President Biden’s Border Crisis: Record-High Crossings and Decade-Low Enforcement

U.S. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding border security:

“One point seven million people.

“That is the record-shattering number of illegal immigrants detained along our southern border in just the last 12 months. In one year, 1.7 million people tried to take advantage of the Biden Administration’s intentionally unsecure border and come here illegally. The most ever recorded.

“There are 11 entire states whose populations are smaller than 1.7 million.

“Of the 1.7 million, more than a million were single adults. That is nearly two thirds — not family units, not unaccompanied children, but adults on their own.

“In many cases, this is not about escaping disaster or persecution. This is about wanting a better job in America. It’s less about emergency refugees and more about economics.

“Legal immigration in pursuit of a better future is a core part of our country.

“It reflects our values and makes us stronger. We are a generous country that wants to welcome ambitious new Americans who come the right way.

“But it is beyond disingenuous for the Biden Administration to pretend that huge numbers of people who simply want better jobs are emergency refugees. Those are two different things.

“In this 12-month span, authorities arrested people from 160 different countries.

“Think about that. The U.S. recognizes 195 countries in the entire world. Customs and Border Protection ran into people from all but 35 of them.

“On numerous occasions, these people have told reporters they are coming specifically because of President Biden.

“His campaign rhetoric and his policy decisions have directly created this crisis.

“Late last December, about a month before President Biden took office, he literally said ‘the last thing we need’ would be if his Administration pursued policy changes that caused us to, ‘end up with 2 million people on our border.’

“That’s how President-elect Biden himself defined failure on our border: Two million people showing up.

“And that is exactly what he has brought about.

“All because of the liberal misapprehension that a weak and porous border is a compassionate border. It is not.

“Even now, even as President Biden faces the exact definition of failure which he laid out, the Administration won’t change course.

“A few weeks ago, Secretary Mayorkas released radical new guidance that essentially tries to create amnesty by executive fiat.

“This Mayorkas memo told ICE that, now, being in the country illegally ‘should not alone be the basis’ for making arrests. A baseline policy of no enforcement, with exceptions for certain extenuating circumstances.

“Last week, before the Judiciary Committee, under questioning from Senator Cornyn, even the President’s own nominee to CBP had to admit that non-enforcement policies are a magnet that make the problem worse.

“Even before the new Mayorkas memo, over the whole last 12 months, immigration arrests in the interior of the country fell to their lowest level in more than a decade. ICE arrested half as many people this past year as they did on average in previous years.

“Put two and two together. CBP encounters at the border are at historic highs… but ICE enforcement is down to a decade low. It doesn’t make any sense. Unless we are looking at functional amnesty through non-enforcement.

“But even now, Democrats keep pushing more new policies to incentivize illegal immigration. Their next reckless taxing and spending spree proposes to double down on Democrats’ new monthly welfare deposits that can flow directly to people who are here illegally.

“This is a Democrat-created crisis from top to bottom.”