Democrats Can’t Outrun Their Record on the Border
By Sen. John Thune
Four years ago, President Biden and Vice President Harris campaigned against the border security policies of then-President Trump. Soon after taking office, they set about dismantling these effective policies despite their team being warned that doing so could result in a surge of illegal immigration. That surge came, and it was Vice President Harris who was put in charge of handling the administration’s response. But it wasn’t much of a response.
Now President Biden and Vice President Harris are trying to claim they have been strong on border security all along, but the data tells a much different story. This administration has overseen three record-breaking years of illegal immigration at the southern border. Ten million illegal immigrants have crossed the border illegally during this administration. Included in that number are suspected terrorists, gang members, criminals, and 1.9 million known “gotaways” who have entered the country without being apprehended, which the chief of Border Patrol has called a “national security threat.”
Additionally, the Biden-Harris administration’s lax implementation of our asylum system is undoubtedly a “pull factor” for many migrants. In many cases, individuals who show up at the border claiming asylum are simply released into the country with court dates as far as a decade into the future. As we learned in June, this administration also gave de facto amnesty to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants whose cases were closed without resolution. Then there are the government-funded flights to cities around the country, guaranteed shelter in a number of cities, and, in California, illegal immigrants can get taxpayer-funded health care.
The effects of this crisis are not limited to the southern border alone. In fact, every state has virtually become a border state in one way or another. Here in South Dakota, law enforcement can trace illegal drugs in our communities to the southern border. Police in New York City recently revealed that illegal immigrants make up 75 percent of arrests in midtown Manhattan as the city deals with an influx of illegal immigrants. And many of us have seen the tragic stories of Americans killed by illegal immigrants who should have never been in our country in the first place.
A crisis has raged at the southern border for much of the Biden-Harris administration. On more than one occasion, the Biden-Harris administration has turned its back on border security, and their Democrat allies in Congress have voted against meaningful border security policies time and again. Try as the Democrats might to change their tune in an election year, the American people can see what’s happening with their own eyes, and they know that this administration’s disastrous record on the border is to blame.
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Hmmm. When is Senator Thune going to call for a vote on his conservative Senate colleague James Lankford’s border security bill? The only politicians holding up a robust increase in border security are Donald Trump (who wants to preserve his favorite election issue) and Trump’s obedient minions, of which Senator Thune is a prime example. The allure of becoming Senate Republican Leader is apparently so strong that it justifies uttering blatant lies about who is actually standing in the way of real border security. Harris has already promised she will sign Lankford’s bill. Why won’t Trump and Thune get behind Lankford’s bill and bring it to the Senate floor for a vote? We all know exactly why — so they can preserve this “issue” for their campaigning and continue to lie about who is responsible.
Sad!