If anyone has the right to protest the way the Biden administration has been dealing with the huge increase in illegal border crossings, it it Mark Morgan. His service to our country included serving during the Trump administration as acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Prior to leading terms in those posts, he was chief of the U.S. Border Patrol during the Obama adminstration. Before filling the assignments dealing with illegal.immigration, he served in the FBI for 20 years.
On July 22, 2021, Morgan delivered a speech in Washington at Hillsdale College’s Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship. What follows are his thoughts [given in italics] about what he terms “The Disaster at Our Southern Border.”
Morgan: In just a few short months, the Biden administration has created a disaster on the southern border of the United States. It did so by methodically — and by all indications intentionally — undoing every meaningful border security measure that had been in place. As a result, we have had five straight months of over 170,000 illegal immigrants apprehended at the border. The number in June (2021) was the highest in over 20 years. And Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been effectively shut down.
With extensive experience dealing with the border problem, Morgan pointed out that, in 2006, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act, which directed the Department of Homeland Security to establish “operational control” over U.S. land and maritime borders to prevent “unlawful entry” into our country. This law, overwhelmingly approved by 80 members of the Senate, mandated providing two layers of fencing, plus roads, lights, cameras, and sensors. Morgan noted that the measure was enthusiastically approved by then-Senators Barack Obama, Chuck Schumer, and Joe Biden. He specifically pointed to Joe Biden’s 2006 warning that “people are driving across the border with tons — hear me, tons — of everything from methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin.”
This former chief of Border Control and Commissioner of Customs and Border Protection noted that, once in power (2009-2017), the Obama-Biden administration had reestablished the failing policy known as “Catch and Release,” under which apprehended illegal entrants were merely noted and given immediate free reign to leave the border area and migrate to any part of the United States. He pointed specifically to the Trump administration’s cancelling of “Catch and Release” and replacing it with a “Remain in Mexico” policy whereby anyone who ilegally crossed into the United States from Mexico would be sent back across the border immediately after his application for asylum had been recorded. Implementation of this policy cut the number seeking entry into the United States by 75 percent.
Morgan then stated: Less than three weeks after President Biden took office, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that, in line with the President’s vision, the U.S. had suspended and was in the process of terminating the Asylum Cooperative Agreements with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. In the same announcement, Blinken said that the new U.S. approach to the problem of migration from these countries would be to address the “root causes” of that migration — especially economic underdevelopment and poverty, although, oddly enough, climate change has been mentioned as a root cause as well.
Morgan then pointed to the March 21, 2021 incredible claim issued by the Biden administration’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas: “Our message has been straightforward — the border is closed.” That was totally false even as Mayorkas contradicted himself with a claim that the Turmp administration had “torn down the entire [immigration] system.” Morgan pointed to the revealing figures noting that “the June [2021] apprehension number [of border crossers] exceeded 180,000, July exceeded 210,000 and “Year-to-date apprehensions are over one million.”
Summarizing the very serious drug smuggling at the border, Morgan told his audience: It is estmated that just this year, the Border Patrol has apprehended 8,000 criminal aliens – including 46 murderers, 393 sex offenders, and 880 assailants. Over the July 4 [2021] weekend, Border Patrol apprehended several members of MS-13, the most violent transnational gang operating in the U.S. So far this year, Customs and Border Protection assets have participated in the seizure of more than 600,000 pounds of drugs.
Morgan stressed that President Biden’s budget for the Department of Homeland Security assured that “not a cent will go towards the construction of border walls.” He closed his important message about what he termed “The Disaster at Our Southern Border” with a sobering wake-up call: A country that cannot control its borders is not a country, and I’m sad to say that we are facing that eventuality.
But the record, as shown by Mark Morgan, shows that the Biden administration has undone several successful steps taken by the Trump administration, continues to weaken border security, and issues lies about virtually every aspect of the growing border disaster. The reality is that those currently in power want illegal immigrants to become voters for Democratic Party candidates as soon as possible. And that is part of the motivation for erasing recent steps to beef up border security and prevent our country from committing suicide.
