thousands of new immigrants, they claim that opponents of their border policies are racist, xenophobic, or without compassion. They can add frustrated and angry for the people dealing with the border crisis. Stephanie Hubbell, a resident of Arizona, recently spoke with Shea Garrison. 

[The Biden administration] is giving a lot of false hope. [President Joe] Biden invited [illegal immigrants] over and they are sleeping in the streets in Gila Bend because facilities are all full. They bring them from Phoenix, dropping them off [by] the busloads. What they think they’re getting [doesn’t happen] and what they’ve been falsely promised by the Biden administration isn’t what is happening.

            Hubbell got the wrong end of the Biden promise. She arrived at her clothing boutique in Sonoita, Arizona, in early April to learn that traffickers of illegal immigrants had broken into it. The traffickers had recently been released from jail, and they stole money and merchandise and left behind drug paraphernalia.

            The Hubbell family have lived near the Arizona border for 17 years, but Hubbell has never seen a border crisis like the one created by Biden. There is a high level of criminality, a stark lack of law enforcement, and large numbers of illegal immigrants flooding into her community with no place to live or any food to eat. They come with the belief that they will receive food, health care, and lodging, and many of them get nothing.

            With the high numbers of immigrants coming, the Border Patrol stations are full. So, the government is spending American taxpayer money to buy hotel rooms. Some of them receive money and airline tickets – but many of them are left with nothing but empty promises.

            The Biden administration made lots of promises to lure the thousands of illegal immigrants here. Hubbell believes that the administration would have made better plans for the immigrants if they really had compassion for them. The hordes of people come, but they are on their own when they arrive. Since the Biden administrative refuses to act to correct the problem, we can only assume that they want the crisis to continue.

Did Biden Make False or Misleading Statements about Immigration and Border?

            Last Friday, President Joe Biden was interviewed by NBC News about immigration and the border crisis. Experts say that the President made “numerous false or misleading statements” on the topic during the interview. Four members of the homeland security team at The Heritage Foundation responded to the claims by President Biden.

            Mark Morgan is the former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Chad Wolf is the former secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Mike Howell is an attorney that previously worked in the general counsel’s office for the Department of Homeland Security. The three men, plus Lora Ries, work for The Heritage Foundation. They responded to the following claims. 

Claim No. 1: Biden inherited “one God-awful mess at the border” from the Trump administration. Rating: False [Answered by Chad Wolf.]

The border crisis is entirely of the Biden administration’s own making, and it’s critical to understand the context in which it’s happening.

In the final months of the Trump administration, we saw border apprehensions increase because more people were coming illegally in the hopes of a Biden election victory. However, it wasn’t until the Biden administration took office that monthly apprehensions exploded, as Department of Homeland Security numbers make clear. [Emphasis added.]

This administration inherited a border that was under control thanks to strong and effective actions by the Trump administration. In May 2019 – the height of the 2019 crisis – 140,000 illegal aliens were caught crossing the border. However, by November 2019, this number was down to 42,000, and by April 2020, apprehensions were down to about 17,000.

This decrease was thanks to the Migrant Protection Protocols, which essentially eliminated fraudulent asylum claims at the southern border; asylum cooperative agreements with Northern Triangle countries, which gave individuals the ability to apply for protection closer to their home country instead of the southern border; and more construction of the border wall.

Every single one of these effective policies was still in place on Jan. 20, 2021, when Biden undid them with the stroke of a pen in the first days of his administration. We’ve seen the numbers skyrocket since. Biden inherited the most secure border in U.S. history, and promptly blew it apart. [Emphasis added.]

Claim No. 2: “It is getting urgent action now.” Rating: False [Answered by

Mike Howell.]

This claim is fatuous on its face. Vice President Kamala Harris, who Biden tapped several weeks ago to lead the crisis response, won’t even visit the Norther Triangle until June.

Holding Zoom calls and calling for amnesty is not “urgent action.” Building more intake facilities is not urgent action, either….

“Urgent action” would be restarting construction of the border wall…. It would be restoring the Migrant Protection Protocols and asylum cooperative agreements with Northern Triangle countries. It would be untying the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other law enforcement to allow them to deport those here illegally….

Claim No. 3: “For example, a month ago, we had thousands of young kids in custody in places they shouldn’t be, and controlled by the Border Patrol. We have now cut that down dramatically.” Rating: Misleading [Answered by Lora Ries.]

While the number of unaccompanied minors in Customs and Border Protection custody has decreased, the numbers are clear: Most of those minors are simply being transferred from one government agency to another – in this case, CBP custody to the Department of Health and Human Services.

In fact, more than 23,000 minors are [now in] federal custom as of a few days ago, more than 21,000 of which have been transferred to HHS….

And no matter who has custody of these minors, the Biden administration is doing nothing to eliminate the incentives for Centra and South American parents to continue to send their children to the border. Until that happens, these sky-high numbers will persist.

Claim No. 4: “Hey, look, here’s what happened – the failure to have a real transition. The two departments that didn’t give us access to virtually anything were the immigration [department] and the Defense Department. So, we didn’t find out they had fired a whole lot of people, that they were understaffed considerably.” Rating: False [Answered by Chad Wolf.]

What the president of the United States said is untrue. Plain and simple.

At the Department of Homeland Security, we provided the transition team with more than 200 extensive briefings on homeland security issues, the majority of which dealt with the border, immigration policy, and the processes and procedures we had in place to secure the border and reduce asylum fraud….

It's also untrue to claim anyone in DHS was fired during the transition. Not only is this factually incorrect, but it is illegal to remove any career executives for 120 days during a change in administration.

The Biden administration is not being truthful….

Claim No. 5: “Well, look, it is way down now. We’ve now gotten control.”

Rating: False [Answered by Mark Morgan.]

Nothing about the border crisis is “under control.” In just two months, more than 334,000 illegal aliens have been apprehended trying to cross our southern border, including 162,000 in April – the highest back-to-back monthly total in more than 15 years.

CBP officials also estimate more than 170,000 illegal aliens this fiscal year have evaded apprehension and are already in the U.S. Additionally, ICE is cutting arrests of violent criminal illegal aliens by 50%....

Claim No. 6: “For example, we have – they didn’t plan for, which it comes every year, this flow, whether it is 22,000 or 10,000, they didn’t have the beds that were available. They didn’t plan for the overflow. They didn’t plan for the Department of Health and Human Services to have places to take the kids from the Border Patrol and put them in beds where there was security and there were people who could take care of them. So, there is a significant change right now, a significant change in the circumstances for children coming to and at the border.” Rating: False [Answered by Mark Morgan.]

This is an outrageous claim – in November 2020, CBP under the Trump administration had fewer than 800 unaccompanied alien children, family units, and single adults in custody. In March of this year, that number had exploded to more than 10,000.

Even though apprehensions started increasing in 2020, as growing numbers of illegal migrants gambled on a potential Biden election victory and subsequent amnesty, the Trump administration had strong policies in place to quickly and responsibly process and deport most of these individuals. This meant there was no systemic issue with backlogs or overcrowded CBP or HHS facilities.

The Biden administration broke the system, and now has the temerity to blame the Trump administration for not implementing policies to anticipate its reckless behavior. It’s truly astounding.

Biden is right about one thing, though. The circumstances for children at the border have significantly changed. Biden’s open-borders agenda is only encouraging more unaccompanied minors and families to make the dangerous journey to the border, creating not only a humanitarian crisis, but also a windfall for the drug cartels and smugglers who profit off human misery, including, sadly, an ever-increasing number of children….

            According to the experts quoted above, the President of the United States is lying to or misleading the American citizens about immigration and the southern border. He obviously does not want the truth to get out. He has not been to the border and neither has Kamala Harris. In fact, the administration would not let the media into the border facilities until they had moved out some of the unaccompanied minors.

            The bottom line: Trump administration had the border situation under control with its policies. The Biden administration ended all the successful policies and invited the border surge. The crisis at the border belongs to Biden.