Border crisis front and center this week on Capitol Hill
WASHINGTON (SBG) – The difficult task of securing our Southern border is front and center this week on Capitol Hill. New data shows those detained have come from more than 100 different countries, and that some have ties to the Terror Watch list.
Still, the vast majority of those who come to the United States are fleeing poverty, corruption and violence in their home countries and see a newfound chance at being granted asylum.
Republican senators on Wednesday spoke out against the change in policies by the Biden administration, which they say have incentivized many migrants to make the dangerous journey, often paying smugglers to get here.
“If you’re looking for root causes as Vice President Harris did, all you have to do is walk in the Oval Office and look at the president of the United States. President Biden is the root cause of this problem,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin.
Some are sounding alarm bells that the worsening challenges pose a threat to national security.
Former U.S. Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott in a letter written six weeks ago requested hearings be held where he issued several warnings.
“The U.S. Border Patrol is rapidly losing its situational awareness required to know who and what is entering our homeland,” he wrote. “I urge you to request detailed information from DHS/CBP on the number of individuals with Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB) alerts that USB has arrested this fiscal year.”
Scott recently opted for an early retirement after 29 years of service.
When asked at Wednesday’s news conference to shed more light on why he left his post, he responded,
“To be completely transparent, I felt at the jobs I was being offered or a way to keep me silent because I have been outspoken internally about the impacts of some of these policies.”
He says those impacts also include more and more drugs getting into the country, with fentanyl seizures up 500% and overdose deaths hitting a record high in 2020.
“What happens on the Southwest border doesn’t stay there. Every town, city and state in the nation is a border town city and state,” said Mark Morgan, the former Acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, during an interview Wednesday.
It’s been one of the top challenges for President Joe Biden, who’s seen high numbers of border encounters every month since taking office. His poll numbers on the matter have taken a hit but the White House is trying to implement a more humanitarian approach to immigration.
During a hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, made this point:
“There are a lot of desperate people many have legitimate claims in entering the United States.”
Sen. Chris Coons, D-Delaware, called the immigration system broken but argued that the problem wasn’t new/
”We’ve seen significant migration for a variety of reasons for a number of years both because of violence for a number of countries and because of climate change,” Coons said.
