‘It’s Still Going to Allow Crossings in the Thousands’: Conservatives Shred Biden’s Border Order

With elections looming in November, the Biden administration is finally taking action on border control — or at least giving that impression. President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Tuesday to curb the influx of illegal immigrants that have been entering the U.S. almost unobstructed for the past three years, but conservatives are warning that the executive order isn’t enough.

The executive order allows (but does not require) the nation’s southern border to be “shut down” if illegal entries exceed 2,500 per day for at least seven consecutive days, reopening two weeks after illegal entries drop to 1,500 per day. Even if illegal entries were limited to 2,500 per day, the policy would allow over 912,000 illegal entries per year.

Illegal immigrants who schedule appointments at ports of entry via U.S. Customs and Border Patrol’s app CBP One will also still be processed. According to Breitbart News, roughly 45,000 illegal immigrants enter the U.S. monthly via the CBP One app, accounting for over a half a million illegal entries annually.

Conservatives have been critical of Biden’s lax policies in the executive order. “It’s not going to be Trump-era-level executive order,” quipped Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) on “Washington Watch” Tuesday night. “It’s still going to allow crossings in the thousands.” Brecheen warned that the dramatic increase in illegal immigrants in the U.S. could significantly reshape the electoral landscape in favor of Democrats. “I think that’s where the real game is. It’s about long-term power. And not just that, of course, but most of us know that their [Democrats’] aim is ultimately to give them [illegal immigrants] full citizenship status.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) issued a similar warning last month. “Listen, we’re coming up on an election now. We’re six months out, and this has gone on for three and a half years,” Johnson explained. “We’ve been saying this for quite some time. I was accused when I started saying this a couple of years ago of engaging in some sort of conspiracy theory — but very clearly, they want illegal immigrants to be turned into voters. That’s patently clear.” He added, “If just one out of every 100 of them tried to vote in a local election — because they’re spread all around the country — you could change the outcome of the presidential race or certainly congressional races.”

Both Johnson and Brecheen also sounded the alarm over Democrats’ plans to reorganize the census and congressional district-mapping in order to benefit from the millions of illegal immigrants the Biden administration has poured into the country. Brecheen noted that enough illegal immigrants have entered the U.S. to potentially add 10 or more congressional seats to the House of Representatives. Johnson stated, “Only American citizens should decide American elections. But not all Democrats agree with that. And they want to affect the census in six years by putting people around and changing the congressional map. And they want to affect elections between now and then. We’ve got to stop it.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins asked Brecheen how Americans can stop this agenda. “Number one, we change by congressional law and we have a president [who] signs it into law,” the congressman responded. Brecheen praised the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act introduced by his colleague Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) before continuing, “Then you have measures that would not allow [illegal immigrants] to be tied into a census. And so we have to have a law change to where common sense prevails.”

Biden has spent months faulting congressional Republicans for inaction on the border, despite rescinding policies that his presidential predecessor, Donald Trump, had put in place to quell illegal immigration. “I’ve come here today to do what the Republicans in Congress refuse to do: take the necessary steps to secure our border,” Biden said on Tuesday when issuing his executive order, despite having previously claimed that his office does not have the power to act on the border without the support of congressional Republicans. The Democratic president referred to a bipartisan bill that failed in Congress earlier this year, purportedly meant to increase border security. “But then Republicans in Congress … walked away from it,” Biden said.

Senate Republicans did kill the bill in February after it narrowly passed the House, but conservatives in both chambers explained at the time that the provisions in the bill were inconsequential and effectively legalized a specified amount of illegal immigration. Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah) said that the bill had “significant flaws,” many of which are now tenets of Biden’s executive order, such as permitting significant illegal entries annually and opening up numerous loopholes in border security procedures.

Polling has repeatedly found that illegal immigration is among the top concerns — outpaced only by inflation — for American voters heading into November’s elections. Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) explained, “Don’t be deceived by Biden’s latest move on the border, which is nothing more than a political stunt. He’s trying to appear tough on immigration because he’s losing ground in the polls.” He added, “Remember, he’s already let in over 10 million illegal aliens, and his new executive order will likely lead to at least 1.5 million more illegal crossings in the next year.”

Meanwhile, Trump has pledged to “seal the border, stop the invasion, and send Joe Biden’s illegal aliens back home” if reelected in November. “When I was president, we built over 500 miles of border wall, stopped the flood of criminals, and we had the safest border in the history of our country. We need to secure our border once again, we need to secure our border once and for all,” Trump stated. “Crooked Joe will never get the job done. He doesn’t want to get the job done. It’s just words and misinformation because he could have done it very easily. All he had to do is say, ‘Close the border.’ That’s the power of the presidency.”