Courtesy of Mark Green’s RealClearPolitics
Since early 2021, Americans have watched as illegal immigrants continue to cross our southwestern border unhindered. They have read in horror the stories of innocent Americans who have been killed by illegal immigrants. They have seen their families and friends killed by fentanyl that came across the border. And the Biden-Harris administration has largely done nothing.
But now, after months of declining apprehensions at ports of entry along the southwestern border, the Biden-Harris administration is taking a victory lap. But such hasty celebration ignores the reality of the ongoing nature of this crisis.
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Before explaining why, Americans must understand that even if no more foreign nationals are banned from entering the country by the end of Biden and Harris’ term, millions of people who have already entered our country have caused damage that will take decades to repair. For many families, such as Laken Riley, Rachel Morin, and Jocelyn Nungaray, the damage is absoluteness Collapse.
But if Biden and Harris want to talk numbers, the president and his “border czar” won’t get away with it. Under their watch, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded more than 10 million encounters nationwide, and an additional 2 million “fugitives” were known to have crossed our border without being caught.
Many on the left like to use the history of Ellis Island as an excuse for mass immigration, despite the fact that these people arrived according to the laws of the time. But the number of people who came through Ellis Island was also about 12 million. For 62 years, from 1892 to 1954.
The number of inadmissible aliens who have crossed our border without encountering or apprehending them since the beginning of fiscal year (FY) 2021 is unprecedented. To claim victory now because of a temporary decrease in border crossings is to show willful ignorance of the nature of this ongoing crisis, because these numbers alone do not tell the full story of what Americans are going through.
Related: Illegal Border Crossings Surpass 12.5 Million Since Biden-Harris Take Office
First, there are ongoing financial implications. As of mid-June 2024, more than 205,000 illegal immigrants have arrived in New York City since the spring of 2022. Mayor Eric Adams has declared that these arrivals and the costs they entail will “destroy New York City.” Smaller cities will also suffer as a result of years of uncontrolled border crossings. Springfield, Ohio, with a population of 60,000, has seen about 20,000 Haitians arrive since the crisis began, putting a strain on housing and other services. Whitewater, Wisconsin, with a population of just 15,000, has been overwhelmed by the arrival of 1,000 illegal immigrants, “often with limited basic English skills.” Last year, an official in Sanford, Maine, said, “We were tapped out. … We were overwhelmed.”
DHS reports that more than 80 percent of illegal aliens who are “neither directly removed or deported by CBP nor persistently detained by ICE” remain in the United States years later. These communities, and thousands like them, will have to deal with these costs for years.
Second, consider the ongoing public safety implications of what is happening at the Southwest border. Since fiscal year 2021, Border Patrol has more than doubled the number of arrests of illegal aliens with criminal backgrounds compared to fiscal years 2017-2020. Worse, criminals and individuals with possible terrorist ties have been and continue to be released into the interior. In fact, it was recently reported that the Biden-Harris administration released 99 individuals on terrorism watchlists into the interior.. According to a DHS source, ICE officials are “blocked from deporting even illegal immigrants with gang ties who have final deportation orders.” Former ICE field chief John Fabricatore said, “I You shouldn’t have gone out on the street.”
How many other threats to our safety and security are there, unwittingly released or entered as refugees? How many more people who have never committed a crime in their own country or have never been caught are now committing their first crime against an American victim?
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Finally, despite recent declines in illegal border crossings, ~ between Port of entry, encounter with foreigners who are not allowed entry ~ in Ports of entry are at record highs, largely because the administration has designed a number of illegal mass release programs to encourage people to enter the country this way. In February 2021, the first month of Biden and Harris’s presidency, CBP recorded just 17,744 encounters at ports of entry nationwide. By July 2024, that number had reached 110,615. While encouraging people to cross the border at ports of entry certainly reduces the spectacle of overwhelmed Border Patrol agents and facilities, it ultimately results in the same outcome: inadmissible aliens being released into the interior. And now, one of these mass release programs has been temporarily suspended due to massive fraud.
This border crisis is not over. It has never been over. It is time for Congress and the American people to say enough.
Representative Mark E. Greene, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, represents Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District.
Reported with permission from RealClearWire.
