A freshman Democrat congresswoman from Washington State warned that the Biden administration has no “operational control” of the southern border and called on Trump-era policies to be brought back to counter the illegal immigrant crisis.
“It’s been one of the fundamental mistakes around immigration, is to debate whether or not an immigration policy is, you know, motivated by racial animus,” Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-Wash.) said in an April 29 interview with NPR.
“A lot of people in rural and working-class communities like mine, we come from communities that have been hollowed out by fentanyl, and so we’re watching our cousins, our neighbors, our coworkers overdose and die, and we are demanding operational control of the southern border.
“That can’t wait for a perfect immigration policy to come along.”
The United States “does not have operational control of the southern border … Biden needs to exercise his existing authority under Remain in Mexico and Congress needs to give him back the presidential expulsion authority under Title 42.”
Remain in Mexico was a policy introduced by the Trump administration in 2019 that required asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their court dates were set. When President Biden came to power, he immediately ended this policy.
After federal courts later instructed the Biden administration to reinstate the policy, the Supreme Court ruled in June 2022 that the government had the right to end Remain in Mexico. The government of Mexico also said it was not interested in reviving the policy.
Under the Trump administration, Title 42 allowed the federal government to deny the right to seek asylum and to turn back illegal immigrants at the border.
President Biden initially kept the policy but tried to end it in 2022. After the national COVID-19 public health emergency declaration ended, the policy was abolished.
When the NPR host told Ms. Perez that her border policy resembled those of Republicans, she dismissed such arguments, claiming that concerns about the border were “not a partisan issue.”
“I don’t know that that is partisan. I mean, I think it’s really—at its heart, it’s like a fuller picture of what humanitarianism looks like.
“We have to listen to people in rural and working-class and the trades communities about what the impact of an unsecured border is in our communities, and so part of it is just resting back the narrative and saying, like, this is not a partisan issue. This is an issue of community,” she said.
Forty-two percent supported “implementing mass deportations of undocumented immigrants.” Thirty-eight percent backed “implementing travel bans on people from certain countries.”
Another 35 percent want to shut down the southern border entirely, and 30 percent supported “ending automatic citizenship for children born in the U.S.”
Between October 2021 and March 2024 under the Biden administration, the border patrol reported encountering more than 7.9 million illegal immigrants at the Southwest land border.
“Our national security interests don’t stop at our physical borders. That is why we voted to send more weapons to Ukraine for its fight against Russia,“ they said in an April 24 statement. ”The lesson of Pearl Harbor must not be forgotten: appeasement invites aggression against us. As Speaker Johnson stated last week, we would rather send ‘bullets than American boys.’”
The Biden administration has worsened the border crisis “by trying to stop the use of measures that will secure our border like shipping containers and razor wire,” said Ms. Blackburn.
“Because Joe Biden refuses to do so, it’s clear Congress must act to give border states the explicit authority to protect their communities and the sovereignty of the United States.”
Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution allows for the protection of states from invasion, with Article I, Section 10 granting states the right to defend themselves. However, states are not allowed to place structures on federal land under current law unless they obtain approval from the federal government.
The CONTAINER Act grants states the authority to temporarily place movable, temporary structures on federal land to secure their borders without any authorization from the federal government.
States will be allowed to keep such structures on federal land for up to a year, subject to 90-day extensions approved by the secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior.
“It should come as no surprise that states like Texas and Arizona, which have been decimated by the illegal immigration crisis, have been forced to take matters into their own hands,” said Mr. Scott.
“It’s President Biden’s duty to secure the southern border, and his failure to do his job has put the safety and security of every American at risk.”
