One of the most important current national security issues is the overwhelming influx of individuals flooding the southern United States border. In recent days, President Joe Biden has made questionable claims as to whether he has ever visited the border. Press Secretary Jen Psaki sparred with Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy on Friday after President Biden said in a Town Hall on Thursday evening that he had “been to the border” and that he “knew it well.” Psaki revealed that in 2008 Biden had driven through El Paso on his way to a campaign stump.
Why is Biden’s attention to the border so important at the moment? In the last ten months, over 1 million migrants have crossed our southern border, and Americans are greatly concerned. Ranchers on the border are reporting property damage. During the week of October 17, 2021, it was reported that migrant children were being flown to New York and Florida during midnight flights. The destination of the children is unknown. Some apprehended migrants have been found to have direct links to the violent gang, MS-13, and just last month, 30,000 Haitian migrants arrived at the Del Rio area of the southern border.
Considering the chaotic state of the border, when Secretary of State Anthony Blinken commented that the record drug seizures at the border were both “good news and bad news,” Americans reacted with criticism.
On Tuesday, Blinken was in attendance at a press conference in Ecuador. The press conference was a joint effort with the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Mauricio Montalvo. Both Blinken and Montalvo were posed questions dealing with security and migration, as well as narcotrafficking.
Blinken responded that narcotrafficking is a “shared concern for both nations,” and he said that both the United States and Ecuador are working together to “equip police and give law enforcement the tools needed to combat trafficking.” Blinken then said, “We are working together and facilitating what had been -in both a good news, bad news story – record drug seizures.” Blinken added, “The good news being we’re effective, the bad news being it’s a record drug seizure – which means the problem, in a sense, is even larger.”
For Blinken to acquiesce to something most Americans have suspected all along was going on at our southern border only serves to further anger those who supported the Remain in Mexico policy of the last administration as well as the construction of the border wall. With the record number of migrants spilling into the United States on a daily basis, many Americans are insistent that the Biden Administration do something to stave off the unrelenting flow.
The idea that drugs are being trafficked over the border due to Biden’s lax border policies is not a new one. Law enforcement all along border states is reporting an uptick in all sorts of dangerous drugs, from fentanyl to methamphetamine to heroin. On October 1, the Customs and Border Protection seized $1.2 million worth of cocaine and fentanyl. The sheriff of Cochise, Arizona told Fox News that until the border is secure, “the war on drugs in the U.S. will likely worsen.”
Perhaps another issue many Americans have with the open border to our south is the fact that migrants are allowed to walk across the border without proof of vaccination, nor are there any sites set up to offer COVID vaccinations to migrants. This takes place when many Americans are facing a Biden Administration mandate to be fully vaccinated or face being fired.
Although it is most likely that Blinken intended his comments to be a commendation of the work law enforcement is doing, there are critics who believe the record amount of drugs would not be coming to the border if the Biden Administration had not reversed the construction of the border wall or stripped the CBP of much of its authority shortly after the president took office.
The Remain in Mexico policy will be reinstated next month. Until then, the porous border continues to hemorrhage much to the chagrin of the American public.
