One year ago, in response to an unprecedented border crisis unleashed by the Biden administration’s destructive policies, House Republicans united to pass landmark border security legislation. H.R. 2, the Secure the Border Act, is the strongest border security legislation to pass a body of Congress and undoubtedly would have drastically reduced illegal crossings and the resulting chaos over the last 365 days.
Unfortunately, open-borders Democrats in the Senate have refused to bring this bill up for a vote — or even hold a single hearing on it — while the border continues to spiral out of control. Instead, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is again trying to pass a Senate border bill that will only exacerbate the illegal immigration crisis.
Since Biden took office in January 2021, 7.8 million illegal aliens have been encountered at the southern border — more than the populations of 36 states. Alarmingly, more than 4.6 million of these illegal aliens have been released into the interior, largely through the purposeful abuse of legally narrow humanitarian asylum and parole provisions in our law designed to be “case-by-case” and limited.
Indeed, Americans such as Laken Riley would almost certainly still be alive today if their assailants (in Riley’s case, the accused is an illegal alien from Venezuela who crossed the border without authorization) had not been paroled and released into the interior, something H.R. 2 would have prevented.
The magnitude of the damage cannot be overstated. In May 2023, when the House passed H.R. 2, Border Patrol was encountering 10,000 illegal aliens a day; by December, daily totals were more than 12,000. Jeh Johnson, secretary of Homeland Security under President Obama, once said that 1,000 illegal alien encounters at the border constituted a crisis. During a surge in 2019, Johnson added, “I cannot begin to imagine what 4,000 [encounters] a day looks like.” Shamefully, that is now the new normal under the open-borders Biden administration.
During this time, the southern border has grown as a hotspot for infiltration by criminals and terrorists. In the nearly four years Biden has been in office, Border Patrol has arrested 48,395 individuals with criminal convictions — a 120 percent surge compared to the 21,936 criminals arrested under the Trump administration.
In fiscal year 2023 alone, Border Patrol encountered 169 known or suspected terrorists attempting to cross the southern border, an all-time record that should alarm every American. What’s more, these numbers only represent those who were caught — while an estimated 1.8 million illegal alien “gotaways” have successfully evaded border officials under Biden.
This mayhem would be halted by the enactment of H.R. 2. The legislation is designed to support a willing president and also to force a lawless administration to detain, turn away, or remove illegal aliens — rather than the Biden policy of encouraging them to come and then releasing them into the interior en masse.
Additionally, H.R. 2 bars the “CBP One” application from being used by illegal aliens to schedule unlawful entry into the country. Under the Biden administration, CBP One has served as a pull factor for unchecked migration at the border. H.R. 2 also closes multiple loopholes and addresses the countless incentives created by irrational policies, outdated laws, and flawed judicial decisions.
These reforms have the support of the vast majority of the American people, who now rank border-related issues as their top concern.
Of course, while blocking H.R. 2, Senate Democrats, with limited “bipartisan” support purposefully offered alternative border legislation as cover. In reality, their bill accepts the flawed premise of open borders while offering token “reforms” and keeping existing laws and loopholes in place.
It does nothing to stop the president’s parole abuse, creates a whole new “claim-and-release” process for dubious asylum claims, exempts huge swaths of illegal aliens from being expelled, and writes checks worth billions of dollars to help NGOs and Biden’s DHS to perpetuate all of it. It was so bad that it died before it got out of the gate in the Senate.
Still, one year after the House passage of H.R. 2, the dangers stemming from our open border have increased exponentially. In the weeks after Hamas’ attack on Israel, U.S. national security officials warned of elevated threats of terror attacks against the United States. Last fall, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that “the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States [had reached] a whole other level.”
Drug cartels smuggle substances like fentanyl that have claimed countless American lives. Often originating in China, fentanyl enters our country in large amounts across our southern border and is now responsible for the deaths of about 70,000 Americans a year.
But it’s not just the American people who are suffering. The human beings making the trip to America — some for good reason, some for bad — are suffering. Thousands of little girls and some boys get sold into the sex trafficking trade, billions of dollars are extorted by the cartels, and many die on the journey — indeed, in fiscal year 2022, a record-breaking 853 people died along the southern frontier.
From needless crimes committed against Americans by criminals who are taking advantage of these policies to the staggering fiscal and social burdens being imposed on cities and states, Americans are suffering the consequences. American state and local governments are seeing their resources stretched thin to deal with the influx. Texas alone has spent over $13 billion under Biden to manage the crisis, in addition to untold burdens on local communities.
This must end.
One year ago, at the urging of House conservatives, Republicans united in passing H.R. 2 to take the first step in decades toward an actual national border security policy for a sovereign nation. Radical open-borders Democrats in the Senate — led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer — blocked it, and House Republicans have been unwilling to leverage spending, Ukraine, or any other issue to force their hand.
We must ensure H.R. 2 reaches the president’s desk and is signed into law. If Congress fails to do that, we will deserve every single ounce of blame we get for what comes after.
Chip Roy is the Republican representative for the 21st Congressional District in Texas. Dan Stein is president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).
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