WASHINGTON, DC, Apr 25 -- Title 42, indeed, helps slow down the surging illegal immigration crisis at our border with Mexico. And it’s great news that a goodly number of Democrats in Congress are starting to understand that its implementation under President Trump, among other initiatives, helped the border patrol manage the unlawful, ever increasing flow of migrants. But it won’t put an end to the growing number of caravans of intruders who’ve been knocking at our door ever since Mr. Biden and his side-kick, Kamala Harris, began promising come-one-come-all asylum during their 2020 presidential campaign. However, Title 42 is an effective tool that helps the Border Patrol keep drug smugglers from getting into the U.S.
Earlier this month, Georgia’s Attorney General Chris Carr, joined the ranks of lawmakers and lawmen “challenging the Biden administration's termination of the Title 42.” He filed a lawsuit to block termination. Carr says “It is the paramount role of the federal government to secure our nation’s border and ports of entry, and anything less poses a significant risk to U.S. national security and overall public safety. We know that unchecked immigration policies are a source for human trafficking, drug smuggling, and other violent crime, and we are once again stepping up to defend our state and our fellow Georgians from this administration’s unlawful actions.”
You may never have heard his name before, but Art Del Cueto is a Border Patrol Agent with almost two decades of experience on the job. In fact, Del Cueto is currently the VP of the Western Region of the National Border Patrol Council . In testimony earlier this month before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, he put it this way: “Since he took office in January of last year, the policies enacted by President Biden and his Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have directly resulted in the least secure border I’ve ever observed in my 18-year career. Due to the Biden Administration’s border and immigration policies, we have seen historically high numbers of individuals, families, and children illegally crossing the border over the past year, which has forced the Border Patrol to dedicate more than 50% of its resources to activities other than patrolling the border, creating gaps along our border.”
The NBPC executive went on to describe how Border Agents are being overwhelmed by the massive surge of illegal immigrants at our southern border. And Del Cueto said that this has distracted them to the point that they are “unable to patrol the border.” As a result, he says, the criminal cartels have free rein to use the migrant surge to successfully increase drug trafficking – the smuggling of deadly narcotics, mainly opioids such as fentanyl – that kill users in the U.S. by the tens of thousands.
Fentanyl is perhaps the deadliest drug of its kind. Just two milligrams of the stuff – the weight of a feather – is all that is needed to cause death. In the 2021 Fiscal Year, a staggering 11,000 pounds of fentanyl, nearly 50 billion milligrams, was seized at the Mexican border. To put it into perspective, in the first four months of the Biden presidency, the authorities at the border seized about 6,494 pounds of fentanyl compared to 4,776 pounds seized in all of the last year of President Trump’s tenure. Last year, more than 100,000 American deaths were caused by drug overdoses.
Del Cueto concluded his House testimony by telling the lawmakers that they “do not need to enact new legislation or appropriate new money to address these issues. Thankfully, we already have the laws on the books that we need to stop this growing public health, humanitarian, and national security crisis. And we have more than enough funding appropriated to DHS each year to do what we need to operationally to address these issues. We simply need a change in policy. It starts with policy, and President Biden's policies have made our borders the least secure in our nation's history.”
As if we don’t have enough homegrown bad guys in the U.S., President Biden has apparently decided there aren’t enough. The statistics are undeniable. During the Fiscal Years in which President Trump held office, the numbers of drug traffickers apprehended at the border by the Border Patrol fell from 1,797 in FY16 to 449 in FY 2019. In Mr. Biden’s presidency apprehensions skyrocketed from 386 in FY20 to 2,138 in FY21. And in just the first six months of FY 2022, trafficking arrests are already at almost 1,000.
Title 42 made it easier for the Border Patrol to keep drug smugglers out of the country by making it harder for them to get into the country. Mr. Biden’s decision to repeal it will make life harder for the border police and easier for the smugglers. It’s as simple as that.
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