Submitted by Tommy Hicks, Republican National Committee Co-Chair.
Mississippians can recognize partisan spin from left-wing politicians, and there’s no shortage of spin coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue these days.
But political spin doesn’t even begin describing the gaslighting coming from Joe Biden about the security and humanitarian crisis his open borders agenda has created.
Joe Biden’s administration insists everything is fine as crisis rages at our southern border. Biden declares he has the situation under “control.” His Homeland Security Secretary claims “the border is closed.”
Nothing could be further from the truth and the numbers don’t lie, even if Joe Biden does.
The numbers demonstrate a complete failure on behalf of the Biden-Harris administration. The record number of illegal immigrants flooding the border under his watch doesn’t happen “every single solitary year” as Biden would have you believe. In April, more than 178,000 people were caught trying to cross the border illegally. Far from being a routine seasonal spike, that’s the highest one-month total in 20 years. It’s a ten-fold increase from just a year ago.
More than 17,000 of those apprehended were unaccompanied minors making the dangerous trek to America alone, the second-highest monthly total in Border Patrol history. The Biden-friendly media would instead ask him about his favorite flavor of ice cream instead of addressing the crisis.
But nothing is humane about leaving young and vulnerable children at the mercy of drug cartels and human smugglers, susceptible to sexual assault and violence. We’ve already witnessed the tragic images of children being dropped over border walls and left abandoned in the desert, only before thankfully being rescued by brave border patrol agents. These heartbreaking stories are just another poignant reminder that the cartels win when our policies lose.
Biden’s open-border policies are also Christmas morning for transnational gangs like MS-13, who are exploiting the crisis for their own evil ends.
Unable to deal with the influx of illegal immigrants coming to our country and unwilling to come up with a plan to solve it, Biden’s administration is simply releasing them into the interior of our country.
Compare the more than 61,000 illegal immigrants let go by Border Patrol in February, March, and April to the 18 released in the final full month of Donald Trump’s presidency and it’s clear that’s no coincidence – Biden’s policies are directly to blame.
If Joe Biden or his border crisis manager Kamala Harris ever bothered to visit the border, they would quickly realize their upbeat rhetoric doesn’t match the dire reality on the ground. They would see firsthand how the border is being overrun and our border patrol agents are being overwhelmed.
Local mayors and county sheriffs on the frontlines of the fight would share how they’ve been sounding the alarm about the border crisis and have been calling for backup.
Unfortunately, those pleas have fallen on deaf ears from Democrats in Washington who have done nothing but bury their heads in the sand and deny a crisis even exists.
What makes Biden’s border crisis so bewildering is that it was entirely preventable.
By building hundreds of miles of border wall, tough negotiating that got Mexico to harden security at their own border, and ending policies that incentivized illegal immigration while also cutting down on asylum abuse, President Trump and Republican leadership created a secure southern border.
Now because of weak immigration policies designed to placate radical socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, in a matter of months, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have managed to turn a secure border into a porous one.
To add insult to injury, amid a crisis growing from bad to worse, Biden is handcuffing Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ability to do their job. Even as illegal border crossings continue to skyrocket, ICE deportations have dropped to the lowest levels on record.
While Biden’s policies have done terrible damage at the border and our nation, it’s still not too late for the White House to make a much-needed course correction.
Joe Biden likes to talk a good game about wanting to “build back better.” But so far, he’s failed. To show Mississippi and the rest of America he’s serious about it, he could start by fixing the crisis he created at the border.
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Op-ed submitted by Tommy Hicks. He was elected to serve as co-chairman of the Republican National Committee in January 2019.
He previously served as chairman of America First Action PAC, the primary super PAC dedicated to electing federal candidates who support the agenda of the Trump-Pence administration from 2017-2019. He was also chairman of America First Policies, a non-profit organization supporting key policy initiatives from 2017-2019.
Prior to the 2016 presidential election, Hicks served as national finance co-chairman for Donald J. Trump for President. He was vice chairman of the Finance Committee for the 2017 presidential inauguration and worked with the transition team following the election. He also served on the national advisory board for Turning Point USA, a conservative advocacy group focused on developing grassroots in college campuses.
