Biden is in a corner, and his handlers know it. The Biden Administration refuses to enforce the law of the land and has brazenly attempted to stop the Lone Star state from doing the job. Twenty-five states have announced support for Texas in the state’s struggle to secure our southern border. Biden really can’t come down hard on Texas in a way that would threaten the country’s peace, but allowing the coalition of states to win will show him to be a lame duck whatever the outcome of November’s election. So he is banking on the supposed Senate “deal” being negotiated by Senators Kyrsten Sinema (I, AZ), Chris Murphy (D, CT), and Jim Lankford (R, OK). By repudiating this truly raw deal and demanding that our border be secured, the Senate GOP can finally win one for the American people—and the party.
The United States went from a secure border under President Trump to a record number of illegal immigrants last month and a record over the last quarter of 2023. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) sources told Fox they finished December with over 302,000 encounters. This was the first time ever that the 300,000 mark was broken. This made 785,000 encounters from October 1 to December 30. Additionally, CBP has reported that they just caught 19 people on the FBI’s terror watchlist. This makes 50 already in 2024.
How many people have made it across illegally or have been admitted on a “catch and release” basis with an order to appear at a court sometime? It’s hard to say. Paul Bedard reported on a study released by the Center for Immigration Studies last fall showing that since January 2021 the foreign-born population has surged by 4.5 million people, a number larger than the population of 25 different states. Of this, they estimated that 2.5 million were illegal immigrants. This meant that whereas the foreign-born population grew at a rate of 42,000 per month under Donald Trump and 68,000 under Barack Obama, it has grown at a staggering 137,000 per month under Joe Biden. If the study is correct, then the U.S. appears to have more illegal immigrants coming in per month than all immigrants who entered the U.S. per month under Trump and even under Obama.
Given Governors Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott’s strategy of busing just a fraction of the illegal immigrants allowed into their states to “sanctuary cities” such as New York, Chicago, and Boston, even American Democrats who were happy to virtue signal about their openness are now starting to feel the pressure that such an insane policy will bring. Stalwart DNC-MSM outlet CBS News reported with a touch of worry that Biden’s use of “immigration parole” has been astonishingly large with over 1 million people being let into the country under this particular power.
Americans are well and truly sick of the chaos such uncontrolled immigration brings. A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll this week showed that immigration is now the top concern of the American voter, with 35% ranking it their number one and 64% saying the border has worsened since Joe Biden has been president. 46% say that it has made them less likely to vote for him and 77% say that Biden should make a deal with Republicans on border security.
Despite that showing, it is clear that Republicans should not sign on to the Lankford-Sinema-Murphy deal. Donald Trump has recommended that Republicans reject the deal, calling for them to sign only a “perfect bill.” Most Republicans agree. Lankford’s own Oklahoma GOP has passed a “Resolution Condemning & Censoring Senator Lankford’s Open Border Deal.”
What’s so bad about it? After all, Biden has himself called it the “the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country.” Well, as CNN reports, under this bill he would gain emergency powers to act.
Under the soon-to-be-released package, the Department of Homeland Security would be granted new emergency authority to shut down the border if daily average migrant encounters reach 4,000 over a one-week span. If migrant crossings increase above 5,000 on average per day on a given week, DHS would be required to close the border to migrants crossing illegally not entering at ports of entry. Certain migrants would be allowed to stay if they prove to be fleeing torture or persecution in their countries.
It also provides for an expedited asylum process.
So let’s get this straight. DHS could shut the border if a week averages 4,000 encounters per day but would only be required to shut the border if there is an average of 5,000 per day. Added to this is the requirement that the border be closed if there are over 8,500 encounters per day. Given those incredible December numbers, this would allow the border to be closed now.
But here’s the problem. This is not draconian. That the border would only be shut if 35,000 crossings per week is reached means that we could potentially have 1.8 million per year without anything happening.
More importantly, Biden doesn’t need any new authority to close the border now. House Speaker Mike Johnson posted on X his own opposition to the reported deal, noting that at 1.8 million crossings per year, “America will have already surrendered.” He wrote that he had informed Biden last year in a letter that the President already “can and must take executive action immediately to reverse the catastrophe he has created”:
The Immigration and Nationality Act coupled with recent Supreme Court precedent give him ‘ample authority’ to ‘suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.’ As my letter stated, President Biden can begin to secure the border by ending catch-and-release, ceasing exploitation of parole authority, reinstating the Remain in Mexico program, expanding the use of expedited removal authority, and renewing construction of the border wall. The President must start by using the broad legal authority he already possesses to reclaim our nation’s sovereignty and end the mass release of illegal aliens into our country.
In short, Biden could simply put in place all the Trump-era policies that he abandoned—leading to our current disaster. As Governor DeSantis affirmed in a short video, backing Trump and Johnson, solving this is “a matter of will.” Why would Republicans sign any deal that looks like this, especially when Schumer, Biden, and the mainstream media are hawking it?
There is no reason. The Senate GOP must firmly reject any deal that looks anything like what is being reported. First and foremost, this is because we already have laws in place. President Biden is simply not enforcing them. Negotiation over new bills only serves to obscure this fact. President Trump is right: only a perfect deal would be acceptable. Given that this will never be offered and isn’t really needed, the only answer is to stand strong and force Biden to actually act or, at the very least, allow this burgeoning coalition of red states to begin the process of ending the chaos that is tearing our country apart.
Given the House’s power of the purse, Speaker Johnson and the GOP may well be able to do something much more powerful in March when the Continuing Resolution on spending ends. But for now, his Senate colleagues just have to grow a backbone and say loudly, “No.”
David P. Deavel teaches at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, and is a Senior Contributor at The Imaginative Conservative.
