Ever since Joe Biden has been in office, our borders have effectively been open.
Joe Biden is now asking Congress to pass legislation to give him the power to shut down the border (something he can already do), and some of his top campaign staff are now pushing back.
Talking Points...
- Biden wants congressional legislation
- Campaign staffers revolt
- Analysis
It being an election year, Joe Biden needs to make it look like he did not have the power to shut down the border during these monster surges that have allowed more than six million illegal encounters and more than likely more than eight million overall entries (this would include gotaways) since he has been in office.
So, Biden has asked Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass legislation in Congress that would allow him to get immigration under control. That legislation was just revealed on Sunday, with hundreds of pages of text to now go over to see what little bombs the Democrats have added as concessions for more border control.
Over the last week or so, Biden has been telling the media that he will lock down the border when he has the power, and that rhetoric is not sitting well with some of his campaign staffers.
Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) serves as the Congressional Progressive Caucus leader and is the co-chair of Biden’s re-election campaign. She is not exactly happy that Biden is finally looking to enforce border laws. This is shocking since she is in Texas, and her constituents are the ones feeling the brunt of Biden’s lax policies.
Escobar was recently asked how she felt about Biden’s comments about locking down the border, and she was not very pleased with the sudden turn in the narrative. Escobar stated:
“I was not happy.
“And that’s absolutely not language or terminology that I would use – not today, not ever. … I am a huge supporter of the president’s. … Does that mean I agree with him on everything? I don’t.”
Escobar went on to say that she thinks Biden should have been trying to push Congress for more immigration reform all along, not necessarily to close the border but instead to get Democrat policies in place. She added:
“I have yet to see what’s in the Senate bill, but there are certain red lines for me. And here’s an example of a red line – if there are ‘rapid expulsion’ policies in there. I live on the border. I have daily communication with the border patrol. I talk to our shelter operators, our local government leaders. … And something that has consistently not worked is rapid expulsion.
“The political environment is rapidly shifting. And I now hear many Democrats using similar terms that Republicans have used to describe immigration, about ‘closing the border’ – and that includes the president.”
This is going to be a problem for Biden if he cannot get every Democrat in both chambers to support the legislation that is now going through the Senate. The Senators who wrote the bill have been pushing the idea of rapid expulsion for immigrants who do not meet asylum criteria, and considering that Escobar specifically mentioned that aspect of the bill as troubling, it tells me that Biden will meet with resistance on this.
And let’s be honest... Democrats have no real interest in getting the border under control. This is more or less a political stunt by Biden in an election year to make it look like he is doing something about the border issue. To that point, even if the legislation passes, if the early numbers reported are correct, we could still see as many as 150,000 border crossings a month before any of these controls would kick in.
Even then, the flow at the border would only be reduced by about 45,000 per month before those controls were removed. So, the ideal situation for Democrats is that we see about 1.8 million border encounters per year, which is still about three times as many as we were seeing when Trump was in office.
