OPINION:
For the past three years, the uniparty in Washington has allowed President Biden’s deadly open-borders policy to deteriorate into a full-blown catastrophe without lifting a finger.
Only now — with the situation well past the boiling point and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, poised to amplify the critically important issue to Trumpian levels — is the Washington establishment rushing to throw the dangerously incompetent Mr. Biden a life preserver.
Make no mistake. This is part of a coordinated effort to stop Mr. Trump from being reelected, and it’s being led in the Senate by liberal Republican James Lankford.
Everything the Washington swamp throws at Mr. Trump, he deftly swats aside and moves forward like a man on a mission. Through a season of political indictments, sham lawsuits and an unconstitutional push to disenfranchise voters by throwing him off the ballot, Mr. Trump is stronger today than ever.
Mr. Biden and his cronies went too far when they implemented their government election interference strategy. And now — in an eerily similar fashion to 2016 — defenders of the broken status quo in Washington are in panic mode. The fentanyl, humanitarian and national security crises that Mr. Biden’s lawless border policy created just might be enough to propel Mr. Trump back to the White House because Mr. Biden has succeeded in making every city in the country a border town.
So, it’s time to inject some honesty into the illegal immigration debate. When it comes to the border-security negotiations taking place in the Senate, no one in the room is actually interested in solving the problem.
There’s nothing conservative about the Schumer-Lankford proposal. If there were anything remotely conservative about it, left-wing Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer wouldn’t put his name on the bill. Just look at the leaked outline of the alleged plan; legitimate border security measures are nowhere to be found.
Nothing about a border wall, nothing about enforcing immigration law, nothing about cracking down on sanctuary cities, nothing about increasing the number of Border Patrol agents, nothing about confronting the cartels, nothing about fentanyl. Let’s face it: Americans have come to realize that Mr. Biden opened our border on purpose, and no Democrat wants to fix it.
Perhaps the most infuriating part of the amnesty plan that’s percolating in the upper chamber of Congress is the line “5,000 migrants per day allowed in the U.S.” For the past two decades, we’ve come to know what language like this represents. It acts as a magnet for illegal immigration.
To make matters worse, we’ve all seen the headlines about the record 302,000 migrant encounters last month at the southern border. So, the Senate’s answer is to welcome 150,000 people to enter our country illegally per month. Let’s stop kidding ourselves: These kinds of liberal policies will only cause the border emergency to expand.
Republicans in the House did their job by passing the Secure the Border Act of 2023 several months ago. There’s a good reason that Mr. Biden, Mr. Schumer and the rest of the bipartisan open-borders caucus in the Senate have sat on the legislation for so long: It would secure the border in a way that reflects the wishes of Americans.
If Mr. Biden or Senate leaders were listening to the American people, they would have put the Secure the Border Act on the floor, engaged in a transparent debate, offered amendments, and moved the bill forward. But that didn’t happen because of powerful special interest groups that benefit from an open border. Again, the only loser in this equation is the safety and security of Americans. Thankfully, there’s a candidate who is on their side: Mr. Trump.
Every Republican in the Senate must come to their senses and get on board to kill this legislation. Over 8 million immigrants have entered the country illegally under President Biden, and God only knows how many millions of so-called gotaways are here as well.
This problem is destroying our national sovereignty and the rule of law. And let’s make one thing perfectly clear: This bill will serve only as an in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign. Any Republican in the Senate who votes in favor of this disgraceful plan is supporting Mr. Biden’s reelection bid and hastening America’s lurch to lawlessness and socialism. That’s the bottom line.
The plan forward for Republicans in Congress should be to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas without delay, double down on the Secure the Border Act, and refuse to fund any aspect of Mr. Biden’s open-border policy for one more second.
Polls indicate that a vast majority of Americans reject what Mr. Biden is doing to our country with his border catastrophe. Republicans must stand firm for real border security at all costs and draw a sharp contrast with the radical left.
• David N. Bossie is president of Citizens United and served as deputy campaign manager for Donald J. Trump for President.
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