Lankford Calls on Biden Administration to Stop Pushing for a Wide Open Border

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on YouTube.

CLICK HERE to watch Lankford’s remarks on Rumble.

WASHINGTON, DC – Senator James Lankford (R-OK) called out the Biden Administration’s proposal to end the use of Title 42 expulsions at the southern border and instead hide the chaos by relying on “interior processing” to move illegal immigrants into the country for processing and release. Lankford and his team warned Biden Administration officials directly about what a bad idea that is. He has warned Senators directly, and today he warned the media about the Administration’s impending decision to revoke Title 42 authority.

Title 42, a clause of the 1944 Public Health Services Law, provides border law enforcement the authority to remove illegal immigrants during a public health emergency like COVID-19. Trump and Biden both have used Title 42 to rapidly expel migrants at the southern border. DHS has expelled over 1.1 million migrants—56 percent of all migrants encountered at the southern border—under the authority since Biden took office.

Lankford has sounded the alarm on the chaos at the US-Mexico border for months and in recent weeks has highlighted his concerns for the Biden Administration’s plans to lift Title 42 and start internal processing. Last week he warned that the US could see an additional 1 million illegal border crossers in six weeks if Biden rescinds Title 42. Lankford said he would bring a Congressional Review Act resolution forward to overturn the Biden Administration’s attempt to lift the Title 42 order.

Yesterday, Lankford sent a letter to Senators to make sure they’re aware of the chaos that is about to begin if the Biden Administration follows through with plans to lift Title 42 authority,

Transcript

Last year, we had 2 million that illegally crossed our border. That’s the highest number ever recorded. If you take just the first 14 months of the Biden Administration, 2.3 million people illegally crossed our border. To put that in perspective, the first 14 months of the Biden Administration had as many illegal crossings as the previous four years the Trump Administration did, combined.

We’re seeing an epidemic level of people coming across the border.

Now, in March of 2020, President Trump put into place because of COVID-19, put in place, what’s called Title 42. That was the ability, due to the pandemic, to turn people around at the border and to say, ‘You can’t cross right now during the pandemic time period.’ We all knew it was temporary. The Trump Administration knew it was temporary. The Biden Administration chose to extend that policy, agreed with the Trump policy, extended that when they came in in January of 2021.

From that time, I started addressing DHS to say, ‘What is your plan when Title 42 goes away to replace it or to be able to deal with enforcement?’ Literally for a year, this [Biden] Administration has had time to be able to look at what is their plan. They’re now presenting their plan to us of what they’re going to do when they take Title 42 off.

Their plan is to move people into the country faster. That’s their whole plan.

What they have worked on apparently for a year is a way to expedite people crossing the border and moving into the interior at a faster rate. As they talk about mass migration, they talk about, ‘How do we actually move people to the interior faster so they don’t get clogged up at the border,’ and the images that all of you saw last summer don’t occur again at the border with thousands and thousands and thousands of people.

That is not a plan to help us with illegal immigration, is to actually figure out how to be able to move people across the border faster. We need solutions from this [Biden] Administration. They’ve had plenty of time to be able to look at this temporary issue of Title 42 and to actually do real enforcement. Now DHS in its own numbers estimate—this DHS from the Biden Administration—its own numbers estimate a million people will illegally cross the border within six weeks at the moment that they drop Title 42. They’re aware of what they’re about to release. They have had a year to be able to plan for it, and they’ve chosen not to. And our understanding is, they could drop Title 42 within hours to days at this point.

Here’s my biggest struggle with this, among many things of just basic enforcing of the law. Just a few weeks ago, the Biden Administration said, ‘We need to continue to wear masks on planes because of COVID-19.’ As of April the first, we’ll have members of the military that will be released from the military because they’ve not gotten a COVID-19 shot because of the pandemic. We have individuals across this country that are living with all kinds of mandates because of COVID, but yet they’re opening up the border and saying, ‘COVID is over. If you want to come into the country illegally, you’re welcome to be able to do that.’

Clearly the Biden Administration is using the COVID pandemic to try to accomplish its purposes in this, and when it doesn’t want to do it, it just ignores it. When it does, it does. We have a big issue here, and it’s going to face every single area. Every state is a border state as we deal with drugs and with what’s actually coming across the border in high numbers. Just this morning, we had another group coming in the Rio Grande Valley that crossed of over 100 people, just this morning. And typically when that occurs, the cartels would put over 100 people in one area, and then they will move those that were criminal aliens and drugs a couple of miles downriver and to be able to move them as well.

This is a serious problem, and it needs to be addressed and taken seriously by this Administration. And they’re currently not.

###