By Moshe Hill
For the past three years, the American people have been told that there is no crisis at the southern border. Congress was told this by Homeland security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, and it was repeated over and over again by the Joe Biden administration. In that time, over 6 million people have been apprehended at the southern border, and even more are known and unknown got-aways. Cities like New York, Chicago, Boston and Washington D.C. are overrun with illegal migrants flooding shelters and sleeping on the streets. This has all been happening while the Biden administration has been, at best, ignoring the problem and, at worst, actively facilitating it.
For those who don’t remember, Joe Biden spent his first 100 days in office undoing everything that President Donald Trump did. It didn’t matter what the policy was, who it helped, what it achieved, Biden undid it simply out of spite for Trump. On day one he issued six Executive Orders related to the border, halting all border wall construction and deportation. A week later he reversed the “Remain in Mexico” policy which stated that anyone seeking to claim asylum in the United States had to stay in Mexico until their asylum hearing date. Speaker Mike Johnson has highlighted 64 different actions that Biden took to weaken the border.
Not only does Biden weaken the border, he fights anyone who tries to strengthen the border. When Arizona was using shipping containers as a makeshift border wall, Biden sued. When Texas put up buoys to prevent illegal river crossings (crossings that cause death of countless people who attempt it), Biden sued. When Texas put up razor wire, Biden sued. Any action that anyone takes to protect America from a foreign invasion, Joe Biden actively attacks using his weaponized Justice Department.
Biden also completely changed the jobs of Border agents. While Democrats scream and cry that they want more money for the Southern border, Republicans correctly demand to know where that money will be spent. Instead of policing the border, Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents have been used as a ferry service for transporting illegals into the interior of the country. They want more judges to process more asylum cases, but have no plans to stop people from coming in the first place. Biden also reduced the proof required to even claim asylum, so anyone can do it, despite people coming from countries where there is no persecution or need for asylum in the United States.
All of this was action taken by the Biden administration without the input of Congress. There was no legislation that had him actively weaken the border and ignore American law. Joe Biden also does not want to reverse direction on his open border policies, otherwise he would have done so. After a string of months where the illegal border crossings hit record levels, during an election year, Biden is finally feeling some pressure to do something.
So how do you make it look like you are doing something without doing anything? You go to the people who are famously known for not doing anything at all – Congress! But Joe Biden ran into a problem there, because the House of Representatives already passed the Secure the Border Act of 2023. What did that act do? It basically re-enshrined in law that Biden has to do his job as President. It increases Border Patrol agents to actually patrol the border. It restarts border wall construction. It prohibits CBP from being a ferry service. Any of these things Biden could do without Congressional approval, but he chooses not to. This bill passed in the House in May of 2023. It was never brought up for a vote in the Democrat-run Senate.
With all of that background, now we get to this Senate “bipartisan” bill, which is not just border funding, but also money for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and, for some reason, Gaza. It’s 370 pages long and over 118 billion dollars, with only a percentage of that having to do with the border. So what does this bill do? It basically allows up to 1.875 million illegal border crossing a year, or 5,000 a day, before the border is closed. It gives Biden the unilateral power to undermine the bill itself by unilaterally reversing the policies. To prevent a future president like Trump from actually enforcing the border, any court cases will be done in the far-left D.C. circuit court. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Speaker Mike Johnson and Republican Majority Leader Steve Scalisce both declared this bill “dead on arrival” meaning that it won’t receive a vote in the House. Senator J.D. Vance claimed that this bill means “the border never closes”. The reception was so wildly unpopular that Mitch McConnell is reportedly telling Republicans in the Senate to vote against the bill, meaning that it may not even make the 60 vote threshold in the Senate.
So what are the Democrats doing? They are blaming Republicans! They claim that since they created this terrible bill, the crisis is now the fault of Republicans who refuse to vote for it. That is like saying that a hungry man who refuses to eat feces is doing so because he hates all food. To make matters more absurd, Democrats are claiming that Republicans are only rejecting the bill because Donald Trump told them to! No, Republicans have the ability to read and think and don’t vote lockstep with their party (often to their demise and embarrassment). This bill is dead because it’s a dumpster fire.
Biden thinks he has a shield now to defend his awful and country-destroying policies. All Democrats will parrot the talking point that they tried to get something done, but Republicans stopped them, so they own the crisis. The calculus hasn’t changed one iota, however. Biden created this crisis, he can fix it. He refuses to do so, because he wants the border open. It will come back to bite him in November.
