OPINION:
For eight months now, Americans have heard the Biden administration repeatedly insist the southern border “is closed.” And every single month, Americans are reminded what a bald-faced lie that is.
Our southern border isn’t closed. It is wide open and being overrun thanks to Joe Biden’s failures. The numbers prove it.
In August, Customs and Border Protection agents caught more than 208,000 illegal immigrants trying to cross the southern border. Those are the highest August apprehension numbers in 21 years. It’s the second month in a row border encounters surpassed 200,000. They’re a more than three-fold increase from just a year ago.
The situation has gotten so bad that the Biden administration is releasing migrants into our country’s interior, not only along the southern border.
Overwhelmed by the mounting evidence, Mr. Biden finally admitted he didn’t have the border under control last week. Never mind, this concession comes after months of Mr. Biden saying just the opposite or shrugging off the unprecedented surge in illegal immigration as a seasonal spike that happens “every single year.” Fact check – it doesn’t.
The chorus of criticism for Mr. Biden’s wholesale failure at the southern border isn’t only coming from the right.
President Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson is urging Biden to get the border under control.
Texas Democrat Congressman Henry Cuellar has criticized the administration for greenlighting illegal immigration.
And many more Democrats at the local level in Texas and beyond have called out Mr. Biden for failing to provide our immigration officials with the resources they need.
It’s bad enough that Mr. Biden created this crisis by reversing President Trump’s secure-border policies one-by-one. Even worse is that he doesn’t seem to care.
In March, Mr. Biden promised he would go to the southern border to see the devastating effects of his open-borders agenda firsthand.
Not only has Mr. Biden broken his promise and not visited the border this year – it seems like he never has.
That former President Trump has gone to the southern border more times this year than Mr. Biden only underscores the wanton disregard this president has for border communities that are Ground-Zero for this security and humanitarian disaster.
Mr. Biden isn’t the only member of his administration taking a “hear no evil, see no evil” approach to a crisis spiraling further and further out of control. Biden’s point-person on the border, Vice President Kamala Harris, likewise isn’t taking it seriously.
Ms. Harris has plenty of time to go to football games. But when it comes to the border, she can’t be bothered to do the bare minimum besides making one box-checking stop that even Democrats panned.
Perhaps Mr. Biden’s biggest lie of all is that he is leading an immigration policy that is compassionate and humane. It’s anything but. Just look at the mess we saw in Del Rio, Texas.
Earlier this year, a fawning reporter praised Mr. Biden for being “moral and decent” when it came to immigration. Someone should follow up and ask Mr. Biden if creating conditions where migrant children are camped out under a bridge in squalid conditions in 100-degree-plus heat fits his definition of moral and decent.
In the face of Joe Biden’s failed and absent leadership, Republicans are stepping up and doing what they can to secure the border. But they need backup – backup that Mr. Biden continually refuses to provide.
Unfortunately, the chaos we are seeing at the southern border doesn’t come as a surprise.
It’s the predictable result of what happens when you put the priorities of the far-left ahead of the interests of the American people.
Mr. Biden could start securing the border tomorrow with effective immigration policies we saw under Republican leadership. Since he’s held captive by the radical-left, however, he won’t, and so Mr. Biden’s border crisis will continue to rage on.
• Thomas O. Hicks, Jr. was elected to serve as co-chairman of the Republican National Committee in January 2019.
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