Millions of illegal immigrants have poured into the United States and have been promptly released under President Biden’s catch-and-release policy. The use of Title 42’s health emergency authority to immediately expel illegal immigrants without any hearing on their asylum claims is on its last legs. But President Biden could not be bothered. He refused to even visit the border when he was in Arizona for a photo-op recently, claiming that he had more important things to do.
Congressional Republicans need to show some backbone fast during the new session of Congress to push back hard against the Biden administration’s open border policies. The alternative is a continuation of the catastrophic invasion of illegal immigrants and deadly fentanyl smuggled into the United States by the Mexican cartels.
Unfortunately, the new House Republican majority was dealt a bad hand by 18 cowardly Senate Republicans at the end of the last session of Congress that concluded its business just before Christmas. These renegades, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, voted with the Democrats to approve a reckless $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill that funds the federal government through September 2023. By allowing this spending monstrosity to pass, they took away appropriations leverage that the incoming House Republican majority would have had in the new Congress to move real border security measures over the finish line.
The omnibus spending bill, which President Biden signed into law as the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, designates only $60 million to hire 125 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers. But it lavishes $410 million towards border security for Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Tunisia, and Oman. And it appropriates enough money to hire or contract for 87,000 new IRS agents!
Yet 18 Republican senators voted in favor of these twisted priorities.
To make things worse, the omnibus spending legislation that the 18 Republican senators voted for prohibits the use of funds set aside for the Customs and Border Protection “to acquire, maintain or extend border security technology and capabilities, except for technology and capabilities to improve Border Patrol processing.” (Emphasis added)
In other words, there must be no federal spending on bolstering border security capabilities to keep as many future migrants as possible from illegally entering the country. The priority instead is to first admit the illegal immigrants and then spend the funds to improve the processing of their release into communities across the country.
Moreover, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 transfers hundreds of millions of dollars from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to funding a new Shelter and Services Program for migrants encountered by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). We are not talking about basic detention facilities to hold illegal immigrants claiming asylum until their immigration hearings are heard. Indeed, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is to receive $340 million for “non-detention border management requirements.” (Emphasis added)
These anti-border security provisions alone should have moved all Senate Republicans to support a filibuster and block the omnibus spending bill from passing in the Senate. But 18 of them defected to the Democrats’ side last month. As ACT for America founder Brigitte Gabriel asked: “Who is worse? The Democrats who are actively destroying the country or the Republicans who are sitting on their hands watching it burn?”
With their control of the House for the next two years, the Republican majority better not disappoint if they want to have any chance of retaining their majority in 2024. --->READ THE REST from Joseph Klein HERE
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