Border security/ illegal immigration polls as one of voters’ top concerns along with inflation, crime, abortion, and the economy in general. GOP governors such as Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott are doing what they can to address the problem, but since border security is fundamentally a federal matter, their powers in this regard remain limited. The GOP minorities in the House and Senate also are limited in addressing the problem — constrained primarily to highlighting the problem and proposing alternate policy prescriptions. Nonetheless, given the scale of the debacle, congressional Republicans — with a few exceptions — have been far less vocal and energetic than the circumstances would predict. Consider:
- More than 2 million illegal aliens have crossed the border this fiscal year; an estimated 3.5 million have crossed since President Biden took office. Historically, an invasion of this magnitude usually is a consequence of losing a war.
- Among those who crossed in the last year were 78 terror suspects caught by Border Patrol. Given that terror suspects have a unique interest in avoiding detection and apprehension, the true figure is much higher. In contrast, DHS reports that between 2017 and 2020 a total of eleven terror suspects were caught crossing the southern border.
- DEA seized 15,000 pounds of fentanyl at the border in the last fiscal year. That’s four times the amount seized in 2017. The CDC reports that last year there were a record 70,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. from opioids such as fentanyl.
- Mark Krikorian calculates the cost to the American taxpayer of the increase in illegal immigration under the Biden administration at $100 billion. This includes costs associated with overwhelmed school systems, swamped benefit programs, and stressed infrastructure.
- Illegal immigrants also are displacing Americans in the low-skilled labor markets. A hearing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights more than a decade ago — when the scale of the problem was significantly smaller — showed that approximately 1 million black workers had been displaced by illegal immigrants, a cohort less likely to complain to OSHA, the EEOC, or the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor.
Over the last two decades, congressional Republicans — again, with a few notable exceptions — have been flaccid defenders of the southern border. Unfortunately, the consequences of their fecklessness are far graver than mere electoral underperformance.