By U.S. Senator Deb Fischer
**Audio is not available for this week’s column**
The Biden administration has never wanted to admit that what is going on at our southern border is a crisis. But what else would you call a situation where illegal crossings are at an all-time high, dangerous drugs are pouring into our country, and the men and women charged with protecting the border aren’t given the resources they need to do their jobs?
U.S. officials encountered nearly two million illegal migrants at the border last year, a new record. That number doesn’t account for those who slipped into the country unnoticed. You have to go back more than 20 years to find a time when illegal border crossings were higher.
Despite President Biden’s promises to get the situation at the southern border under control, there is no end in sight to this crisis. For January of this year, which is typically one of the slowest months at the border, CBP is expected to report more than 153,000 total encounters. That is almost twice as many as January 2021 and four times as many as January 2020.
Failing to enforce our laws at the border has consequences. Last year, agents at ports along the southern border seized 76,652 pounds of narcotics, including more than 800 pounds of fentanyl. China is the main source of illegal fentanyl in the U.S., and 800 pounds is enough to provide a lethal dose for nearly every adult in America. This is one of the most dangerous drugs in the world – just two milligrams can be lethal. And more and more of it is streaming across our border every day.
Vice President Kamala Harris was tasked with “addressing the root causes of migration” in Central America and other countries in March of last year. The administration hasn’t done enough on this so far, and what they have done clearly hasn’t worked: Half of all migrants in 2021 came from countries other than Mexico, more than ever before.
In the history of our country, things have never been as chaotic at the southern border as they are right now. So what is the Biden administration doing about it?
Not much. Instead of learning from the successful policies President Trump implemented, President Biden has chosen to turn a blind eye, allowing anarchy to reign at the southwest border.
In many ways, I believe President Biden’s policies have actively made things worse. On day one, he ended the national emergency declaration at the border, halted construction on the border wall, and scaled back ICE enforcement. His campaign promises to relax border security and expand citizenship opportunities for illegal migrants certainly didn’t help. Neither did the administration’s failed proposal last year, which I worked to put a stop to, to pay certain illegal migrants up to $450,000 to settle their lawsuits against the federal government.
No president in recent memory has been this soft on illegal immigration – not even President Obama. Last September, President Obama said during an interview with ABC, “We’re a nation-state. We have borders. The idea that we can just have open borders is something that … as a practical matter, is unsustainable.”
He’s right. We are a nation of immigrants, but we are also a nation of laws. We have the laws we do for a reason: to keep American citizens safe. And our laws mean nothing if we aren’t willing to enforce them.
An open border puts law-abiding Americans in danger. And it leads migrants themselves to take alarming and unnecessary risks to get here.
The solution to this crisis is clear: give our border patrol agents and law enforcement the resources they need to do their jobs.
Thank you for participating in the democratic process. I look forward to visiting with you again next week.