By Mark Anderson
While Congress wasted no time voting 229-202 for spurious contempt-of-Congress charges against former Trump administration strategist Steve Bannon because he would not testify about the so-called Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol “insurrection,” the issue crying out like never before for corrective action, the Southern border breach, has often been treated lukewarmly. But, finally, 34 House members are using their time constructively—having sent President Joe Biden a hard-hitting letter to bluntly admonish him to come clean with hard data on the extent of the Southern border breach.
Most significantly, they are demanding answers on why the Biden bunch will not abide by a recent key judicial decision to enforce the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), otherwise known as the remain-in-Mexico policy, from the logical Trump days that requires asylum applicants to stay on the Mexican side of the border while their applications are carefully reviewed. Meanwhile, Mexico must see to their humanitarian needs.
“We have got to get help from the Mexican government and we need to get help from our leaders, too,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) told Fox News Oct. 24. He added that Biden remains utterly obsessed with undoing everything Trump did to secure the border—which included getting Mexico and other nearby nations to cooperate in keeping human caravans at bay and discouraging a mad rush to the border—illegal border crossings have become so intense that hundreds of border-crashers have been shown in video storming ineffectual groups of Mexican troops and security forces, easily breaking through such forces and running, often at full speed, to continue heading north.
As of Oct. 24, some 2,000 additional “migrants,” on foot with bus rides reportedly available at times, were known to be near Tapachula in Mexico’s Chiapas state, in the nation’s southern-most region near Guatemala. It’s about 1,273 miles from the most southerly parts of Texas.
Biggs, who is taking the apparent lead to impress upon the White House that the situation is intolerable and must be immediately addressed, also remarked that there are three key reasons the current border blitz—with quadruple the apprehensions of illegal aliens this year (1.734 million) compared to last year (approximately 458,000)—is happening. First, Biden campaigned on the theme of an open border. Second, granting asylum and amnesty to hundreds of thousands of new arrivals may translate into new voters for Democrats. Third, the Democrats “don’t believe in the concept of the Westphalian nation-state.”
The Westphalian nation-state is an international law principle that each nation-state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs.
According to Tom Homan, a former police officer who served as Trump’s acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement until mid-2019, even the leaders of Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico have conceded that “the Biden policies are causing the surge.”
Homan also described Border Patrol (BP) morale being at “rock bottom,” as BP officers who ought to be patrolling the border are doing tons of tedious paperwork that should be done in Mexico under the MPP.
The two-page letter from the 34 Congress members states in its key parts: “In August, U.S. Judge for the Northern District of Texas Matthew Kacsmaryk ordered you to ‘enforce and implement MPP in good faith until such time as it has been lawfully rescinded in compliance with the APA and until such time that the federal government has sufficient detention capacity to detain all aliens subject to mandatory detention under Section 1255 without releasing any aliens because of lack of detention resources’,” quoting the judge himself in that part.
The letter adds:
Your administration has yet to comply with the order to restart the MPP or [take] the steps necessary to expand detention capacity. In fact, instead of restarting MPP, the Department of Homeland Security has announced that it is still working to terminate MPP. The obsession with terminating MPP is evidence that your administration has no desire to secure our border and stop illegal immigration. The surge of aliens into Del Rio and the accompanying lawlessness . . . is directly linked to your refusal to comply with Judge Kascmaryk’s order. . . . If the DHS was implementing MPP as ordered, the aliens entering the U.S. in Texas would be returned to Mexico instead of being released into the interior of the U.S. . . . You must restart MPP and you must begin expanding detention capacity. Further delay is harmful to the safety and sovereignty of our nation.
The other signatories are Republican Reps. Michael Cloud (Texas), Bill Posey (Fla.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Bill Johnson (Ohio), Vickie Hartzler (Mo.), Scott Fitzgerald (Wisc.), Bob Gibbs (Ohio), W. Gregory Steube (Fla.), Andy Harris (Md.), Glenn Grothman (Wisc.), Brian Mast (Fla.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Jody Hice (Ga.), Matthew Rosendale Sr. (Mont.), Markwayne Mullin (Okla.), Louie Gohmert (Texas), Ted Budd (N.C.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.), Andrew Clyde (Ga.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Brian Babin (Texas), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Robert Aderholt (Ala.), Dan Bishop (N.C.), Bob Good (Va.), Chip Roy (Texas), Scott DesJarlais (Tenn.), Randy Weber (Texas), Debbie Lesko (Ariz.), Mary Miller (Ill.), John Rutherford (Fla.), Russ Fulcher (Idaho), and Yvette Herrell (N.M.).
The Biden bunch was given an Oct. 22 letter-response deadline that it failed to meet. “We have yet to receive a response to our letter,” Rep. Biggs’s media spokesperson Hilton Beckham emailed AFP Oct. 25 at 11:30 a.m. EST.
Our borders are out of control , its a embarrasment , drugs , murder, terrorist can all just walk over our borders.
This is why I refer to Joe Biden, as the imposter in Chief. He ignores a written letter to have the MPP by some members of the House GOP dealing with the southern border. He violates his oath office, and he thinks that he is above the law. If the Biden botch up at the border is not solve, he should be tried for treason.