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A broken southern border is now a lasting hallmark of the Biden presidency. Drugs and people flow across unabated, while President Joe Biden and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have shown little interest in solving the crisis. Indeed, they are instead moving forward with a plan to hand out ID cards to illegal immigrants, making it easier to receive government services and benefits.
It is up to Congress to protect our country.
According to Reuters, since President Biden took office, there have been more than 1,000 deaths along the U.S. Mexico border. On June 27, 53 migrants, men, women, and children, died in agony due heat exposure stuffed into an un-airconditioned semi-truck trailer by human smugglers near San Antonio, Texas. They were attempting to evade apprehension by U.S. Border Patrol.
Opioid and fentanyl deaths have also skyrocketed under Biden, with 108,000 Americans killed by overdoses in 2021. To put that amount in perspective, it is the equivalent of the entire population of Las Cruces or Rio Rancho, New Mexico, dying from poison in one year. If a foreign military destroyed a city this size, it is difficult to believe that the president and Congress would be so inactive. These drugs flow largely through our southern border, manufactured with precursors made in China and finished and trafficked by Mexican drug cartels. Fentanyl is now the leading cause of death of Americans 18 to 45, stealing America’s future before our eyes.
According to the Border Patrol, cartels are also getting rich over the staggering number of migrants illegally entering our country. Over 3.1 million have been apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection since Biden became president and more than 800,000 have evaded capture since the start of Fiscal Year 2021. Cartels use large migrant groups as a diversionary tactic to smuggle drugs in areas undefended by U.S. Border Patrol that are stuck processing thousands of migrants. The Biden administration has ceded control of our international sovereignty to these bloody killers, while few media talking heads seem to have noticed.
But the people of New Mexico notice. Millions of outraged Americans notice. It is our communities that suffer from the criminal networks trafficking people across our lands. It is our mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters who are killed by the tsunami of drugs that Biden and Mayorkas seem incapable of stopping.
But even if our president is uninterested in solving the border crisis, Congress can act. We can secure our border and stop this humanitarian disaster. Here are a few simple ways we can protect Americans, save lives, and strike back at the infiltration of cartels.
We should immediately pass my legislation, the PAUSE Act, to keep Title 42 protections in place for the remainder of the COVID-19 emergency declaration. This allows us to ensure the rapid repatriation of illegal migrants and eliminate incentives to cross illegally.
Despite the recent Supreme Court Ruling allowing the White House to drop the successful Remain in Mexico policy, Congress and the Biden administration can and should maintain and enhance it. This would allow real asylum seekers — less than 20% of whom qualify for asylum — to safely wait for adjudication in Mexico.
Congress can also support efforts by Mexico and other Western Hemisphere nations to repatriate illegal migrants traveling through their countries en route to the U.S. border. This will reduce flow at our border, preventing the misery of human trafficking. That is why I have introduced legislation to allow for the use of foreign aid for the repatriation of migrants headed to the U.S.
Any foreign aid to Mexico and Northern Triangle countries should be contingent upon those nations sharing the full criminal background information of those headed toward our southern border, ensuring they meet FBI background check standards.
We must ensure that transnational criminal organizations like the Mexican cartels face justice from the full strength of the United States government. This includes the Department of State declaring prominent Mexican drug cartels to be foreign terrorist organizations to allow for more aggressive actions against their leadership and members. This is no mere exercise in name-calling: a staggering 56 migrants on the terror watch list have been apprehended along our southern border in Fiscal Year 2022. And it is anyone’s guess how many more have disappeared into our communities along with hundreds of thousands of other "getaways."
Without border security, Americans will continue to see surges of crime, drugs, and serious threats to the safety of their communities. Ending the flow of illegal immigration and smuggling will save the lives of citizens and migrants alike. Biden should be doing this, but he won’t. In his absence, Congress must lead the way.
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