President Biden has a demanding schedule. Biden has places to go, people to meet, and things to see. During his recent trip to Arizona, for example, Biden visited the North Phoenix site of the new Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd $12 billion plant.
But when asked why a trip to the chaotic Southwest Border, just miles from Phoenix to the Yuma or Tucson sectors, wasn’t on his agenda, Biden snapped: “There are more important things going on. They’re going to invest billions into new enterprise,” a reference to Taiwan’s investment. Although Biden touted TSMC’s factory as a bonanza for Arizona workers, the company will use visa guest worker programs to hire cheap, foreign-born labor for entry level jobs.
Biden’s infuriating reply surprised no one. The president’s 22-month long border neglect, along with his czar Vice President Kamala Harris, is standard procedure for the White House duo. Given that Biden acted so swiftly to dismantle President Trump’s immigration guidance, the naïve might think that the sitting president could spare a few hours to view his handiwork’s consequences. Instead, Biden intuitively understood that his border appearance would create the worst conceivable optics. Awaiting border patrol agents, ranchers, and irate citizens would use Biden’s in-person visit as an opportunity to unload their pent-up frustration.
Since his 2021 inauguration, Biden and his Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have overseen, and through their refusal to enforce immigration laws, tacitly encouraged a record, sovereignty-busting illegal immigrant invasion. In FY 2021, Southwest border patrol agents apprehended nearly 1.7 million illegal migrants, a new annual high. More than 305,000 apprehensions occurred in Tucson and Yuma. Then, in FY 2022, the illegal immigrant flow smashed the previous year’s record. Agents apprehended 2.2 illegal immigrants, 562,000 in Tucson and Yuma. The FY 2022 totals represented year over year increases of 25%, and in Tucson and Yuma, 47%.
Biden has proven time and again that he doesn’t care that his open borders have allowed fentanyl traffickers to ply, with impunity, their deadly billion-dollar trade. The latest CDC provisional data showed that in the 12-month period from April 2021 to April 2022, drug overdose deaths increased from 101,167 to 108,174. Most of those deaths, especially among young adults, were fentanyl-related. About 60% of all seized fentanyl nationwide is seized at the border.
Other border tragedies that Biden ignores include criminal human trafficking, and trafficking minors for sexual exploitation. The most vulnerable of the migrants are unaccompanied minors. The Department of Health and Human Services is alleged to have “knowingly” transferred minors into families with criminals that include sex offenders. Another tragic FY 2022 border record that the White House is indifferent to: 856 migrant deaths and an additional 23 deaths to date during FY 2023; the lure of asylum enticed the 879 migrants to their deaths.
Recently, another heartbreaking fallout from the border chaos has become public. This calendar year, 14 CBP employees have taken their own lives, including eight Border Patrol agents. The three most recent deaths took place during a 15-day span in November. In a press conference outside of the U.S. Capitol, U.S. Rep. Mayra Flores (R-TX), married to a Border Patrol agent, said federal agents "feel abandoned…families are forever changed. We have lost Border Patrol agents in the recent weeks that are friends…It has to stop." Flores pleaded with Biden to treat the border crisis seriously, something he’s empowered to do, but won’t.
Agents’ suicides have become such a grave problem that, to protect the mental health of its 60,000-strong CBP work force, the agency added a "suicidologist" to its ranks in the first half of 2021. CBP has also hired 21 clinicians and 13 psychologists to help agents deal with work stress, relationship troubles, financial loss, and health issues.
Even if Mayorkas is impeached, as future House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly promised to do, he’d be replaced by another secretary equally under Biden’s thumb. In the mid-terms, voters missed an opportunity to win congressional control, and with it an opportunity to redirect border policies toward enforcement first.
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