Biden could stem border immigration crisis with this tool Trump left for him
The crisis at the border is astounding in its scale. Thousands of people, often enabled by drug cartels and human traffickers, enter the country illegally each day. Many are unaccompanied minors, untested for COVID-19.
This is a surge at levels we have never seen before, and it’s a reaction to the Biden administration dispensing with numerous measures that protected our southern border.
One of them, an emergency declaration from the Department of Health and Human Services known as Title 42, has been credited as one of the most important measures used to secure our border during our ongoing COVID-19 challenges.
Joe Biden was clearly going to be an open borders president. He sent numerous signals during his campaign that he would offer no meaningful border protection, promising to reverse President Donald Trump’s policies. Wall construction stopped, and we have seen this crisis build each day.
There is a simple solution: The president needs to enforce Title 42 more firmly to expel immigrants. And if he refuses, our border states, Texas among them, should go to court to hold him accountable.
In March 2020, when our nation was only beginning to come to grips with the gravity of the pandemic, a national health emergency had been declared and Trump enacted Title 42. It prioritized the health and safety of Americans and closed our borders in an effort to stop the spread of COVID-19.
Trump left America the most secure border in my lifetime and helped our country make progress against COVID-19. Texas is finally seeing rates of hospitalization and death decrease, businesses can fully re-open, and the vaccination roll-out has been called a remarkable success.
Biden simply cannot have it both ways. We are either in the middle of a national pandemic or we are not. If not, he should lift the national emergency order and let every student back into a classroom and every restaurant and music venue, museum and theater open at full capacity.
If we are still in a pandemic, shut our borders, as they are required to be under the law, to protect our country.
Thousands of unaccompanied minors are coming across our border, and we have no way to stop them or take care of them. Nor can we keep our communities safe through partnerships between local law enforcement and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, known as ICE.
In addition to ignoring Title 42, Biden has jeopardized Texas communities by removing much of ICE’s ability to handle criminals who come to our cities from other countries. Allowing ICE to do its job is an easy step to make our communities safer.
I have met with law enforcement members in our region, who are working with shrinking budgets and rising crime rates. They need ICE to remove criminals from our streets. When I was mayor of Irving, a close relationship between our police department and ICE was a large factor in making it the fifth-safest city in America.
It’s obvious we have a broken immigration system, but Biden’s flagrant disregard of the pandemic to appease the far left is dangerous. Ignoring Title 42, denying there is a border crisis and having a double standard on the pandemic – that’s not leadership, and Texans know better than to take that sitting down.
The president can use whatever term he wants to describe what is happening on our southern border. But his reckless policies are creating a disastrous situation for Texans and putting our health in grave jeopardy even as we deal with the tremendous challenges of a global pandemic.
All of this is within his ability to fix. He simply won’t, and that is a tragedy for our country and our state.
This story was originally published March 19, 2021 at 9:40 AM.