A few weeks ago, while returning from a short trip to Brownsville, Texas, I was going through airport security when I noticed a long line of individuals all holding red bags and paperwork. They did not show identification to the TSA but were instead waived through with plane tickets to various destinations within the United States. As I sat next to one of these individuals, I noticed the headline of the paperwork, which read “Order of Release on Own Recognizance.” As a representative of California, a border state, I have come to realize that under President Joe Biden, every state has become a border state. Every town is now a border town.
I have no doubt that the majority of the people in this line, and the more than two million others who have been apprehended trying to cross our border illegally, are good people, simply looking for a better life in America. In fact, I think it speaks volumes that people from around the world still risk dangerous journeys in order to come here, despite what many on the Left would have you think of our country. There is simply no other place in the world that provides more freedom and opportunity to improve one’s circumstances than the U.S. We should wear it as a badge of honor that our country is a land of immigrants and that we welcome more people to our shores legally than any other country in the world.
However, as a sovereign nation, it is also incumbent upon our government to enforce our borders and to understand who and what is coming into our country. Under Biden, a record number of individuals and drugs are crossing illegally into the country. Customs and Border Protection has confirmed that four individuals who were apprehended were on a terror watch list. We have no idea how many others who may want to harm the U.S. have crossed the border undetected. That is precisely why it is vital to maintain operational control of our borders. We must have a workable immigration system that can properly vet people, especially those claiming asylum.
One tool that has been helpful to our Border Patrol is Title 42, which grants the government the “power to prohibit, in whole or in part, the introduction of persons and property to stop a contagious disease from spreading in the U.S.” Despite the record number of crossings, the Biden administration just announced it will end Title 42 enforcement at the border in a few short weeks. It is estimated that the current flow of 8,000 migrants crossing into the U.S. illegally will swell to 18,000 per month once Title 42 is revoked, a number that will further overwhelm our Border Patrol agents and border communities.
Even as Biden and House Democrats revoke this public safety tool, they are simultaneously asking for an additional $10 billion in so-called pandemic relief. They are forcing Americans to mask on airplanes and trains, requiring people returning from overseas to show a negative COVID-19 test, and allowing for continued proxy voting in the House of Representatives — all in the name of COVID-19 prevention. So it seems that U.S. citizens must live under different rules from those illegally entering our country. Once again, the hypocrisy of D.C. Democrats is on full display.
Unfortunately, as we have seen too many times before, Democrats seem all too willing to put politics before science and responsible governance. By removing Title 42, Democrats are creating a huge incentive for people to surge across our border in the coming months. Many of these people will endure the dangerous journey, and some will not make it. An estimated 650 people died trying to come to the U.S. in 2021. Women and children are especially vulnerable to human and drug trafficking. It is reckless and irresponsible to essentially encourage people to make this dangerous journey, as well as risk the possible health consequences of unchecked illegal immigration.
The bottom line is that these disjointed, irrational policies have become a hallmark of the Biden administration and the new Democratic Party. They nonsensically spend trillions more to fight inflation, defund the police to provide more safety, cut off domestic energy production while begging dictatorships to sell us more oil, open our borders while extending pandemic emergency authorities, and the list goes on.
Biden and the Democratic Party have been hijacked by the progressive Left, whose policies are steeped in a deep disdain for our country and a desire to alter our basic institutions radically. They intend to create a fundamentally different system of big government, open borders, regulated speech, high taxation, and generational dependency.
The chaos at the border is simply the latest example of a president and party that have lost their way.
Ken Calvert represents California’s 42nd Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.
