Former President Trump is visiting the border today to see what some are calling President Biden’s big border blunder. Critics say Biden inherited a solution and canceled it, creating a crisis. Now one million migrants are expected to surge into the U.S. this year alone.
While the Trump administration built about 450 miles of new barriers along the southern border, Biden immediately halted construction when took office, leaving gaps that rendered most of the border wall incomplete. Meanwhile, border states are dealing with an unprecedented surge of people coming across, leading many Republican lawmakers to call for the wall to be finished.
“The money to finish wall construction is already there, it’s just that President Biden decided he didn’t want to do it anymore,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) told CBN News on a recent trip with a congressional delegation to McAllen, Texas. “Border patrol is essentially a medical triage unit right now.”
On their tour, they learned that where the wall is complete only one agent is needed for patrol compared to five or six. Yet even where the structure looks finished, construction stopped before power lines were put in, leaving the already installed camera and light systems powerless.
“When you come down here and you see the infrastructure for yourself, you go into the detention facilities run by border patrol, you see what’s happening on the ground, it just makes sense to finish wall construction and bring back some of the enforcement measures that we had in the previous administration,” continued Donalds.
The group also participated in intelligence briefings, spoke with agents and local residents, toured detention facilities, and visited areas where people are coming across.
“We’re actually on pace to add about a million different illegal aliens to the already 10 million that are here in the United States this year alone,” claimed Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council.
Judd has been a border patrol agent for 24 years and claims more people are coming across now than ever before.
“The ones that are released, they’re never going back,” explained Judd. “Once they get released into the United States, if they don’t show up to their court appearance, the Biden administration will not let ICE go after them if they don’t have a criminal record. The vast majority doesn’t have a criminal record here in the United States.”
Judd describes the current situation as “complete and total chaos.”
“What’s disappointing to us is that the administration won’t even define this problem, and if you’re not going to define the problem you’re not going to find solutions,” continued Judd.
Texas Congressman Michael Cloud (R-TX), who led the trip to the border, blames Biden for the current influx in people coming across.
“What we had under the Trump administration was an administration who looked at a crisis, put in policies to mitigate the crisis, and we’ve seen the absolute reversal of that,” Cloud told CBN News. “An administration who’s inherited a solution and has removed those policies to create a crisis.”
He fears Biden plans to reverse more Trump immigration policies like Title 42, which allows agents to send migrants back to Mexico.
“Basically, it would take one of the few tools we have in order to return people to Mexico who are not supposed to be in the country away and would de facto create catch and release,” explained Cloud.
Cloud argues agents desperately need more resources to fight the cartels.
“Right now it’s difficult when you have an administration who wants the chaos to happen, that’s what seems to be the case,” claimed Cloud.
Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (R-CO) says we’re dealing with a humanitarian crisis.
“The cartels are in control of everyone who crosses the southern border, this is organized crime, this is human smuggling,” said Boebert.
She says parents are self-separating from their children to get their kids into the U.S. and then following behind them.
“They’re sending their daughters with the Plan B pill,” claimed Boebert. “They’re giving them the Plan B pill because they expect their daughters to be sexually assaulted on their journey.”
Boebert wants to see wall funding included in the current infrastructure bill.
“That wall allows us to dictate where illegal traffic takes place,” said Judd. “It also allows us to control the flow of drugs coming into the United States. Without that infrastructure, without that barrier there, the cartels are free to cross their products anywhere that they want.”
Representatives Cloud and Boebert are among the congressional delegation joining former President Donald Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbot on the southern border Wednesday. Gov. Abbot is trying to use federal COVID-19 relief funds to finish the border wall, which 50% of Texans support, but he’s facing opposition from Democrats in the legislature.