A Trump-era director of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the Biden administration “designed” the migrant situation at the southern border.
Thomas Homan, who served as director of the immigration agency from January 2017 to June 2018, claimed during a Wednesday interview on Fox & Friends that President Joe Biden fueled a “preventable” crisis in furtherance of an “open borders agenda.”
“This was totally preventable. The Biden administration … was briefed by leadership at ICE, at [Customs and Border Protection]. I talked to people that briefed them, and so they knew this was happening. … They knew what they were doing,” he said. “This isn’t incompetence. This isn’t, you know, bad management. This is open borders. They designed an open borders agenda, and the men and women of Border Patrol feel abandoned because they’re no longer enforcing the law — they’re facilitating illegal entry at the instruction of the administration.”
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Rep. Brian Babin, a Texas Republican who participated in the panel, agreed with Homan, saying the surge was part of the administration’s “plan.”
“They want open borders. They want as many of these people to come in and get on government assistance and become voting citizens, or at least voting people that would come and continue the Democrat majority,” he said. “And I think people just need to wake up. … What we need is the truth here.”
After Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade played a clip of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying that calling it a “surge” at the border invokes white supremacy, Homan called on the New York Democrat to visit the border and argued that the situation amounted to a “national security crisis.”
“The men and women of the Border Patrol say it’s a surge. The men and women of the Border Patrol [say] it’s a crisis. … This is a national security crisis, and if she can’t understand that or accept that, then she shouldn’t be in Congress at all,” he said.
The U.S. is facing a large number of migrants, particularly unaccompanied minors, crossing the border with Mexico. More than 100,000 migrants were encountered at the border in February, according to officials, and reports indicate that an unprecedented 117,000 migrant children will enter the U.S. by the end of 2021. The most recent border surge saw the arrival of 80,000 unaccompanied minors at the southwestern border in 2019.
Most Democrats have refused to call the surge a “crisis,” instead terming the situation a “challenge” that arose from policies enacted by the Trump administration. Last week, Biden appointed Vice President Kamala Harris to lead efforts to address the uptick in migrants, including unaccompanied children, flocking to the U.S.-Mexico border.
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While there are no immediate plans for Biden or Harris to visit the southern border, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden plans to visit in the future.
“I don’t have any trips to preview for you,” she said last week. “I can tell you the president is briefed regularly on the situation at the border.”
