Rep. James Comer, House Republicans’ lead investigator, says it’s time to send active-duty military troops to the U.S. border with Mexico to shut down drug routes and curtail the reach of smuggling cartels, who control the boundary with startling effectiveness.
The Kentucky lawmaker led a delegation from the House Oversight and Reform Committee to the border in California and Arizona last week, and said the level of chaos was noticeably higher than a similar trip to the border in Texas and New Mexico last year.
He said cartels dictate border operations, sending groups of migrants over to tie up Border Patrol agents, then sneaking drugs across. And the cartels have eyes on everything happening on the U.S. side.
And the brazenness of their defiance was stunning, he said.
“We were seeing buses and Ubers pull up and letting people out. They were waiting until we left and they were going to walk across,” Mr. Comer said.
When the migrants did cross, they were taking selfies to commemorate their easy arrival.
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Mr. Comer said agents shepherding them around the border pointed to a house on the Mexican side where the cartel had eyes on the congressional delegation. Agents also pointed to a hilltop on the U.S. side where cartel scouts were believed to be messaging Border Patrol movements back to the Mexican side.
“This is an issue of national security, these spotters that are over here, they’re a national security threat,” Mr. Comer said. “Not only are they complicit in allowing the illegal drugs to cross the border … they’re also involved in crime, just horrific crimes.”
“It’s the fact that the United States isn’t putting up a fight,” he said. “We need to have a military presence on the border. There’s clear paths across from Mexico to the United States where these drug smugglers are walking every day.”
National Guard troops have been deployed before, and some are still on the border as part of state details, but Mr. Comer said it’s time to send active-duty troops.
The Border Patrol has seen the longest sustained stretch of high illegal immigrant apprehensions in history under President Biden, with 2.1 million arrests over the last 12 months. That tops the 1.7 million figure set over a 12-month period ending in the summer of 2000.
Under Mr. Biden the onslaught has gone from seasonal to year-round — and the evidence suggests that the people who make it across are staying, and serving as enticements for others to make the journey.
Indeed, Homeland Security expects things are about to get even worse with the looming end of Title 42, a pandemic border shutdown that the administration has slated to expire on May 23.
The department expects up to 18,000 illegal immigrants a day to be caught at the southern border. In the just-completed month of March, about 7,000 were nabbed each day, which was itself a near-record pace.
During the early days of the Trump administration, there were times when the Border Patrol caught fewer than 15,000 in an entire month.
Mr. Comer said even before the looming surge, agents are overwhelmed. They told him they spend more than half their time doing administrative duties, such as writing out reports on apprehensions or providing caretaking for the migrants in custody.
That leaves fewer people to actually guard the border.
“Under President Biden, he has turned the Border Patrol into the welcoming committee for anybody who wants to come to the United States, for any reason,” he said.
Mr. Comer said during his trip to the border last year, lawmakers gave Mr. Biden the benefit of the doubt on his border policy, figuring it was a miscalculation.
After this trip, he said, they have concluded the president wants it this way.
“Now we realize he fully understands what’s going on at the southern border and this is his policy — to let as many people into this country as possible,” the lawmaker said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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