Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) is calling for the southern border to be “closed down” amid the ongoing influx of illegal immigrants, while denouncing fellow Democrats who downplay the crisis despite warnings that the open border poses a significant security threat.
Mr. Manchin made the remarks in a conversation with Fox News host Sean Hannity in a Dec. 13 appearance on his show after Mr. Hannity listed statistics like the fact that around eight million illegal immigrants have been encountered along the border since President Joe Biden took office.
The latest data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) shows that October marked the thirty-second straight month where illegal immigrant encounters were higher that even the highest month seen under former President Donald Trump.
In congressional testimony in mid-November, FBI Director Christopher Wray expressed “great concern” that some of the people crossing the border illegally may pose a terror threat while also noting that the number of known or suspected terrorists trying to cross the border has jumped in recent years, reaching record numbers.
Mr. Hannity expressed national security concerns relating to the border crisis—especially the threat of terrorism.
“I am 100 percent certain that we have—because those borders have been wide open—terror cells now in this country,” Mr. Hannity said, before asking Mr. Manchin if he agreed.
“I’m as concerned as you are,” the West Virginia senator replied. “Our borders are a mess.”
In fiscal year 2023, there were 169 people whose names appear on the terrorist watchlist who were arrested trying to cross the southern border, an all-time record.
‘Close Our Borders Down’
Many Republicans see the issue of illegal border crossings as one of the country’s most pressing issues, while polling shows that for Democrats, it’s of relatively low priority.Biden administration officials have been reluctant to call the situation along the border a “crisis,” while White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has accused Republicans of turning the border issue into a “political stunt.”
Mr. Manchin said during the Fox News interview that anyone who doesn’t acknowledge the seriousness of the problem is mistaken.
“For any Democrat—or anybody—to say it’s not in jeopardy right now ... we have to close our borders down. We’ve got to control the borders,” Mr. Manchin said.
The West Virginia senator, who told Mr. Hannity he’s considering running for president in 2024 because the Biden administration has pulled too far to the “extreme left,” also called for reforms that would allow legitimate asylum-seekers to find refuge in the country—but strictly block illegal entry into the United States.
In the interview, Mr. Manchin said that Americans are in need of new leadership, arguing that President Biden has become increasingly more leftist.
“The Democrats had been pulled so far to the left, and I think Joe Biden has been pulled to the left,” Mr. Manchin said. “I know Joe Biden. He never has governed that way. He wasn’t a senator for 36 years on the extremes, and I’m hoping he comes back to the middle.”
Mr. Manchin, who has been in the Senate for more than 13 years, announced last month that he would not be seeking reelection.
The border crisis is increasingly becoming a political weight on President Biden, dragging down his approval ratings.
A recent ABC News/Washington Post survey shows that 71 percent of Americans disapprove of the way he’s handling immigration and the situation at the U.S.–Mexico border.
That figure has grown steadily from mid-July, when 61 percent of Americans said they think the president is doing a bad job on immigration and the border crisis.
Republicans have blamed the president’s policies for helping fuel the border crisis.
Terror Threat Rises
Since Hamas attacked Israel in October, terror threats to the United States have increased, according to U.S. lawmakers and officials, including the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.“The reality is that the terrorism threat has been elevated throughout 2023, but the ongoing war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole other level,” Mr. Wray said at a congressional hearing in mid-November.
The FBI chief said that the agency’s most immediate worry was that homegrown violent extremists would draw inspiration from the Hamas terror attack on Israeli civilians and carry out attacks against Americans going about their daily lives.
Further, a group of four Republican senators who visited the U.S.-Mexico border said that they’re concerned that President Biden’s “open border policy” would open the country to terror attacks.
Also, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) recently sounded the alarm on the potential national security threat posed by bomb-carrying drones along the southern border.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump said recently that he sees the influx of illegal immigrants across the border as a national security crisis and has vowed to impose tough border security measures the moment he gets into office.
“We’re closing the border, and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling,” the former president told Mr. Hannity during a recent Fox News town hall, remarking on his immediate priorities if his 2024 comeback bid for the White House succeeds—that he'd be “dictator” only on Day 1 to get what he wanted.
He called President Biden’s anti-fossil-fuel energy policies bad for the country and vowed to abolish them, while encouraging more domestic oil and gas production.
