On Thursday, Senate Republicans once again blocked a bill that Democrats claimed would crack down on the amount of illegal immigrants allowed to claim asylum at the southern border. But GOP lawmakers characterized the legislation as an unserious “prop” that fails to address the underlying causes of an ongoing three-and-a-half-year border crisis that has allowed a record number of migrants to enter the U.S. unlawfully.
“Today is not a bill, today is a prop,” said Senator James Lankford (R-Okla.) on the floor before the vote. “Everyone sees it for what it is.” Independent Senator Krysten Sinema (Ariz.) agreed, remarking that the vote amounted to “political theater” that will do nothing to solve the border crisis.
“It was a non-serious effort to try to get some political cover,” Senator John Cornyn (R-Texas) concurred during Thursday’s “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins.” “The Biden administration and Democrats have done nothing while millions of migrants have made their way across the border and moved across the country. And the drugs that killed 108,000 Americans [have made] these criminal cartels wealthier by the day. And then there’s the 400,000 children, the unaccompanied minors that were placed with sponsors that the administration has simply lost track of. So this is a huge political liability in addition to being a humanitarian and public safety crisis.”
Over the last three years under President Biden, the number of illegal immigrants present in America has doubled, from roughly 10 million in 2020 to 20 million at the beginning of this year, including approximately 1.7 million “gotaways” — unknown individuals who completely escaped contact with Border Patrol.
Cornyn went on to express doubt that border laws passed by Congress would be effective based on the Biden administration’s track record of failing to enforce existing border laws.
“[W]hat kind of confidence can we have that President Biden would actually enforce any law we might pass?” he wondered. “He hasn’t enforced existing laws, which are basically the same as were in effect when President Trump was in office with much different results. We had much better control of the border back when President Trump was president of the United States, because that’s the job of the executive, which is to enforce the laws. Congress can pass laws, yes, but if the administration is unwilling to enforce them, that’s I think the reason why there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for this particular piece of legislation.”
In recent days, the Biden administration and legacy media outlets have drawn attention to an apparent decrease in border apprehensions over the last month. But House Republicans contend that “the border crisis remains at catastrophic levels” and that administration is playing smoke and mirrors by “using ‘unlawful mass-parole programs’ to send migrants to ports of entry and then letting them into the country ‘often with little or no vetting.’” In April, nationwide encounters surpassed 247,000.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins argued that the Democrats’ Thursday bill is similarly deceptive.
“This really isn’t a border security bill. It’s an immigration enhancement bill,” he insisted.
Cornyn agreed. “Part of the problem is it basically would make it possible for as many as 5,000 migrants a day to make it across the border before there would be a surge of resources to deal with the overage or the higher numbers that we’ve seen — as high as 13,000 a day at one point. But the concern was that this is not so much a desire to secure the border now as to tie the hands of the next president.”
The Texan senator further detailed what is currently occurring under the Biden administration’s border policies. “[S]ome [migrants are] claiming asylum and waiting perhaps as many as 10 years before they would ultimately go before an immigration judge. But many of them were paroled. … Basically what that means is that they’re released even when they’re not claiming asylum as a way to manage the bottlenecks at the border. So this bill was more of a management of this humanitarian and public safety crisis to try to move people into the interior of the country.”
In light of a majority of House Democrats voting on Thursday to allow non-citizens in Washington, D.C. to vote in local elections, Cornyn expressed candidness regarding the possible motivation behind why Democrats and the administration appear to be fine with such an unprecedented influx of illegal immigrants into the country.
“I don’t know of any other explanation for [why] they’re letting illegal immigrants into the country, [other than] allowing them to vote and then using those non-citizens for purposes of drawing congressional lines and the Electoral College,” he emphasized. “I don’t know any other explanation other than it’s a quest for political power.”
Cornyn concluded by cautioning that the effort could backfire. “What they’re finding, though, is even among Hispanics, for example, in Texas and elsewhere, many of them are chagrined and concerned about the massive illegal immigration across the borders that they are now tending to vote more Republican because of the consequences. So I don’t think it’s working, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not dangerous.”
Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.
