U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) and U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) have joined nine other U.S. senators to formally ask that U.S. President Joe Biden replace Vice President Kamala Harris with a new border czar.
This, considering Harris’s failure to stem the flow of illegal migrants to the United States and her failure to work with our neighbors to secure the border, Hagerty said in an emailed press release Thursday.
“Your administration’s rhetoric caused a surge in illegal immigration into our country. From August 2020 to August 2021, there has been a 317 percent increase in encounters at the border. The current surge is the largest in 20 years as illegal border crossings have increased substantially since you took office,” the U.S. senators told Biden in a letter.
“For example, migrant encounters at the border have increased for six consecutive months. In August 2021, there were nearly 209,000 migrant encounters as compared to August 2020 when the number was only 50,000. Additionally, since January, your administration has released at least 225,000 migrants into the United States who illegally crossed the border. Finally, and most concerning, encounters with unaccompanied children are also rising; up 24 percent from June to July of this year alone.”
Hagerty, Blackburn, and the other U.S. senators also said that, despite those alarming numbers, Harris has only visited the southern border once “and that visit was hundreds of miles from the epicenter of the surge.”
“Even her trip to Guatemala and Mexico intended to address the ‘root causes’ of illegal immigration into America was a public relations disaster with absolutely no substantive policy commitments from neighboring countries,” the U.S. senators wrote.
“As if to prove the point, last month, Panama’s foreign minister suggested your administration ignored early warnings as thousands of Haitian migrants made their way north, and eventually crossed the southern border near Del Rio, Texas,” according to the letter.
“At one point, media reports indicated there were more than 14,000 migrants camped under a bridge near the border. Many of these migrants—despite originally being from Haiti—reported they came from South and Central America. Many stated that they made the dangerous journey because you, and Vice President Harris, promised to open America’s borders.”
Also signing the letter were U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), U.S. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), U.S. Senator James Lankford (R-OK), U.S. Senator John Boozman (R-AR), U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY), U.S. Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), U.S. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL), and U.S. Senator Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi).
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
