Capitol Hill Updates

House Republican Whip Scalise: Biden’s Self-Made Crisis at the Southern Border

TOPLINE: Through promises of amnesty and open borders, the Biden Administration has created an out-of-control surge of illegal immigrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. President Biden and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas refuse to take responsibility for their actions and acknowledge the reality of the situation. Will House Democrats support these reckless policies that are creating a massive humanitarian and health crisis in our country?

A Crisis, Not a Challenge

In February, over 100,000 illegal immigrants were detained — nearly three times the apprehensions during the same period of time last year.

At the beginning of the year, less than 500 family units per week were attempting to cross the border. Now, we are seeing nearly 2,500 family units per week.

Customs and Border Protection is currently encountering more than 3,000 individuals per day. Jeh Johnson, Secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama, said at the time that 1,000 encounters per day were “a bad number.”

The Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the detention of children, is expected to hit capacity this month as more migrants are expected to surge across the southwest border. CBP is projecting a peak of 13,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the border per month by May.

An HHS official told Axios: “We’re seeing the highest February numbers that we’ve ever seen in the history of the [Unaccompanied Alien Child] program.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/03/05/border-patrol-300-percent-spike-family-apprehensions-creates-crisis-southern-border-wall-trump/3070451002/

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki is refusing to call this a crisis and referred to the surge at the border as a “challenge.”

Biden Bears Responsibility

After taking office, President Biden terminated the Migrant Protection Protocols enacted by President Trump, which required asylum seekers to wait for their hearings in border facilities in Central America, rather than being released inside the country.

Biden also axed the asylum agreements Trump negotiated with Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, which require asylum seekers to remain in the first safe country they enter — the prevailing standard for asylum seekers in the European Union and in Canada.

Biden has replaced these policies with the Obama-era process of “catch and release,” where illegal aliens claiming asylum are detained, processed, and released inside the United States as they await their hearing — which usually takes years.

As a result of Joe Biden’s reckless decisions, foreigners believe that now is the best time to enter our country illegally.

The New York Times reports that the number of children detained at the U.S.-Mexico border has TRIPLED over the past two weeks. This comes as the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests FELL by 60 percent last month. The Washington Post reports that ICE officers averaged nearly 6,800 arrests in October, November, and December, the last three full months of the Trump Administration. In February, arrests fell to about 2,500 arrests.

Speaking at a White House press conference, Southern Border Coordinator Roberta Jackson said that it was not a coincidence that border crossing attempts spiked after Joe Biden became president. She said that hope for a change in policy “may have driven people to make that decision, but perhaps, more importantly, it definitely drove smugglers to express disinformation, spread disinformation about what was now possible.”

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bidens-immigration-policy-may-have-driven-migrant-surge-encouraged-smugglers

While visiting a local business in Washington, D.C., President Biden ignored a reporter after asked she asked him if there was a crisis at the border.

The Rasmussen Reports Immigration Index is based on a series of questions designed to determine whether voters support more immigration or less immigration.

In the week of February 28-March 4, 2021, the Immigration Index fell to 85.1, the lowest it’s been since the Index began in December 2019.

In the latest survey, 54% of Likely U.S. Voters feel the government is already doing too little to reduce illegal border crossings and visitor overstays. Nineteen percent (19%) say the government is doing too much. Twenty-one percent (21%) rate the level of action as about right.

Significantly, 73% of Republicans and 60% of voters not affiliated with either major party say the government is not doing enough to reduce illegal border crossings and visitor overstays, as do 33% of Democrats.

Where’s the Outrage From the Mainstream Media?

In 2018, Joe Biden said that a “policy that separates young children from their parents isn’t a deterrent, it’s unconscionable.” He then described the child-separation policy first implemented under the Obama Administration as “abhorrent.”

To address the surge at the border, Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Health and Human Services have reopened their respective overflow facilities for both family units and unaccompanied minors that were used during the 2019 border crisis — the same detention centers that progressive lawmakers compared to Nazi concentration camps.

After engaging in endless news cycles about the Trump Administration’s use of detention centers and falsely likening them to keeping children in cages, now the same level of outrage is somehow missing from the mainstream media’s coverage.

Coverage during Trump Administration: 

Coverage during Biden Administration: 

NBC News reports that over 3,200 migrant children were being held in Border Patrol facilities — a record — with almost half being held past the three-day legal limit.

The difference in coverage from the mainstream media illustrates the favoritism given to the Biden Administration.

Will the media ask each House Democrat about Joe Biden separating children from their parents or about his inhumane housing facilities for unaccompanied minors?

The mainstream media has also failed to cover how the Biden Administration’s immigration policies are spreading COVID.

Migrants once were forced to wait at border detention facilities, or in Mexico, for their immigration cases to be processed under the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols policy, but the Biden Administration is now winding that effort down.

It also remains unclear whether the Biden Administration continues to use its emergency powers under Title 42 to quickly remove illegal immigrants who risk spreading COVID-19 across the border. After being released, these COVID-positive migrants can potentially spread the virus to those who they come into contact with — putting numerous lives at risk.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/number-of-covid-positive-migrants-released-in-texas-surges-officials-say

Two Democrats Warn Biden About the Catastrophe at the Border

Will Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi listen to Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez?

Both congressmen represent districts in southern Texas that run along a portion of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Speaking to a local television station, Rep. Cuellar warned that our nation is heading towards an impending border crisis. He predicted that the United States is weeks, maybe even days, away from a critical situation along the southern border.

https://www.kgns.tv/2021/03/06/congressman-cuellar-warns-of-an-impending-border-crisis/

In an interview with CNN, Rep. Gonzalez said that Democrats’ plan to release migrants into our communities after they are apprehended would incentivize tens of thousands of people to show up at the southern border and would be catastrophic for his congressional district.

BOTTOM LINE: The Biden Administration has created the surge of unaccompanied minors and migrants along the southern border. Illegal immigrants believe that if they can reach the United States, they’ll be allowed to stay because of Joe Biden and Democrats’ open border policies. This is unacceptable, and every House Democrat must be asked if they agree with these reckless policies and what they will do to fix them.