A pair of Republicans invited their Democratic colleagues to join them on their trip to the southern border.
GOP Reps. Jim Jordan and Tom McClintock extended the offer to their Democratic counterparts on the House Judiciary Committee in a letter addressed to Chairman Jerry Nadler on Wednesday.
“We write to notify you that Committee Republicans intend to travel to the southern border in the coming weeks to hear directly from individuals affected by the Biden border crisis. … We welcome any Democrat colleagues on the Committee to join us,” the two wrote.
Jordan and McClintock criticized President Biden’s “abrupt reversal of [former] President [Donald] Trump’s successful immigration policies,” calling the surge along the United States-Mexico border a “crisis.”
“President Biden’s and [Homeland Security] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas’s radical policies have caused the crisis at the border. Each day seems to bring a shocking new revelation about how the crisis is worsened by the Biden Administration’s failures of leadership,” they wrote. “Because you refuse to convene a hearing to address this crisis — or, in fact, convene any full committee hearing — Republican Members are compelled to take matters into our own hands. We will therefore plan to use Committee funds to travel to the southern border to observe firsthand what Democrats refuse to acknowledge and hear directly from those affected by the Biden border crisis.”
In the months since Biden assumed office, the southern border has seen a historic surge of migrants illegally entering the U.S. Authorities have said that more than 100,000 migrants were encountered at the border in February, and reports indicate an unprecedented 117,000 migrant children are set to enter the U.S. by the end of 2021. The most recent previous border surge saw the arrival of 80,000 unaccompanied minors at the southern border in 2019.
Republicans have criticized Biden’s policies, with Trump claiming that Mayorkas incentivized illegal crossings via “catch and release” policies, in which authorities detain illegal immigrants and release them with notices to appear in court.
“Even someone of Mayorkas’ limited abilities should understand that if you provide Catch-and-Release to the world’s illegal aliens then the whole world will come,” Trump wrote in a statement.
Administration officials disputed the use of the word “crisis.” Mayorkas recently called the situation a “challenge” that the administration is currently “managing.”
While there are no immediate plans for Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris to visit the southern border, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden will travel there soon.
“I don’t have any trips to preview for you,” she said on Monday. “I can tell you the president is briefed regularly on the situation at the border.”
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Some border towns have invoked federalism to implement their own border security measures without input from the White House. Gila Bend Mayor Chris Riggs declared a state of emergency in his Arizona town after the Biden administration left him “completely in the dark.”
“We’re a very economically depressed community,” he said last week. “We can barely afford to take care of the people that we have here in our community now, and as of the 2nd [of March], Border Patrol advised us they’re basically going to drop people off here and [say], ‘They’re your problem.’”
